The Money You've Already Earned, But Will Never See (EP 208)

Episode Summary

Busy firms can still have cashflow problems. In this episode, I talk about the report most owners skip: work in progress. It's work you've already paid your team to do, but it isn't money until it's invoiced and paid. It also doesn't age well. The longer it sits, the harder it is to bill and the more likely the client is to push back.

I walk through how I read a WIP report, where time quietly leaks out of a firm, and how a simple billing cadence took my own firm from lumpy cashflow to steady money coming in every week. This is one of the most practical parts of learning how to manage a law firm, and it's where a lot of profit hides.

Billings tell you what happened. Work in progress tells you what's about to happen.

What We'll Cover

• Why your total WIP figure tells you almost nothing on its own
• The four ways I break down WIP: by age, by lawyer, by matter, and against the estimate or fixed fee
• The warning signs that show a bottleneck in your billing process
• The two places time gets lost, and what that can cost each lawyer every year
• Why work sits unbilled, and why it's rarely about effort
• How a firm owner cut 11 days of invoice delay by stepping out of the review process
• Setting up a billing cadence for time-based, fixed fee and long-running matters

What You'll Learn

• How to read your WIP report so it gives you an early warning on cashflow
• How to measure your realisation rate and find where recorded time is being written off
• Practical ways to manage payments in your law firm, including billing triggers, money in trust and billing disbursements as you go
• How to take yourself out of the billing loop without losing control
• Five simple actions you can take this week to start turning WIP into cash

Free Resources

• Book a free law firm growth call to talk through your billing and cashflow setup

Is Your Work in Progress Costing You More Than You Think?

If your WIP keeps growing while your bank balance stays flat, it's usually a structure problem, not a people problem. Inside the Scalable Law Accelerator, our law firm coaching gives you the systems to bill on a rhythm, stop time leaking out, and take billing off your shoulders for good. If you'd like help setting this up in your firm, book a free growth call and we'll work out where your cashflow is getting stuck.

Who Do You Know With Money Sitting on the Shelf? 

Know a law firm owner whose team is flat out but who still worries about cashflow every month? Maybe they're chasing invoices, or they're the only one who knows when a matter should be billed.

Send them this episode. It might be the nudge they need to stop treating it as a busy month and start looking at the billing structure behind it.

And if this episode made you look at your work in progress differently, I'd love to hear about it. Share your biggest takeaway on social media and tag me. I love seeing the changes you're making in your firm, even small ones like setting a billing day or finally ageing your WIP report. Over time, those small changes make a big difference.

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