Financial Planning & Analysis Solutions For Law Firms
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Operational planning and performance management in one intuitive business platform
Strengthens financial governance, risk, and management
Helps develop financial management skills in Partners with a non-finance background
Typically implemented in just 15 days
Financial Planning Demands
In today’s financial climate, Law Firms face a range of complex Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) needs in planning and delivering their objectives.
Key planning needs are not only the fulfilling short-term economic objectives, but also, planning the future development of the Firm and delivering the longer-term ‘successful future’.
Planning is made more complex both by the fast-pace of external forces in the form of market changes, competitor firm pressure and AI, and also by internal development options and investment needs for Department, Partner Teams, Work Type, digitisation, AI and Offices etc.
Cash flow and Balance Sheet modelling, and its integration with the P&L is of increasing importance. The ability to set and monitor the achievement of Gross Margin and Turnover requirements and Fee Earner KPIs, coupled with Practice development choices and future investment goal returns remains paramount.
Struggles Faced by many Finance Leaders
However, many firms struggle with planning, forecasting and reporting processes that fail to meet today’s needs. You may recognise some of the problems:
- Slow, resource intensive processes, that require too much manual processing
- Multiple models, that are poorly integrated and lack version control and struggle to deliver a ‘single version of the truth’
- Lack of real time data
- Susceptibility to error
- Inflexible in adapting as your needs and the Firm changes
- Hard to run reforecasts and to compare multiple scenarios
- Ill-suited to range of strategic planning and investment options now required by external market forces and technological change
- Difficulty in supporting performance driven-planning needs of the Partners and Practice Managers
- Limited ‘self-serve’ reporting
- Over-dependent on the skills of a single individual
How Account-Ability Helps
Account-Ability enables Finance Leaders in Firms to achieve their FP&A goals though the implementation of award-winning Corporate Planner software.
Used by over 5,000 Finance Leaders to deliver the integrated financial planning needs of their organisations, Corporate Planner overcomes all of the problems with legacy planning models and systems.
The key headlines are:
- Implemented to your specific needs quickly, typically in ~ 10 to ~ 20 days, without disruption or undue demands on staff time
- Affordable and scalable for all sizes of Firm
- Flexible and future-proof, requiring no on-going dependence on consultancy
- Dynamic, integrated, multiple user, database solution with version control
- Cloud SaaS solution with web browser access
- Leading business application with over 30 years’ continuous development and support
Ready to transform financial planning in your firm?
Get in touch today or book a free demo.
Account-Ability Planning, Forecasting and Reporting Solutions for Law Firms empower users to:
P&L and Management Reporting
- Budget billings by Partner Groups and Fee Earners
- Model individual fee earners, with drivers for activities, chargeable hours, charge-out rate, discounts, wip etc
- Budget and report by Departments, Partner Teams, Work Type, Offices etc
- Perform ‘what-if’ analyses on activities, chargeable hours, charge-out rates, Partner, Team and Office growth etc
- Set fee targets, plan gross margin and business won etc
Expense budget by:
- Model individual fee earners and support staff pay, benefits and office costs
- Budget non-pay expenditure, overheads, loans and leases etc, capital investment
- Apportion costs to report the fully absorbed position by Department, Partner Team, Office etc
Re-Forecasting, Scenario Planning, Reporting, Data Connections:
- Perform rolling re-forecasting and cross-financial year planning/analysis
- Undertake unlimited scenario planning on all key drivers including Partner and fee earner numbers, changes in Teams, Offices etc, charge-out rates, expenditure growth, etc
- Produce the management accounts and reporting pack, including billings, cash, wip and all key metrics
- Link directly to Practice Management system and to any BI/analytics system
Integrated Cashflow, Balance Sheet and P&L
- A single, dynamically updating combined model of actual, budgeted and forecast Cash, Balance Sheet, P&L, wip, investments, borrowings, leases and covenants etc
- Easy setup with transparent, configurable, flexible ‘logic blocks’ making the account connections between Cashflow, Balance Sheet and P&L
- Full scenario planning on Firm growth, Work Type, Offices and investment. Also on debtor and creditor terms, tax rates, capital investments, loans etc
- Professional quality self-serve management reporting
- Direct link to Fee Earner and P&L planning model
- Direct link to Practice Management system and to any BI/analytics system
Partner Accounts
- Budget, plan and report Partner Accounts - full equity and fixed share partners
- Capital and Current Accounts
- Capital contributions, Loans, Interest on loan and capital, Profit Allocation, Drawings etc
- Taxation, tax reserves
- Exits
Why You should Use Account-Ability’s Law Firms Solutions
Here are some of the reasons why and how your Law Firm will benefit from Account-Ability FP&A solutions:
- It delivers a modern, efficient, integrated, FP&A solution, promoting a common understanding across the Firm of current financial performance and future plans and objectives. It has the ability transform the efficiency, transparency and integrity of the budgeting and forecasting process, replacing legacy systems which frequently involve dozens of inter-linked, manually updated spreadsheets that have little version control
- By acting as a repository of ‘all the key figures’ for each plan and scenario, coupled with professional quality reporting, it assists the Senior and Managing Partners, and the Partner Board to have a ‘grasp of all the key figures’
- It helps Partners to manage performance, by pin-pointing key issues and variances
- It helps directly to promote the financial management skills and understanding of Partners whose background is not in finance
- It promotes the ready production and comparison of scenarios enabling a wide range of different strategic options and investment to be investigated, and each one can be assessed for upside and downside risk
- It identifies how ‘levels of activity’ are related to measures of resources, and deliver measures of ‘performance’, and gives confidence in ‘how performance will change in the future’
- The whole strategic plan and variants on it, covering I&E, Balance Sheet, Cashflow, Capex, Partner numbers, Teams and offices etc, is contained in a single flexible, version controlled award-winning, business application that is future-proof, robust and flexible. This saves time, freeing managers from ‘processing data’ and empowering both accountability and responsibility
- It strengthens financial governance in a world that is a lot more fluid and with more risk
- It strengthens the Firm on an on-going basis, making it ready to tackle future challenges and brings more certainty to outcomes by helping the Partner Board make the right decisions more quickly
Benefit from 27 years’ of Account-Ability FP&A experience:
Account-Ability has over 27 years’ experience of FP&A needs of Firms. This means that you benefit from a fast implementation (typically ~ 10 to ~ 20 days’, depending on needs, spread over ~ 5-weeks). With training, your users will be able manage and adapt the solution themselves This approach ensures efficient cost-effective ownership.
Confidence in underlying software and platform:
Account-Ability Law Firm solutions use Corporate Planner software, Operational Controlling and Finance modules. This software is used by over 5,000 organisations (including in the FTSE 100) and is an advanced FP&A application. It has been developed continuously for over 35 years by CP Corporate Planning, a Division of Pro-Alpha, a large German developer of financial software. The software is offered hosted as an SaaS application in the Cloud thus making no demands and placing no footprint on your IT Services You can, if preferred however, host the solution on premise.
Book a FREE Demo of Our Software
Our Corporate Planner solutions ease time and resource pressures while providing management with timely, accurate insights. With seamless integration to your existing systems, automated data transfers, and drill-down capabilities, you save time, reduce errors, and access the structured information needed for smarter decision-making.
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