The questions firms ask before they book.

Revenue leakage is money a firm earned, or could have earned, that never reached an invoice or a bank account. It covers unbilled time, enquiries nobody followed up, renewals that lapsed, discounts nobody approved and agreed fees that were never raised. It is different from bad debt, which is an invoice that was raised and then not paid.

SourcesAccelo: what is revenue leakage

Published research puts the loss at roughly 4% to 5% of revenue. A 4.3% figure is quoted by Accelo and Sage, Certinia cites 4% to 5%, and a Kantata and IDC study found firms that fail to adopt professional services automation software lose 5% to 10%. On £4m of annual revenue, 4.3% is £172,000 a year. These are industry averages. A Leak Scan measures your own firm from your own data.

SourcesAcceloSageCertiniaKantata and IDC via Business Wire

At the handoffs between people and systems. An enquiry arrives and nobody owns the follow-up. A client conversation reveals extra work that never reaches a quote. A renewal date passes without a call. Time is recorded but the invoice goes out weeks later. Each gap is small. Added together they are the 4% to 5% that research keeps finding.

Compare three pairs of numbers for the last twelve months: hours recorded against hours billed, enquiries received against instructions opened, and renewals due against renewals kept. A gap in any pair is leakage. If your system cannot produce those pairs in under an hour, that is a finding in itself. A free Leak Scan builds all three from an export of your own data.

No. Bad debt is an invoice that was raised and never paid. Leakage happens before the invoice or around it: work never billed, billed below the agreed rate, or an opportunity nobody pursued. Both reduce cash, but they need different fixes. Bad debt needs credit control and collection. Leakage needs visibility and a named owner for each handoff.

Realisation rate compares what a firm bills, or collects, with the value of the time recorded at standard rates. A rate below 100% means time is being discounted, written off or left unbilled. Track billing realisation and collection realisation separately, because a firm can bill well and still collect badly, or the other way round.

Lock-up is the money tied up in work already done: unbilled work in progress plus billed invoices not yet paid, expressed as days of fee income. The Law Society and Hazlewoods 2026 Financial Benchmarking Survey reports a median lock-up of 134 days, down from 146 the year before. Including disbursements the median is 144 days, down from 156.

SourcesLaw Society: Financial Benchmarking Survey 2026

SW Group reports that just under half of firms target 75 days or less. Lubbock Fine, reported by City AM, puts lock-up at the top 100 firms at 124 days. Against a 2026 median of 134 days for firms of all sizes, a 75-day target is ambitious, so set the target by billing model: fixed-fee work and hourly work lock up differently.

SourcesSW Group: the key to lock-upCity AM: Lubbock Fine lock-up

Work in progress is time and cost spent on client work that has not yet been invoiced. Under FRS 102 section 23, revenue from services is recognised by reference to the stage of completion, which is why WIP needs a defensible valuation at every period end. An unreviewed WIP balance is both a cash-flow risk and an accounting risk.

SourcesVJM Global: accounting for WIP in UK professional services

The older unbilled time gets, the less of it a firm bills in full. BigHand research found 50% of firms now name aged WIP as their primary cash-flow pressure, up from 32% in the previous survey. Age WIP in buckets of 0 to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90 and over 90 days, and give every matter over 60 days a named owner.

SourcesLegal Futures: BigHand research

The usual causes are billing late, scope that grew without a written change, time entries a client will not accept because the narrative is thin, fixed-fee overruns and disputes raised only when the invoice lands. Most are visible weeks earlier in the data, which is why a weekly review of ageing WIP prevents more write-offs than any month-end clean-up.

SourcesActionstep: write-offsEnterprise DNA: reduce WIP write-offs

Pull three levers in order. Bill sooner, by shortening the age of WIP before it is invoiced. Collect faster, by chasing debtors on a fixed rhythm. Then stop the leak upstream, so less unbilled work builds up at all. Measure all three weekly, not monthly, because lock-up is a lagging number and the weekly figures show the change first.

IntelMadeSimple tokenises data before any AI processing. Names, emails and identifiers are replaced with tokens, and the mapping between token and person never leaves your control. A data processing agreement is signed with every engagement, and a data protection impact assessment is available on request.

Treat it as personal data. The ICO's final anonymisation guidance, published on 28 March 2025, confirms that pseudonymised data remains personal data when someone can re-identify it. Tokenisation reduces risk but does not remove your UK GDPR duties, which is why a processing agreement and a lawful basis still apply.

SourcesBird & Bird: key takeaways from the ICO anonymisation guidance

Often yes, or at least a screening assessment. UK GDPR requires a DPIA where processing is likely to create a high risk to individuals, and new technology and large-scale processing both count as triggers. IntelMadeSimple supplies a DPIA on request. Your data protection officer or compliance lead makes the final call.

The Act received Royal Assent on 19 June 2025. It amends UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 rather than replacing them, and its provisions commence in phases. For a firm using AI on client data, the practical effect is that the core duties stay in place: lawful basis, transparency, security and accountability.

SourcesClyde & Co: the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025

Only with your written consent. Without it, no third-party model touches your data. The full position is in the IntelMadeSimple AI policy.

SourcesIntelMadeSimple AI policy

IntelMadeSimple aligns its practice with ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 42001, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, Cyber Essentials, and UK GDPR with the Data Protection Act 2018. This is alignment, not certification, and we say so on every page where it matters.

SourcesIntelMadeSimple AI policy

No. Any decision that touches money, people or compliance gets human review. The tools find, rank and draft. A named person at your firm approves before anything is sent, billed or changed.

IntelMadeSimple is a London consultancy that finds revenue leaking from UK professional firms and builds the small tools that stop it. Depending on the sector that means enquiry follow-up, advisory opportunity detection, renewal defence or WIP recovery. Every engagement starts with a Leak Scan on your own data.

Packages start from £6,000, from £24,000, and from £6,000 a month, depending on scope. Each sector has its own anchor. A law firm build starts from £6,500 with a retainer from £3,000 a month, an M&A advisory build from £7,500 with a retainer from £3,500 a month. The Leak Scan itself is free.

The first tools are live within 14 days of data access. The figures from your Leak Scan arrive before that, so you see the size of the leak before you commit to a build.

Access to the system that holds your matters, clients and billing, a named contact at the firm, and a signed data processing agreement. Where read-only access is not possible, an export is enough to run the scan.

For law firms, Clio, LEAP, Actionstep and Proclaim. For other sectors the scan runs from an export of your CRM, practice-management or billing system, so the sector tools do not depend on one vendor.

Yes. The first Leak Scan is free. It sizes what is leaking in your own data and shows where, before you decide anything.

Ten: law firms, accountancy firms, IFAs and wealth managers, mortgage brokers, commercial insurance brokers, commercial property, executive search and recruitment, M&A advisory and business brokers, private healthcare groups, and B2B SaaS. Each has its own toolkit and its own regulator in mind.

No. IntelMadeSimple reads from the systems you already run and adds a layer on top. Nothing is migrated, and your own system stays the record of truth.

PSA software records and reports time, projects and billing, and it only works when the whole team uses it consistently. The Kantata and IDC study puts losses at 5% to 10% of revenue for firms that fail to adopt it. IntelMadeSimple looks across your systems for what never reached them: the enquiry nobody logged, the renewal nobody diarised, the extra work nobody quoted.

SourcesKantata and IDC via Business Wire

No. The tools page runs each tool on a sample file and labels the output Example. The figures show what the tool finds and how it reports it. Your Leak Scan produces figures from your own data.

You receive the findings, the size of each leak and the recommended fix for each one. Whether to build is your decision, and nothing is built before you agree the scope.