Free resource
Professional services hours-back checklist
For UK professional services firms that want research, document assembly and client reporting to run more consistently without removing professional judgement.
Work through the sections when reviewing your document templates, project tools, time recording and inbox rules. The aim is to automate routine assembly and coordination while keeping analysis, advice and client decisions with your people.
Research and information gathering
Make the inputs to a piece of work reusable, so fee-earners are not gathering the same sources and figures from scratch for every engagement.
- List the recurring inputs your work depends on: company filings, market data, prior deliverables, internal precedents and client-supplied documents.
- Keep a maintained source for each input, naming where it lives, who owns it and how current it needs to be before it is used.
- Flag research that needs a specialist judgement, a paid data source or a conflict check for a person, rather than assembling it automatically.
Proposal, deck and report assembly
Build deliverables from approved sections, so time goes to the thinking rather than to formatting and re-typing.
- Create a library of approved sections: scope, methodology, team bios, case references, terms and standard appendices.
- Assemble first drafts of proposals, decks and reports from that library, populated with the engagement details entered once.
- Route anything with tailored analysis, pricing or a commitment to the client to a named reviewer before it leaves the firm.
Client status updates and reporting
Trigger updates from project milestones, so clients are kept informed without a fee-earner remembering to write each note.
- Define the moments a client should hear from you: kick-off, milestone reached, decision needed, delay expected and delivery complete.
- Draft each update from a template that pulls the current status, next step and owner, ready for a quick human check before sending.
- Escalate a stalled action, a missed milestone or a sensitive message to the engagement lead instead of sending an automated update.
Internal reporting and timesheets
Reduce the admin around recording and reporting time, so the numbers are complete without chasing the whole team every week.
- Set a consistent structure for time recording: client, matter, activity type and billable status, agreed once across the firm.
- Send timesheet and utilisation reminders on a schedule, with a short prompt that stops once the entry for the period is complete.
- Send the practice or department lead an exception list of missing, late or unusual entries for review, rather than another all-team chase.
Meeting scheduling and coordination
Take the back-and-forth out of arranging client and internal meetings, so coordination does not fall to senior people.
- Offer a booking link with your real availability for routine calls, discovery sessions and review meetings.
- Send confirmations, joining details, agendas and reminders from a template once a slot is booked, and note who is due to attend.
- Hand off rescheduling, multi-party diplomacy or anything involving a difficult client conversation to a person to handle directly.
Want a hand setting it up
We can wire this up so it runs reliably
On a free 20-minute fit call we will look at your document templates, project tools, time recording and client reporting, then tell you which of the steps above to automate first.
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