Custom software · Professional services firms

Build a practice system around your engagements, your hours and your recoveries.

A professional firm sells time and judgement. Neither leaves a trace. The engagement that quietly ran six months instead of three is usually noticed when the last invoice is raised, and by then there is nothing to say to the client.

Most firms have four systems for this. Email for the work, a spreadsheet for the fees, a drive for the documents, and a partner’s memory for everything else.

A practice system built at GullySystem starts from your engagement letter and ends at the recovery. Hours, documents and deliverables stay tied to the client they belong to.

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Who this is for

Practices we can build for.

Accountants, advocates, recruiters and architects each have their own page here, so this one is for the advisory practices that do not. What your practice charges for decides almost everything below.

Management consulting firms
Business and strategy consultants
Project management consultants
Marketing and branding agencies
Design studios
Digital and IT consultancies
Valuation and advisory firms
Actuarial and risk advisory firms
Compliance and licensing consultants
Quality and standards consultants
Environmental and safety consultants
Sustainability and reporting advisers
Research and analytics firms
Translation and technical documentation firms
Multi-office professional groups

What can be built

The modules, and what each one covers.

Nothing here is a fixed package. Each module is built, left out or changed to match how your organisation already works.

The client record

One place that knows who the client is, who signs, who pays and who takes three weeks to answer an email.

Client and group structure
Registered and working addresses
GSTIN and PAN
Key contacts and their roles
Billing contact
Industry and size
Engagement history
Fee history
Outstanding balance
Conflict check notes
Confidentiality terms
Relationship partner

Pipeline and referrals

Most practice pipelines are a partner remembering to call somebody on the drive back from a meeting.

Lead and referral source
Referring person
Requirement discussed
Estimated fee
Stage and next step
Next follow-up date
Meetings held
Won and lost with reason
Dormant clients worth a call

Proposals and engagement letters

Discovery call
Proposal drafted
Fee and scope agreed
Engagement letter
Acceptance
Kick-off

Proposal from your own templates
Scope and exclusions
Deliverables listed
Fee basis and payment terms
Versions sent
Acceptance record
Signed engagement letter on file

An unsigned proposal should not quietly become work, so the system can flag an engagement that started without an acceptance recorded against it.

Engagement plan

Engagement code and type
Start and expected end
Phases and milestones
Deliverables with due dates
Team assigned and roles
Budgeted hours by role
Budgeted fee
Dependencies on the client
Status and health
Scope change record

Tasks and deliverables

Task per deliverable
Owner and reviewer
Due date
Priority
Checklist within a task
Attachments and working papers
Status and blockers
Review comments
Version history
Final sign-off

Timesheets

The associate fills them on Friday for the whole week. That is when the numbers stop being true.

Time against client and engagement
Task and activity code
Billable and non-billable
Daily entry on a phone
Weekly submission
Manager approval
Missing timesheet alerts
Time against budget
Overrun warnings
Time locked after billing

No software makes a partner fill a timesheet. What it can do is make the entry a half-minute job, and show the manager who has not done it by Tuesday.

Capacity and utilisation

Who is on what this week
Hours booked against available
Billable share of time
Bench and idle time
Overloaded team members
Leave and holidays
Planned allocation for next month
Role-wise utilisation

Client document requests

The balance sheet came by email, the org chart on WhatsApp, and the price list on a pen drive somebody left behind.

Document checklist per engagement
Requested, received and pending
Client upload link
Reminder to the client contact
Version of each document
Who received it and when
Working papers folder
Retention and archival

Meetings and decisions

Meeting record with attendees
Notes and observations
Decisions taken
Action items with owners
Due dates
Client actions and firm actions separated
Circulated summary
Open actions carried forward

Recurring and statutory work

For practices whose year is built around due dates rather than projects.

