Before revenue comes in, invoices must go out. As simple as it sounds, many accounting firms find this basic business principle difficult to execute. The culprit? Antiquated, legacy systems that don’t provide the automation and visibility needed for accountants to enter their time and for managers and administrative staff to stay on top of billing and cash flow.

Time entry is the core foundation for billing in a CPA environment. Yet, getting accountants and other professional service providers to perform non-billable tasks, such as entering time into their time sheets, can be an uphill battle—especially when those tasks involve spreadsheets or clunky, unintuitive legacy systems. Vacations and time-off can also delay the accounts receivable cycle, as administrators often need to track people down in order to find out how many charged hours they’ve accumulated before they left. In a cyclical industry like accounting with traditional busy times, avoiding delays and expediting the accounts receivable process can mean the difference between making payroll—or not—during the slower months.

PracticePro 365 is a unitized cloud practice management software with nine core features that run your firm. Accounts receivable functionality is one of those core features. As an all-in-one platform topped off with real-time visual dashboards, PracticePro 365 offers everything you need to keep your cash flow pumping. We know just how effective our product can be at expediting the cash-flow cycle because we use it ourselves. Benefits include:

• Conveniently enter time and draft bills via user-friendly desktop access—Some firms prefer to have their partners or managers draft their bills; others, funnel everything back to an administrative team that prepares the bills and shepherds them through review. Either way, PracticePro 365 has user-friendly screens that facilitate daily time entry that enable invoices to be created quickly and easily at any time of the month rather than waiting for the end of the month or other lengthy billing cycle. With PracticePro 365, entering time and drafting a bill becomes a simple, streamlined process that can be performed by virtually anyone right from their desktops—as opposed to a cumbersome, process that is only partially enabled by an unwieldy, aging ERP system to which only a select few have access. Indeed, the self-contained, all-in-one accounts receivable system within PracticePro 365 has saved us a ton of time by eliminating spreadsheet use and the double-entry that comes with it.

• Automatically remind people to submit their time. While not part of the standard package, AI tools can easily be incorporated into PracticePro 365 that allow you to send notifications to your partners and associates. Rather than manually contacting those who have forgotten to fill out their time sheets, you can automatically send friendly reminders, e.g., “Oops, you forgot to submit your time for yesterday so please do it soon.”

• Receive real-time updates on WIP. With the dashboarding capabilities in PracticePro 365, you can receive real-time updates on how much work in progress (WIP) is under someone’s name as well as how much billing they have sent out for the month. This allows partners and managers to encourage their team members to stay on top of their billing-related tasks to accelerate cash flow.

• Get invoices into your clients’ hands faster with electronic delivery. Many firms still rely on paper-based processes to some extent, which inherently delays the cash-flow cycle. Electronic delivery changes all that, enabling your clients to instantaneously receive invoices so they can pay you faster.

• See clients with overdue balances and the billing manager responsible for collecting them. It’s one thing to get the bill out the door and it’s another to turn it into cash. PracticePro 365 offers real-time dashboards that allow partners and managers to see which accounts are falling past their due dates, so they can inquire about them immediately, as opposed to waiting 60-to-90 days for administrators to send late notices.

• Identify and analyze trends across your clients, service lines, industry, billing managers, and offices. Who’s paying late and why? Which billing managers have the most or the least overdue invoices? Which service lines have the fastest cash-flow cycle? PracticePro enables you to answer these questions and more—all while giving you the ability to drill down into invoice details to view dates and amounts without leaving the dashboard.

Streamlined processes and access to current information are essential for accelerating the cash-flow cycle. PracticePro 365 delivers both speed and visibility through real-time visual dashboards and automated features that lighten the load on your staff. With these modern capabilities, they can enter time, send invoices, and resolve bottlenecks in a flash so your firm can get paid faster.

Contact us for a PracticePro 365 demo and to see how a unified practice management system can help your firm.