Time recorded where the work already happens
FigsFlow is time and billing software for accountancy firms — timers, work in progress and invoices on the same client record your proposals, engagement letters and jobs already run on. Time attaches to the job it belongs to, so the bill is built from what happened rather than from what somebody remembers on the last Friday of the month.
Partner or principal, start with the two views in the tour below. Practice manager, go straight to where the month-end goes wrong.
- Recorded14.5 hrs across 4 people · every entry on this job
- Agreed fee£4,500 fixed · from the signed letter
- Scope1 out-of-scope request · flagged, not silently absorbed
- InvoiceDrafted from this job · nothing re-keyed
the write-off is visible before the invoice goes out — not discovered in a report three months later
The same recorded hour, seen two different ways
A preparer opens FigsFlow and sees one screen: what they worked on today, and what is still untracked. A partner opens the same system and sees the practice — what is sitting in work in progress, what is about to be written off, and which jobs are earning. Switch between the two, then move through the sections to look around.
| Person | Job | Recorded | Billable | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tom Hewitt | Beaumont Retail · CT600 | 6.75 | 6.75 | Timer on |
| Lisa Reynolds | Hartwell LLP · review | 5.50 | 5.50 | Submitted |
| Amanda Banks | Across 4 clients | 7.25 | 4.00 | Submitted |
| Priya Raman | Colwyn Ltd · bookkeeping | 3.25 | 3.25 | Under target |
| David Fitzwilliam | Advisory · Marren & Co | 2.00 | 2.00 | Submitted |
| Job | Recorded | Agreed fee | Against fee | Aged | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marren & CoAdvisory · retainer | £9,860 | £6,000 | 64 days | 164% of fee | |
| Hartwell LLPSA800 · 2025/26 | £7,240 | £6,500 | 38 days | 111% of fee | |
| Beaumont RetailAccounts & CT600 · YE 31/03/2026 | £4,500 | £4,500 | 9 days | Ready to bill | |
| Colwyn LtdBookkeeping & VAT | £1,850 | £2,400 | 12 days | In progress | |
| Delaney TrustSA900 · 2025/26 | £980 | £1,800 | 5 days | In progress |
| Line | Source | Recorded | Billed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accounts and CT600 preparation | Fixed fee · signed letter | 11.5 hrs | £4,500 |
| P11D and benefits reporting | Out of scope · approved | 2.0 hrs | £650 |
| Opening balance cleanup | Write-off · first-year client | 3.5 hrs | − £1,580 |
| Service | Recorded | Billed | Realisation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory | £61,400 | £59,200 | 96% | |
| Accounts and CT600 | £148,900 | £130,000 | 87% | |
| Bookkeeping and VAT | £92,600 | £74,100 | 80% | |
| Self Assessment | £77,300 | £50,300 | 65% | |
| Opening balance cleanup | £31,800 | £17,800 | 56% |
| Client | Invoice | Amount | Age | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hartwell LLP | INV-0871 | £6,500 | 41 days | Overdue |
| Marren & Co | INV-0866 | £6,000 | 34 days | Overdue |
| Beaumont Retail | INV-0884 | £5,150 | 2 days | Sent |
| Colwyn Ltd | INV-0879 | £2,400 | 12 days | Sent |
| Delaney Trust | INV-0882 | £1,800 | 6 days | Viewed |
Illustrative sample data, shown excluding VAT. Starting a timer, approving a write-off and sending an invoice run in the live demo rather than here.
Nobody decided to give the work away. It leaked, one small honesty at a time.
It is the last Friday of the month and the timesheets are due. A preparer opens a blank week and starts reconstructing it. Tuesday is a guess. Wednesday had two client calls that never made it into anything, so they round.
The partner reviewing the bill has a different problem. The recorded time says nineteen hours against a fee agreed at four and a half thousand pounds. They cannot tell which of those hours were the job and which were the client's fourth revision of the same question — so they bill the fee, absorb the difference, and move on. The write-off is never called a write-off. It is just the number that did not get invoiced.
Neither of those is a discipline failure. They are both what happens when time is recorded somewhere other than where the work lives — in a timesheet tool that knows nothing about the engagement letter, the scope, or the fee that was actually agreed.
