Close the month from the same records delivery works in.
Finance should not find out how a project is going at month-end. In Bitmap the invoice, the budget and the timesheet are one chain, and the numbers the board asks for are already computed.
The problem
Month-end in a consultancy is a reconciliation. Finance exports the timesheets, asks delivery which milestones were reached, checks the proposals for what each was worth, raises the invoices, and then answers the questions the board will ask: what was billed, what was collected, how much of the team was billable, and how much money has been taken for work not yet done.
That last number, deferred income, is the one most consultancies cannot produce on demand. It needs the invoices, the day rates and the time logged against each project, brought together at a date. It usually lives in a workbook one person maintains, and it is usually a month old.
None of this is difficult. It is slow because the inputs arrive from different places at different times, and by the time they are together the month is half over.
What changes
- Every invoice that can be raised this month is in one list on the first
- Drafts are created in Xero with the right contact and codes, and followed to paid
- Deferred income is a report at a date, not a workbook
- Utilisation and the board figures are computed, not assembled
- Finance and delivery read the same records, so they stop disagreeing
What Bitmap does with it
It brings the invoices to you
Payment schedules fall due into Ready to Invoice, grouped by client, with the amount, the project and the financial account. The month's invoicing starts from a list rather than a search.
It raises the drafts in Xero
One draft per client, against the linked contact and the account codes you exposed, with the lines editable at raise time. Finance approves and sends in Xero as before.
It follows each invoice back
Approval, payment, voiding and deletion come back through Xero's webhook, and an hourly reconciliation catches anything missed. A voided draft is flagged, and its schedules roll back to Ready to Invoice.
It computes deferred income
Revenue recognised, converted to time at the budgeted day rate, less the time used and planned, valued back into money. Per project and in total, today or at any date, released automatically when a project completes.
It keeps the ledger's view and delivery's view together
Financial accounts, chart of accounts codes and payment schedules are records in Bitmap, connected to the budgets and the timesheets. The two teams look at the same thing.
It produces the board pack
The KPI overview, the deferred income report and the utilisation chart are computed as timesheets and invoices change. The Google Slides add-on puts the charts in the deck and refreshes them.
Per project: revenue recognised, time funded at the budgeted rate, time used, and the income still to be delivered, at any date.
What it looks like in practice
A consultancy's finance lead connects Bitmap to Xero: the tenant, the client and the secret from a custom connection, the webhook key, and the chart of accounts codes the firm invoices against. Each client is linked to its Xero contact once. Payment schedules are charged to a financial account as they are created.
On the first of the month, Ready to Invoice holds every schedule that fell due, grouped by client. The finance lead raises the drafts from it in twenty minutes, tweaking a line description here and a reference there, and approves them in Xero. Over the following weeks Xero tells Bitmap as each is paid, and the invoice list keeps itself current.
The board pack is the KPI overview for the month, the deferred income report at the month-end date, and the availability chart from the Google Slides add-on, which refreshes when the numbers change. The afternoon that used to start the month-end now finishes it.
The other use cases
A day-rate consultancy that has outgrown its spreadsheet
You sell days, and you know roughly who is on what. The spreadsheet that holds it has stopped scaling, and month-end proves it.
- Budgets, plan and timesheets against the same records
- Who is free, and when, without asking around
- Utilisation on the first of the month, not the fifteenth
An agency running retainers and fixed-price work
You sell fixed prices, monthly retainers and managed services as well as days. Each is priced, delivered and invoiced differently, and no tool you have shows them side by side.
- Contract types for how the work is actually sold
- Payment schedules that raise themselves on the milestone or the month
- Which engagements make money, and which are subsidised
Run your consultancy from one place.
Bring last month's workbook. We will show you where each number in it comes from in Bitmap, and which ones you no longer have to build.