Case study · Professional services
Invoices that go out the day after month-end
A consultancy or agency makes money on time, and loses it when time goes unrecorded or unbilled. This is how we ran projects, timesheets, budgets and billing in Business Central so partners can see margin per project while the work is still under way.
Project overview
Business Central Jobs for time-based businesses.
- Industry
- Professional services
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- Project accounting and billing
- Platform
- Business Central
- Timeline
- 10–16 weeks
- Team
- 3–4 people
- Billing
- Time and materials, fixed fee, retainers
- Integrations
- Timesheet app, expenses, Power BI
- Deployment
- Business Central online
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve
Most of the gain comes from time that was worked but never billed, and from invoices that went out weeks late.
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3–8%
More billable time captured
Timesheets tied to live jobs and reminders before period close reduce the hours that were worked but never recorded.
Target range; depends on how timesheets were kept before
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1–3 days
From month-end to invoices sent
Billing proposals are generated from approved time and expenses instead of assembled in spreadsheets.
After the first two billing cycles
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Weekly
Margin per project
Budget against actual per job, visible to project leads every week instead of at year-end.
Refresh depends on timesheet approval discipline
Business challenges
How project billing worked before
A familiar setup in firms that grew from ten people to a hundred.
Time
Staff record time in a separate tool or a spreadsheet, often on Friday afternoon from memory.
Budgets
Project budgets live in the proposal document and are rarely compared with actual time.
Billing
Finance builds invoices by exporting time, pivoting it in Excel and typing the result into the accounting package.
Expenses
Receipts arrive by email and are recharged to clients inconsistently.
Management
Partners find out a fixed-fee project lost money when the year-end figures arrive.
Proposed solution
What the Business Central build covers
Business Central Jobs, configured for how the firm actually sells its work.
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Jobs and phases
Every engagement as a job with phases and tasks, each with a budget in hours and money.
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Timesheets
Time recorded against jobs with approval by the project lead, including reminders before period close.
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Billing rules
Time and materials, fixed fee by milestone and monthly retainers, each producing a billing proposal.
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Expenses and recharges
Expenses captured with receipts and marked as rechargeable, so they reach the invoice automatically.
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WIP and revenue recognition
Work in progress calculated per job at month-end, posted to the ledger with an audit trail.
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Margin reporting
Budget, actual and forecast per job, client and partner, in Business Central and Power BI.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was about billing speed, but the underlying fix is one record of time that project leads approve and finance bills from, without re-keying.
Fixed-fee work needs the most care: the system has to show hours burned against the fee long before the project ends, so a partner can act while there is still time.
What the project had to deliver
- 01One place for time, budgets and billing
- 02Invoices out within days of month-end
- 03Margin per job while the work is running
- 04Rechargeable expenses that are actually recharged
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
-
Staff who resist a new timesheet tool
What we did
Timesheets were designed to take less time than the old tool, with recent jobs and copy-last-week on a phone.
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Contracts with unusual billing terms
What we did
Billing rules were agreed contract by contract before jobs were configured, including the unusual ones.
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Historic projects that need opening WIP balances
What we did
Opening work in progress for live projects was loaded and reconciled with finance before the first billing run.
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Multiple currencies for international clients
What we did
Jobs were set up in the client's currency, with exchange rates handled by Business Central at invoicing.
What we watched for
- Make timesheets faster than the old tool, or they won't be filled in
- Agree billing rules before configuring jobs
- Run one month in parallel before switching
- Show project leads their own margin, not just finance
Development process
From timesheet to invoice, step by step
We start with billing rules, because they decide how jobs and time have to be structured.
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Billing rules workshop
Every way the firm charges for work, written down with examples and agreed with the partners.
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Job structure and rates
Job templates, resource rates and cost rates set up, with opening WIP for live projects.
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Timesheets and approvals
The timesheet experience tested with a pilot team until it is quicker than the old way.
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First billing run
A parallel month where invoices are produced both ways and compared line by line.
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Reporting and handover
Margin dashboards for partners and training for project leads and finance.
Technology stack
Business Central Jobs at the centre
Standard project accounting, with small extensions for billing rules the standard doesn't cover.
ERP
- Business Central Jobs
- Resources and rates
- AL extensions
Time and expenses
- Business Central timesheets
- Expense capture app
- Approval workflows
Reporting
- Power BI
- Job profitability reports
Integration
- Business Central APIs
- Power Automate
Quality assurance & deployment
Proved on the client's own data before go-live
An ERP is trusted when the numbers agree. Configuration and extensions were tested in a sandbox on the client's own data, and finance signed off the figures before cut-over.
- Sandbox testing of every process on the client's own data
- User acceptance testing with key users, by scenario
- Migration rehearsals, reconciled to the old system
- Automated tests for extensions, run before each release
- Permission sets checked role by role
Deployment
- 01First billing runA parallel month where invoices are produced both ways and compared line by line.
- 02Reporting and handoverMargin dashboards for partners and training for project leads and finance.
- 03Cut-over planA rehearsed cut-over with a checklist, opening balances signed off by finance, and a rollback point.
- 04Hypercare and warrantyConsultants on hand through the first month-end, and six months of free bug fixing.
Final deliverables
Billing that keeps pace with the work
Time is recorded against live jobs, approved by the people running them and billed without anyone rebuilding it in Excel.
Partners get a weekly view of which projects are on budget, and fixed-fee overruns show up while there is still time to talk to the client.
- Approved time flows straight to billing
- Invoices out within days
- Weekly margin by project and client
- Expenses recharged consistently
Handed over to the client
- 01Configured Business CentralProduction and sandbox environments
- 02ExtensionsSource code and documentation
- 03Migrated dataReconciled and signed off
- 04Key-user trainingWith process guides
- 05Six-month warrantyFree bug fixing after delivery
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| More billable time captured | 3–8% | Target range; depends on how timesheets were kept before |
| From month-end to invoices sent | 1–3 days | After the first two billing cycles |
| Margin per project | Weekly | Refresh depends on timesheet approval discipline |
Verified reviews
What clients say about our Dynamics work
Verified reviews from our clients on the same kind of work, published on Clutch.
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Silver Scintilla was responsive, respectful, and enjoyable to work with, quickly addressing any questions or requests.
DeShawn Brown
CEO & Founder, Lithios Jun 2021 – Nov 2022
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Suheb Khan
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