The fee, the hour and the invoice are one record
This is what makes it practice management rather than a timesheet with an invoice button. The price agreed in the proposal, the scope written into the letter, the hours recorded against the job and the bill that goes out are five stages of one record — so the reconciliation between them is not shortened, it is gone. Time and billing software for accountants has to survive contact with a fixed fee, and that is the test this flow is built around.
- 01
The price is agreed
A fee is set on the proposal and becomes the number every later stage measures against.
- 02
The scope is signed
The letter fixes what is included — so “out of scope” is a defined thing, not an opinion.
- 03
The work is scheduled
Jobs, tasks and deadlines give every recorded hour something real to attach to.
- YOU ARE HERE04
Timesheets and billing
Hours recorded on the job, measured against the fee, and turned into an invoice with the write-offs visible.
This page - 05
The money arrives
Payment closes the loop on the same record, so collection is not a second system to reconcile.
Payments · Stripe and GoCardless
- The agreed fee — from the accepted proposal, so recorded time always has something to be measured against
- The signed scope — so work outside it can be flagged when it happens, from the engagement letter
- The job and its tasks — every timer attaches to real work with an owner and a deadline
- Statutory dates — the filing deadline the work is running to, from HMRC deadlines
- An invoice built from the job — assembled from recorded time and the agreed fee rather than typed from scratch
- A write-off with a reason — recorded as a decision, so next year's fee conversation has evidence
- Realisation by client and service — which work earns, and which quietly does not
- A price signal for next time — this year's real cost is what next year's quote should be built on
Two ways to record an hour, because half your firm will never use the other one
Some people start a timer and forget it is running. Others reconstruct the day at five o'clock and would resent a timer on principle. A system that only serves one of them gets partial data, and partial data cannot be used for pricing.
Both routes land in the same place with the same detail — attached to a job, with what was done written next to how long it took.
Start it from the job
The timer lives on the job someone is already inside. One click, no client picker, no job code to look up. It keeps running across tabs and survives a closed laptop.
Or write the day up after it
A week grid where hours are typed straight into the day and job they belong to. Duplicating yesterday's pattern takes one action, because most weeks in an accountancy practice are not novel.
The system shows you the gap
If someone has recorded four hours of an eight-hour day, the missing block is surfaced while it is still recoverable — not four weeks later when the honest answer is a shrug.
The number that matters is the one you see before the job is finished
Every job carries the fee it was sold for. As time is recorded, the job is measured against it — continuously, not at month end. That turns a write-off into something you can still prevent.
At sixty per cent of the fee with the work half done, somebody can act: raise the out-of-scope request, reallocate the reviewer, or decide knowingly to absorb it. At a hundred and forty per cent on the day you bill, the only choice left is how much to swallow.
What has been done and not yet billed
Work in progress is the least examined number in most practices. It is recorded time that has not become an invoice, which makes it either a billing run somebody has not got to yet or revenue quietly ageing out of reach — and from a distance those look the same. This screen separates them.
Eleven jobs ready to bill is not a data problem, it is an unbilled month. Sixty-four days of ageing on a single engagement is a conversation nobody has had. Both are visible on the same screen as the job, the owner and the client — so acting on them does not require exporting anything.
| Job | Recorded | Agreed fee | Against fee | Aged | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marren & CoAdvisory · retainer | £9,860 | £6,000 | 64 days | 164% of fee | |
| Hartwell LLPSA800 · 2025/26 | £7,240 | £6,500 | 38 days | 111% of fee | |
| Beaumont RetailAccounts & CT600 · YE 31/03/2026 | £4,500 | £4,500 | 9 days | Ready to bill | |
| Colwyn LtdBookkeeping and VAT | £1,850 | £2,400 | 12 days | In progress | |
| Delaney TrustSA900 · 2025/26 | £980 | £1,800 | 5 days | In progress |
Which work is actually earning
Realisation is recorded value against billed value. It is the only number that answers the question a partner actually has, which is not “are we busy” but “which of the things we sell are worth selling again.”
Most practices see it once a year, in a report, after the pricing decisions it should have informed have already been made.
