Work in Progress is services delivered but not yet billed. It's real value: work your team has done, time they've spent, disbursements they've incurred, sitting uncollected. In most small practices, WIP builds up silently and gets written off at year-end. That's avoidable revenue lost.
WIP days at large accounting firms increased from 33 to 41 days in 2024. That's over a month of earned revenue sitting uninvoiced.
For a small practice the figure is often higher, because the systems that larger firms use to track and clear WIP don't exist in the same form.
Why it happens
Fee earners are focused on delivering work, not on billing admin. Time goes unrecorded because it feels awkward to charge for a short call or a quick question. Disbursements get missed because nobody tracks them systematically between billing cycles. Billing cycles don't align with the rhythm of the work: the invoice goes out at month-end but the work was completed three weeks ago.
The combined delay between doing the work, invoicing it, and getting paid is called lockup. Reducing lockup directly improves cash flow without winning a single new client. It's one of the fastest levers available to a small practice, but only if someone is actively managing it.
The FRS 102 pressure
From January 2026, the revised FRS 102 revenue recognition rules require WIP records to be accurate on an ongoing basis, not just at year-end, because revenue can only be recognised when performance obligations have been met and evidenced. Keeping WIP records clean throughout the year is no longer just good practice. It's a requirement of the accounting standard.
What good looks like
- Time recorded daily, not reconstructed at billing time.
- Disbursements matched to the right client matter as they occur.
- WIP reviewed weekly, with aged items flagged for write-off or billing decisions.
- Billing triggered as each stage of work is completed, not batched at month-end.
What we do
We maintain the WIP log between billing cycles, flag aged WIP for partner write-off decisions, reconcile disbursements to the correct client matter, and chase the billing triggers that the fee earner hasn't actioned. Nothing gets invoiced without your authorisation. But nothing that should have been invoiced gets missed because nobody was tracking it.