In this guide 6 sections
Practice management software keeps one record for each client, job or placement. The partner in charge, the team, every due date, the hours worked and the fee agreed all hang off that record. Nobody rebuilds the picture from inboxes and spreadsheets.
What does one record per client actually hold?
Open any client and the facts are scattered. The engagement letter sits in a shared folder, deadlines live in a partner’s calendar, and hours hide in a timesheet tool. Fee notes wait in the ledger.
A practice record pulls these under one name. It carries the legal entity, contacts, signed letter, scope and fee basis, and each job beneath it gets its own owner, dates and status.
Search then works the way partners think. Type a client name and you see every open job, every unpaid invoice and every paper still awaited, without opening a single folder or interrupting a colleague.
- Legal name, registration numbers and contact roles
- Signed engagement letter with scope and fee basis
- Open jobs, each with owner, reviewer and due date
- Hours logged against each job
- Invoices raised, paid and still outstanding
How owners and due dates hang off the record
Every job needs a preparer, a reviewer and a signing partner, and those names belong on the job rather than in people’s heads. Reassigning takes one move.
Due dates come in two kinds. External dates are set by a regulator, a court, a lender or the client’s own board, and nobody at your firm can move them. Internal dates are yours alone.
The software counts backwards from the external date and fills in the internal ones, then turns the job amber the moment a step slips. A manager sees it on Monday.
Where fees and time attach
Fees belong to the engagement, not to a person. A monthly retainer, a quoted project fee and an hourly rate all behave differently, so the record must know which one applies to this client.
Timesheets post against the job. Compare hours spent with hours budgeted while the work is still open, because a job sitting at its budget with review not yet started needs a conversation today.
Billing follows from the same data. Instalments, disbursements and write-offs sit on the record, and the invoice matches what the engagement letter promised, line by line, so the client has no reason to query it.
- Fee type: retainer, fixed fee, hourly or milestone
- Budgeted hours against actual hours
- Disbursements to recharge, such as registry fees
- Write-offs with a reason and an approver
What it replaces and what it does not
It replaces the tracker spreadsheet that one coordinator keeps alive by hand, and the partner’s private notebook of promises made on calls and over lunch. Both fail the day those people are away.
It replaces neither ledger nor document store. Most firms keep both, and the practice record links out to them or pushes invoices into the books so that every figure is typed only once and never twice.
Process comes first. If three partners run engagements three different ways, the software only shows the mess faster, so agree the common stages first: intake, preparation, review, sign-off and billing.
How to test one against your own firm
Load five real clients into a trial. Include an awkward one with three entities, a retainer and an overdue invoice, plus one client from each type of work you do.
Have the vendor demonstrate a late-papers case, a fee that changes mid-year and a job moved between staff, and watch whether each answer needs a workaround or simply works.
Pilot it for a week. Note every moment the partner or the junior reached for the old spreadsheet. Those moments are your list of gaps.
- Five real clients loaded, not demo data
- One reassigned job and one changed fee
- A report of jobs falling due in the next fourteen days
- An export you can open in a spreadsheet
Practice record field sheet
A worksheet on one page, in three blocks. The client block lists entity name, registration numbers, contacts and engagement letter date. The job block holds owner, reviewer, signing partner, external date, internal dates and status. The fee block records fee type, budgeted hours, disbursements and invoice schedule. Fill one sheet per client before any data is loaded into the software.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Is practice management software only for accountants?
No. Law firms, consultancies, agencies, recruiters and surveyors all deliver work as jobs for clients. The record shape stays the same, while job types, stages and fee rules differ by trade.
How is it different from a CRM?
A CRM tracks the chase up to the signed letter. A practice system takes over from there. It follows delivery, deadlines, time and billing for the work itself, long after the sale.
Can we start with a small group of clients?
Yes. Load one team’s clients, run a full cycle, then add the rest. Moving everyone at once buries the first month in data entry and hides the early lessons.
Who should own the setup inside the firm?
One partner who cares about the outcome and one coordinator who knows how jobs run day to day. Leaving it to IT alone tends to give you a tidy system that nobody opens.