The same view runs by client, which is a harder conversation and usually a more useful one.
The invoice is assembled, not written
A draft invoice is built from the job it belongs to. The fixed fee comes from the signed letter, approved out-of-scope work comes in as its own line, and anything being written off is named as a write-off rather than quietly deducted.
You still decide what to bill. The difference is that the decision is recorded, with a reason, against the job — which is what makes next year's fee conversation an evidence-based one.
The parts you will actually use every day
Short list, honestly labelled
Timesheets and billing touch the two things a practice cannot afford to run twice — the ledger and the payment rail. Everything on the right is what is not connected yet, because finding that out in month two is worse than reading it now.
Microsoft 365
Staff sign in with the identity your practice already administers. Invoices and supporting documents are written into your own SharePoint tenant rather than ours, under the retention policy your IT function already governs.
- ENTRA ID SSO
- MFA
- SHAREPOINT — YOUR TENANT
- OUTLOOK — INVOICE DELIVERY
Stripe and GoCardless
Clients pay from the same place they approved the work, by card or by Direct Debit. The payment lands against the invoice and the job it came from, so the billing stage and the bank line are one event rather than two people reconciling later.
- CARD PAYMENT
- DIRECT DEBIT
- PAYMENT LINKED TO THE JOB
Xero and QuickBooks Online
Your ledger stays where it is. FigsFlow runs the practice around it rather than replacing it — your books remain the system of record for the practice's own accounts.
- YOUR LEDGER STAYS YOURS
- NO MIGRATION
The rest of FigsFlow
The strongest connection is the one you never configure. Proposals, letters, jobs and statutory deadlines are already the same record, which is the only reason a recorded hour knows what fee it is measured against.
- PROPOSALS
- ENGAGEMENT LETTERS
- JOBS & DEADLINES
- AML
UK tax and accounts production software
No integration with IRIS, TaxCalc, Taxfiler, CCH, Sage or the rest. Timesheets and billing track what the work cost; they do not push data into your tax software.
Not in this releaseExpenses and disbursements
Recorded time is what this module measures. Out-of-pocket costs, mileage and third-party disbursements are not captured here yet.
On the roadmap — no committed datePayroll and staff cost rates
Realisation is measured against billing rates, not against what each person actually costs the practice. True margin by employee needs payroll data this module does not hold.
Not in this releaseMulti-currency billing
Invoicing runs in a single currency per practice. Firms billing international clients in local currency should treat this as a gap rather than assume it.
Not in the UK releaseThree practices, three different reasons to record an hour
Fixed-fee firms are often told they do not need time tracking. They need it more than anyone — not to build the bill, but to find out whether the price was right.
The bill is already decided. The cost is not.
Nothing here changes what the client pays. Recording time tells you which of your twelve monthly clients absorbs three times the effort of the others — and that is the fee to revisit at renewal.
Six people, four billing models, one number
Fixed fees, hourly advisory, retainers and the odd project. Realisation only means something when all four sit in one system with one definition of a recorded hour.
Ten weeks that decide the year
Two hundred Self Assessment returns, everybody at capacity, no appetite for admin. A timer on the job someone is already inside costs nothing to run — and it is the only honest record of what January cost when you price the next one.
The awkward timesheet and billing questions, answered
What timesheets and billing connect to
Proposals
Where the fee this module measures against is set.
PROPOSALSEngagement letters
Where scope becomes a defined thing rather than an opinion.
ENGAGEMENT LETTERSJobs, tasks and deadlines
The job every recorded hour attaches to.
JOBS AND DEADLINESHMRC deadlines
The statutory dates the recorded work is running to.
HMRC DEADLINESCRM and pipeline
Where the commercial relationship, and the number, begins.
CRM AND PIPELINEAudit trail
Who changed a rate, a write-off or an invoice, and when.
AUDIT TRAILBring the job you know you underpriced
Thirty minutes on timesheets and billing, driven by someone who has used it inside a working practice. Bring a fixed-fee engagement you suspect went over, and we will walk it through end to end — the recorded time, the drift against the fee, the write-off, and what it should have been priced at.