Recurring job templates
Monthly, quarterly and annual cycles
Due date per client
Auto-created jobs for the period
Preparer and reviewer
Status against the due date
Filing acknowledgement stored
Client-wise compliance tracker
Jobs at risk of a deadline

Where a portal opens an official route in, it can be used, and those routes change. Otherwise your team files on the portal, while the work itself and its acknowledgement stay here.

Billing arrangements

Retainer, milestone, hourly, fixed fee, and the one client who insists on paying per report.

Monthly retainer
Milestone billing
Time and material
Fixed fee per deliverable
Success and outcome fees
Out-of-pocket expenses
Advance and adjustment
Billing schedule per engagement
Unbilled work in progress

Invoices and recovery

Draft bill from approved time or milestones
Partner review before release
GST invoice
Client purchase order reference
TDS deducted by the client
Receipts and part payments
Outstanding and ageing
Reminder schedule
Write-off with reason
Recovery against billed value

Expenses and reimbursements

Travel and site visit expenses
Expense against engagement
Bill or receipt photograph
Billable to client or absorbed
Approval
Reimbursement to the team member
Expense recovered from the client
Engagement-wise expense summary

Engagement profitability

The quiet number most practices only discover once a year.

Fee against cost of hours
Budgeted against actual hours
Overrun by engagement
Write-offs
Expenses absorbed
Profitability by client
Profitability by service line
Profitability by partner
Repeat business value

Client portal

The client sees the work moving, and stops asking your associate for an update every Wednesday.

Engagement status
Deliverables and due dates
Documents requested from them
Upload documents
Approve a deliverable
Meeting notes and actions
Invoices and payment status
Raise a query
Contact the engagement team

What a client can see is set by permission per engagement. Internal working papers and time records stay internal unless you decide otherwise.

Review and quality

Preparer and reviewer on every deliverable
Review checklist
Comments and resolution
Second partner review where required
Sign-off record
Final version locked
Issue log
Lessons noted at closure

Templates and firm knowledge

Proposal templates
Engagement letter formats
Report and deliverable templates
Checklists by service line
Past reports by industry
Standard working papers
Firm policies
Search across past engagements

Associates and sub-contracted work

Where part of the work goes to a panel firm, a freelancer or an empanelled specialist.

Associate master
Work assigned
Agreed fee
Deliverable and due date
Quality review
Invoice from the associate
Payment status
Confidentiality undertaking on file

Team records

Employee and partner profiles
Designation and service line
Qualifications and memberships
Chargeable rate by role
Leave records
Training and certifications held
Documents
Appraisal notes

Offices and service lines

Office-wise engagements
Service line performance
Fees by office
Utilisation by office
Shared team allocation
Inter-office work
Consolidated reporting

Who logs in, and what they see

Managing partner
Partner
Manager
Associate and executive
Articled and trainee staff
Billing and accounts team
Administrator
Business development
Client contact

Confidentiality and access control

Some engagements should not be visible to the whole firm, and a conflict check is easier when the records exist.

Engagement-level access
Restricted engagements
Document-level permissions
Conflict check against existing clients
Access log on sensitive files
Data retained after closure
Exit checklist when a team member leaves

Reminders and updates

Deliverable due reminder
Document pending with the client
Meeting action overdue
Invoice reminder
Payment received confirmation
Retainer renewal alert
Weekly engagement summary to the partner

Message delivery depends on your email, SMS or WhatsApp provider, and on the client contact details being kept current in the record.

Integrations

Accounting software
Payment gateways
Email and calendar
Cloud document storage
E-signature services
Video meeting tools
Payroll software
Existing practice software

The journey

One connected workflow, end to end.

Every stage below can sit in one system, so nobody re-enters what the last stage already captured.

Lead or referral
Discovery
Proposal
Engagement letter
Kick-off
Document collection
Delivery
Review
Client sign-off
Invoice
Collection
Renewal

Built in phases

You do not have to replace everything at once.

Each phase is usable on its own, so the system earns its place before the next part is built.

