Billing follow-ups, client status updates, report assembly, engagement letter administration. In law firms, accounting practices, and architecture studios across Switzerland, qualified professionals do this work by default. The Clarity Scan maps exactly how much time these workflows consume, and what that costs at your billing rate.
The specific numbers vary by firm size and software stack. The pattern does not. These are the three places professional time disappears every week — before a single billable task gets done.
Invoices are sent. Some go unpaid at 30 days. A partner or senior associate checks the accounts receivable ledger, identifies overdue accounts, drafts individual follow-up emails, and logs the exchange in the file. 35 to 50 minutes every week for a firm with 20 active matters — not including the time spent on the phone for larger amounts. At CHF 180/hr, that is CHF 4,680 per year in billable capacity spent chasing what is already owed.
Clients expect to know where their matter stands. Without an automated update system, someone pulls the relevant information from the matter management tool, drafts a status email, checks the tone, and sends it. 15 to 25 minutes per active client, every week. A 15-client firm handles this 15 times, then again the next Friday. None of this time appears on a timesheet. Most of it could.
A new mandate arrives. Before any professional work begins: conflicts check, engagement letter, KYC/AML documentation collection, fee agreement, matter setup in the billing system, folder creation in the document management tool, client portal invitation. 2.5 to 4 hours per new client, spread across two or three people. At a firm taking on 3 new clients a month, that is up to 12 hours of setup before the first billable entry.
"We knew there were hours disappearing into admin. We didn't know how many, or that they added up to more than a full junior consultant's billing capacity over a year."
Managing partner · Management consulting · Geneva
Two workflows were addressed in the first Sprint: automated invoice follow-up sequences and client status update automation. New client onboarding was deferred to a second phase. The diagnostic report identified all three — with estimated savings and a recommended sequence.
Read the full case study →If your firm uses a tool not listed here, the Clarity Scan will tell you whether integration is possible and what it would take.
We interview your team and map your billing, reporting, and client onboarding workflows. We time each step and calculate the annual cost using your firm's billing rate. The output is a written report: three to five prioritised findings, each with an estimated recoverable-hours figure and a recommended implementation approach. The report is yours, regardless of what you decide next.
We build what the diagnostic recommends. Automated invoice follow-up sequences that trigger at 15, 30, and 45 days. Client status updates that pull from your matter management system and send without manual assembly. New client onboarding workflows that route documents, trigger conflicts checks, and set up billing in a single action. One working system per sprint. Tested, documented, handed over.
Billing software updates. Regulatory changes. New team members. The Continuity plan keeps what we built reliable, adapted, and documented — so a new practice manager can operate the workflows without needing to understand how they were built.
The Clarity Scan tells you exactly which workflows are consuming professional time, how much each one costs at your billing rate, and which ones can be addressed in a single sprint.
The report is written, fixed-price, and delivered in five business days. It belongs to you regardless of what you decide next. There is no obligation to proceed with implementation.
NDAs are available on request and signed before any access is granted. During the Clarity Scan, we map workflow patterns — timing, steps, handoffs — not the content of individual client files. Any data accessed for analysis is anonymised. All work is governed by the nFADP/FADP and, where relevant, GDPR. We have worked with law firms, audit practices, and notaries where confidentiality obligations are non-negotiable, and our process is designed to meet those requirements from the start.
No. We work with what you already use. The Clarity Scan maps your current tools before any recommendation is made. Most implementations connect to existing systems — adding automation layers to ABACUS, Crésus, Vertec, or Sage rather than replacing them. If a tool change would genuinely improve the workflow, we say so explicitly and tell you why. If your current stack is the right foundation, we build on it.
Two to three hours in total, spread over five business days. An initial call (45 minutes), one or two short workflow interviews with the relevant people (30 minutes each), and read access to your billing and matter records for the analysis period. No disruption to client work. No need for your team to prepare documents or presentations — we ask the questions and do the analysis independently.
The Clarity Scan report is designed for exactly that. It presents the workflow findings, the cost estimates in CHF at your billing rate, the recommended implementation sequence, and the estimated recovery timeline — in a format that makes the business case visible to a second decision-maker who wasn't in the initial conversation. Many engagements begin with one partner requesting the diagnostic specifically to use the report to build internal consensus.
Yes. The three workflows above — billing follow-up, client status reporting, and new matter onboarding — appear in law firms across Swiss cantons, accounting practices operating under nFADP/Swiss Code of Obligations requirements, and architecture studios with SIA fee structures. The specific tool integrations vary; the workflow patterns do not. The Clarity Scan assesses your specific situation. The findings in the report will be specific to your firm, not drawn from a template.
Small firms often have more to gain. A 4-person accounting practice losing 4 hours per person per week to non-billable admin loses 832 hours per year in capacity. At CHF 140/hr, that is CHF 116,480 in work that could have been billed. The Clarity Scan diagnostic costs CHF 490. The report tells you which of those hours are recoverable and what it would take to recover them. The guarantee holds regardless of firm size: 3 recoverable hours per week identified, or a full refund.
Kai can answer questions about how the diagnostic works, what it covers, and what results look like for firms like yours.