Collect: bring billing records into one queue
Engagement letters, timesheets, approvals, and billing records are brought together as they arrive, giving each engagement a shared record of scope, hours, approval status, and billing stage.
Professional Services Case Study
Turning completed work into invoice-ready engagements
See how Scellus helped a professional services firm identify unbilled work, resolve missing approvals, and prepare engagements for invoicing sooner.
Regional advisory and legal services firm (name withheld) / Malaysia and Singapore / 6-week launch
DailyBilling visibilityEngagement readiness is maintained as records arrive instead of being reconstructed at month-end.
6 weeksWorkflow launchScellus mapped, configured, integrated, and launched the managed billing operation in six weeks.
6 stagesScope-to-invoice operationCollect, read, verify, chase, review, and deliver keep completed work moving towards invoicing.
Engagement overview
A managed workflow from engagement scope to billing readiness.
This case study covers Scellus’s work with a regional advisory and legal services firm whose identity is withheld for confidentiality. Scellus replaced fragmented billing reviews with a managed scope-to-invoice workflow connecting engagement scope, time records, client approvals, WIP, and billing status in one operating queue. The operation flags revenue at risk, routes exceptions to the responsible partner, and prepares completed work for invoicing without adding another system for the firm to operate alone.
The challenge
The firm could not see what was ready to bill until month-end.
Across the firm’s strategy, tax, restructuring, valuation, and financial due diligence teams, billing practices varied and progress was tracked in separate spreadsheets. Fee earners recorded time, but those entries were not consistently connected to the engagement letter, agreed scope, or billing schedule.
Extra client requests sometimes began before a change order was documented. Hours remained uncoded to a workstream, while approval for a completed deliverable sat in an inbox instead of the engagement file. Each gap looked manageable in isolation, but together they delayed billing and obscured revenue at risk.
Partners often discovered scope changes or stalled approvals only when the billing cycle was about to close. By then, the practical choices were limited: chase the client late, defer the invoice, or write off work that could not be supported. Building a firm-wide view required someone to reconcile spreadsheets, engagement files, inboxes, and memory by hand.
The solution
One managed workflow from engagement scope to billing readiness.
Scellus mapped how engagement data, hours, approvals, and billing decisions moved through the firm, then turned that process into a managed operation: collecting source records, checking scope and hours, following up on stalled approvals, and routing exceptions to the partner responsible for the decision.
How it works
Six functions keep billing readiness moving.
Read: extract scope, hours, and approval terms
Scellus reads the fields needed for billing review directly from source documents, reducing the need for partners to reconstruct the engagement from separate files.
Verify: check each engagement against its rules
The workflow flags delivered scope that has not been billed, hours without a workstream code, and approvals without a written trail while there is still time to resolve them.
Chase: follow up on stalled approvals
Each outstanding approval has an owner, due date, and next action. Scellus manages the follow-up cadence and records the response against the engagement.
Review: route exceptions to the decision owner
Billing decisions and escalations enter a review queue with the deadline, supporting evidence, and potential revenue impact attached. Partners keep control of the judgment without assembling the context themselves.
Deliver: release complete billing packs
When an engagement clears the defined readiness checks, its billing pack is sent to the firm’s invoicing process with the supporting record attached.
Interactive example
Explore the scope-to-invoice console.
The console below recreates the workflow implemented for this engagement using synthetic names, values, and records. It demonstrates how the firm monitors engagement readiness, pending decisions, and billing exceptions without exposing confidential client information.
/industries/professional-services/consoleOpen full console
Filter the engagement table, open a pending decision, or inspect the capture tracker.
Managed operation
A six-week launch, followed by ongoing operation.
Launching the workflow is the first step. Keeping it current is the ongoing work.
Over six weeks, Scellus mapped, configured, integrated, and launched the workflow. After launch, Scellus began operating the scope-to-invoice queue daily, reviewing exceptions with the responsible partners weekly, and reporting billing-readiness measures monthly.
Scellus maintains the integrations, operating rules, and review queues as the firm’s engagement mix changes. The firm’s team retains control of billing decisions while Scellus handles the recurring collection, checking, chasing, and reporting around them.
Technologies
- Collect
- Read
- Verify
- Chase
- Review
- Deliver
The outcome
From month-end reconstruction to continuous billing readiness.
The engagement changed how the firm manages billing readiness. The comparison below reflects the operating process put in place; the client’s name and commercially sensitive performance figures are withheld.
- 01
Earlier visibility into billing gaps
Missing codes, undocumented scope changes, and stalled approvals are now reviewed as they appear instead of being discovered at the end of the billing cycle.
- 02
Less manual status reconstruction
Partners and operations teams now work from a maintained engagement record rather than repeatedly rebuilding billing status from spreadsheets and inboxes.
- 03
Clearer ownership of exceptions
Every billing decision is routed to a named owner with the relevant evidence, deadline, and next action already attached.
- 04
Consistent billing-readiness checks
Practice groups retain their engagement-specific rules while using one controlled process for deciding when work is ready to invoice.
- 05
An operation Scellus keeps running
The firm sees engagement readiness and revenue at risk, while Scellus continues the recurring collection, verification, follow-up, and reporting behind that view.
- 06
A decision record that stays with the engagement
Approvals, exceptions, supporting evidence, and partner decisions remain attached to the engagement, giving billing teams a clear record of what moved forward and why.
Measured improvement.
In their words
The shift was simple: give partners visibility into unbilled scope and stalled approvals while there was still time to act, without asking them to reconstruct the billing picture themselves.
Still reconstructing billing status from spreadsheets and inboxes?
Scellus maps the billing workflow, connects the existing systems, and operates the recurring collection, checking, chasing, and reporting with your team.