1
Clients and engagements
Client records, proposals, engagement letters and the engagement plan with its deliverables. The firm can see what it has committed to.
2
Time and documents
Timesheets, tasks, the document request checklist and meeting actions, which together stop the same balance sheet being asked for a fourth time.
3
Billing and recovery
Retainers, milestones, work in progress, invoices, TDS, receipts and the ageing list somebody has to act on each month.
4
Portal and analysis
The client portal, utilisation, engagement profitability and the reporting partners use before deciding what the firm should stop doing.

How we work

How a build actually runs.

01
Understand
We read your last four proposals against what those engagements actually took. Two of them will not match, and that gap is the brief.
02
Map
Service lines, engagement types, roles, review steps, billing arrangements and the approvals a partner will not give up.
03
Design
Time entry is designed first and kept brutally short, because a timesheet nobody fills makes every other number wrong.
04
Build
Engagements, tasks and time usually come first. Billing follows once there is something reliable to bill from.
05
Test
One service line runs live engagements through it for a full billing cycle before the rest of the firm moves.
06
Deploy
Go-live with open engagements migrated, work in progress carried across, and the team trained by role rather than in one large session.
07
Improve
Portal access for clients, profitability reporting and automation, once daily discipline has held for a quarter.

What we can build

Systems we can put together for you.

Practice management software
Engagement and project tracking systems
Timesheet and utilisation software
Professional services CRM
Proposal and engagement letter systems
Retainer and milestone billing software
Client portals
Document request and working paper systems
Compliance due date trackers
Review and quality workflow tools
Expense and reimbursement systems
Management dashboards
Multi-office practice platforms

Common questions

Questions owners ask before starting.

What does practice management software do for a professional firm?

It holds clients, engagements, scope, tasks, hours, documents and fees in one place. The value shows up when an overrun is visible in week six rather than month six.

Can it handle retainer and milestone billing together?

Yes. Different clients can be on different arrangements, including hourly and fixed fee, and each engagement carries its own billing schedule.

Will our team actually fill timesheets?

Some will, some will need chasing. The system can make entry quick and show a manager the gaps by mid-week, which is as far as software can honestly take it.

Can clients upload documents themselves?

Yes, through a portal with a checklist of what is still due. It also records who sent what and when, which settles the argument about a missing schedule.

Can it track recurring statutory due dates?

Yes. Recurring jobs are created per client per period, with preparer, reviewer and due date, and the acknowledgement stored against the job. A practice whose whole year is filings is better served by our CA and accounting firms page.

Can it file returns on government portals?

Only where a portal offers an official route, and most do not. Filing stays with your team, and the system tracks the work and keeps the acknowledgement.

Can we see whether an engagement made money?

Yes, once hours and expenses are being recorded. Fee against cost of time, write-offs and recovery can be seen by engagement, client, service line or partner.

Can some engagements be hidden from the rest of the firm?

Yes. Access can be restricted per engagement and per document, with an access log on sensitive files.

Can it work across our offices?

Yes. Offices, service lines and shared teams run in one system, with reporting by office and consolidated for the firm.

Do we replace our accounting software?

Usually not. Most firms keep their accounting package and pass invoices and receipts to it, while the practice system holds the work itself.

Where should a small practice start?

Clients, engagements, tasks and time. Add billing once those are steady, and the portal after that, rather than launching everything in one month.

Your trade

How we work with this trade.

Business consultants

Build a system that shows where the week went.

A firm that sells hours should not be guessing at them. Scope, time, documents and fees belong to the same engagement record, and the moment they separate, the year ends vaguely.

Take one engagement that ran over and try to say when it went wrong. A firm that can answer that from its own records has most of what it needs, and we will say so rather than sell a build.

Tell us how you work

Tell us how your professional services firms runs today.

We will tell you what can be digitised, what can be connected, what is worth automating, and what you should leave alone.

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