Founderwright for professional services
AI for agencies and professional firms. Every billable hour, accounted for.
Your time and billing, project, CRM, and accounting systems feed one AI brain, and we build the capacity, margin, and billing tools your firm has been running on spreadsheets. It’s all built in-house, shaped around how your partners price, staff, and bill the work.
Private-equity-grade tools. Without giving up equity. Built by an operationally minded CFO, not a software vendor.
- Marketing agencies
- Creative studios
- Engineering firms
- Architecture firms
- Management consulting
- IT consulting
- Accounting firms
- Law firms
Operator-CFO built
Not generic software. What a CFO would put in front of a firm.
Founderwright is built by an operationally minded CFO. The numbers that grow a company organically are the same ones that make an acquisition work and hold up when you sell. Every build starts there: surfaced before you ask and ranked by dollar impact.
Hours logged
Realization by partner, client, and phase
Billable hours only matter once they turn into collected fees.
Accounts receivable
Lockup: unbilled WIP plus receivable days, by partner
The work is done. This is how long you wait to be paid for it.
Revenue by client
Margin by client after write-downs and non-billable effort
Your favorite clients and your most profitable clients are rarely the same list.
The same numbers carry a firm through every stage: recovery, growth, acquisitions, and exit prep.
The morning brief
Surfaced before you ask. Ranked by what it’s worth.
Agents watch every connected system overnight. By morning, the issues that matter most are ranked, assigned, and drafted.
Tuesday, 7:15 a.m. · What the managing partner sees before the first client call
Ranked actions
From your own numbers, across every system- 1Approve 14 pre-bills held since FridayToday$62K unbilled · 5 waiting on one partner
- 2Rebrand project at 82% of budgetThis weekHalf the deliverables done · 2 change requests never priced
- 3Senior staff booked at 97% next monthThis weekTwo proposals pending · hire-or-subcontract call due Friday
- 4Lockup down 9 days since JuneOn trackNow 76 days · two slow payers back to current
Illustrative data. Every build is designed around your company’s own systems and numbers.
Voice notes that take action
Or just say it.
Between jobs, on the drive, or walking the floor: record a thought and the platform drafts the tasks, schedule changes, and answers. Nothing happens until you approve it. How voice notes work.
“Send the pre-bills that are waiting on me, move the rebrand review to Friday, and who has room next month?”
- New taskPartner review: approve 14 pre-bills held since Friday · $62K
- RescheduleRebrand review → Friday · project team notified on approval
- AnswerNext month: 3 people under 70% booked · senior staff at 97%
Illustrative. Nothing changes until you approve it.
Sound familiar
Your hours shouldn’t leak before they’re billed.
Unbilled time piles up
Hours sit in WIP for weeks because a partner hasn’t reviewed the pre-bill. The work is done, the client is happy, and the cash is still a month away.
Scope creeps one email at a time
A quick favor becomes a new deliverable. Nobody logs it as a change, the budget burns early, and a project that looked healthy at kickoff finishes underwater.
Utilization is known too late
You learn who was light and who was buried after the month closes. By then the idle hours are gone and your best people are already tired.
Hiring runs on instinct
Every hire is a bet on pipeline you can’t quite see. Hire early and margin sags. Hire late and senior people do junior work while proposals wait.
What we’d build
What we’d build for an agency or firm.
We design each module with you and your partners. Each one is built in-house and owned by you, and from the first week it runs on your real timesheets, engagements, invoices, and pipeline, not sample data.
Managing partner’s command center
Fees billed, realization, unbilled WIP, receivables, and cash by practice and office. Each morning’s exceptions are ranked by what they cost, and every figure opens to the timesheet behind it.
Utilization and capacity
Billable and available hours by person and role for the weeks ahead, so you see who is overbooked, who has room, and when the next hire pays for itself.
Project margin tracker
Budget against actual hours and fees on every open engagement, with burn rate, percent complete, and scope changes flagged while there is still time to have the conversation.
