Software for firms that sell expertise and have to deliver it on a fee

The utilisation trap

Most firms measure utilisation because it is easy to measure. It answers whether people are busy, not whether the work is profitable — and a fully utilised team delivering an under-priced engagement is a firm losing money efficiently. Cost against fee, per engagement, is the number that matters, and it requires staff to carry a cost rather than only a name.

Deliverables that someone has to accept

The difference between a consultancy and a task board is that a consultancy owes specific things to specific clients, and getting them accepted is the event that unlocks the invoice. Modelling deliverables and acceptance is what turns a project tool into a delivery system. See project management and client portal.

Firms that keep books for their clients

Accountants, management consultants and advisory firms often hold their clients' books as part of the service. Ofivio Books holds a set per client, hard-separated, alongside the firm's own — which is a genuinely awkward requirement for most accounting software.

The write-off nobody logs

Every professional services firm does unbilled work and almost none of them record it. The extra meeting, the third revision, the report re-cut because the client changed their mind — each is small, each is absorbed to protect the relationship, and none of them appears anywhere. At the end of the year the firm knows its margin is thinner than planned and cannot say where it went. Recording the work is not about billing all of it; it is about knowing which clients cost what.

Where firms this size usually start

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