Accounting Software for Your Professional Services Firm

Accounting Software Designed with Professional Services Provider in Mind

Service oriented companies span a wide variety of business types. Architects, engineers, lawyers, and consultants all provide very different services for their clients, but the accounting practices for managing their "professional service" work can be strikingly similar. Professional services companies typically provide "white collar" type services, usually on a strictly B2B level. There's typically a strong consultative aspect to the work and the service rendered typically involves the application of professional expertise to business and legal issues. Consequently, professional services companies usually bill based on their time, though preset contract rates are not uncommon either.

Software Specific to Services Work

The reality is that there are many nuances to adequately managing financial information for a business that sells services instead of products. Service companies have unique requirements: billing is often based off of time, off-site work is frequently performed, the type of financial reports needed can vary, and a client-centric approach to managing and presenting data is imperative. Finding a solution optimized for the way your company works can make a big difference in leveraging cost-savings and growth from your software investment.

A Complete Range of Financial Management Tools

Accounting software packages designed for providers of services offer a full range of financial management tools. Accounting features include the ability to print checks, pay bills, track expenses, manage payroll, create orders and invoices, manage receivables, establish budgets, perform bank reconciliations, and create top level financial reports.

Accounting for Time and Billing

Typical white-collar professional services firms such as architecture and design groups, law offices, consulting practices, engineering providers, and recruiters will also find a variety of modules designed to help them manage their service work more easily. Time and billing and project management are two examples of modules that professional services companies often require. For more commercially-oriented providers of more blue-collar services, there may be a need for software tools such as a work order management module or job costing.

The ability to track time for billing purposes is critical for service businesses. The two main applications for tracking labor are time and billing and job costing modules. Which system will work the best for you depends mostly on the type of work you perform. A time and billing module provides a way to track time spent working for clients. A time and billing module will support time-tracking where entries can be assigned to specific clients or projects, as well as marked billable or non-billable. Summary views in time and billing applications help service businesses analyze the work they've performed on particular projects. Basic expense tracking capabilities provide a method for charging incidental costs back to the client. Professional services companies usually use time and billing modules, rather than job cost modules.