Timesheets and pre-bills
Missing time is chased daily. Unbilled hours are aged by client and engagement, and agents assemble draft pre-bills for the responsible partner to review and approve.
Lockup and collections
WIP days plus receivable days, tracked by client and partner. Collection notes are drafted for every overdue invoice, and slow payers are flagged before you take on more work for them.
Pipeline and proposals
Every opportunity, proposal, and renewal in one place, weighted by stage and set against capacity, so you know whether next month’s win needs people you don’t have yet.
Client profitability
Margin by client after write-downs, discounts, and non-billable effort, with concentration shown plainly, so you see which relationships carry the firm and which quietly cost it.
Write-off watch
Every write-down and write-off captured with a reason and tied to the phase, the person, and the estimate that set the fee, so pricing learns from what actually happened.
The compliance line
We build above the line. We connect to everything else.
For a professional firm, the line sits under your books, payroll, tax filings, and any account that holds client money. Time, projects, staffing, pipeline, and reporting sit above it, and that is where our work happens.
Above the line
Built custom, in-house by Founderwright, around how you run. Owned by you.
Below the line
The regulated systems you’re required to keep. We read from them, and where they offer a write API, approved work is written straight back in.
Keep any tool you like. We integrate with it. Firms often stay on their practice management or time and billing system, document management, and CRM, and we’d build the planning and reporting around them. See the systems we connect.
The build
How we’d build it for a professional services firm.
Trace one engagement
We start with you and your partners, following one engagement from proposal to collected fee: how you scope and price work, how time gets recorded, who signs off on bills, and which numbers nobody trusts until month end.
Connect time and billing
We connect your practice management or time and billing system first, and the command center starts showing real hours, engagements, and invoices. Nobody re-keys a timesheet.
Add pipeline, payroll, and books
Your CRM and proposals, payroll, and the general ledger feed the same brain, so utilization, project margin, and cash are measured on shared definitions instead of three competing spreadsheets.
Replace the workarounds
Over time, the things your firm keeps patching together, such as capacity plans, scope logs, and partner reports, are rebuilt above the compliance line. They arrive one at a time, and each one belongs to you.
The numbers it runs on
Your definitions. Measured the same way everywhere.
Every metric is defined with you once, tied back to the source systems, and checked by agents before anyone makes a decision on it.
Questions
What owners ask us.
Do we have to replace our practice management system?
No. It’s usually the first system we connect, and it stays in place. Capacity planning, project margin, and partner reporting are built around it. Should you retire a tool above the compliance line later, its replacement is written for the way your firm staffs, prices, and bills, and it runs on the same client and engagement history you already have.
Which systems stay below the compliance line at a firm like ours?
Your books of record, payroll and payroll tax, the firm’s own tax filings, and banking. If you hold client funds, trust and escrow accounts stay in the systems built for them and are handled the way your profession’s rules require. So do regulated e-filing systems for returns or court documents. We read from all of them. Any that takes writes over an API receives approved entries directly, each signed off by someone at your firm and recorded in an audit log.
How do the agents handle time and billing work?
They do the follow-up your managers never have time for. Agents flag missing timesheets, assemble draft pre-bills, spot engagements burning faster than planned, and draft the note to the client lead. Each item becomes a task with an owner. Nothing goes to a client or into your books until a person at your firm approves it, and every approval is logged.
Can it help us decide when to hire?
Yes. Capacity is projected from the hours already booked, proposals in your pipeline weighted by likelihood, and each person’s typical availability. You see which roles run short and in which weeks, what the gap is worth in fees, and whether a hire, a contractor, or a later start date makes more sense. The decision stays with you. The brain makes the tradeoff visible early.
Do we keep the system if our engagement with you ends?
Yes. You own it: the software above the compliance line, the definitions behind every utilization and margin report, and all of the data it holds. Continue developing it with us, or hand it to an internal lead to run. There is no lock-in, so the only reason to keep working together is the quality of the work.
Start with one conversation.
Recovering, growing, buying, or getting ready to sell: tell us how your company runs. We’ll show you what it could run on.
Start a conversation logan@founderwright.com