Your inventory is your people’s hours, and today you do not know what they are worth

From proposal to project

The proposal is built in one document, the contract in another, and the project is opened in the system with a structure different from the one that was quoted. Comparing what was sold against what was delivered means redoing the work by hand.

Budget and progress control

The budget is frozen at the start and reviewed at the end. Scope changes are agreed by email and show up in neither the budget nor the invoice, so the firm ends up absorbing them.

Resource planning

Staffing is negotiated between partners and project managers with no single view of availability. Overloaded teams coexist with underused people, and hiring decisions are made without load data.

Time and expense entry

Hours are entered at the end of the week or the month, from memory. Reimbursable expenses get lost between emails and receipts, and part of them simply never reaches the client invoice.

Purchasing and subcontracting

Purchases tied to a project, including third-party and subcontractor fees, are approved outside the system and reach project cost weeks late.

Billing and collections

Billing by milestone, by progress, by hours, or against retainers forces you to redo calculations every month. Slow invoicing stretches the collection cycle and strains the firm’s cash flow.

Profitability by project, client, and practice

The income statement shows the firm’s total, but not which project, which client, or which service line added or destroyed margin. Without that detail, deciding which work to take on is a blind call.

Confidentiality and information control

In law and consulting firms, client information is spread across emails, local folders, and shared drives, with no clear policy on access, retention, or separation between matters.

Partners and executive leadership

See which projects, clients, and service lines sustain the firm’s margin and which ones consume it. Deciding whether to take an engagement, adjust rates, or open a new practice rests on the real delivery history.

Finance (CFO)

Recognizes revenue based on real project progress, tracks delivered work not yet invoiced, and follows receivables from the same system where hours are recorded. The close stops depending on consolidating a spreadsheet from every practice.

Operations and project management

Plans assignments from a single view of availability by role, tracks budget consumption against progress, and spots the variance while there is still room to act. Scope changes are recorded as part of the project.

Delivery teams and practice leads

Enter time and expenses in a few steps from the browser or the phone and check the status of their projects without requesting reports. The client conversation rests on progress data, not on impressions.

Administration and billing

Generates invoices from what was approved in the system, with the detail the client requires and with no recalculation. Reimbursable expenses reach the client because they were tied to the project from the start.

Information technology (IT)

Manages identities, access, and information retention in the Microsoft cloud, with permissions by project or by matter. Reduces the number of loose tools holding sensitive client information today.

1. 1

   Business layer (ERP): Dynamics 365 Business Central holds finance, projects, resources, purchasing, sales, and billing. It is the master record for clients, contracts, budgets, hours, and costs.

2. 2

   Data and analytics layer: Power BI consolidates utilization, margin by project, and receivables into a governed model, with a single definition per metric and access segmented by practice.

3. 3

   Collaboration layer: Microsoft 365, Teams, and SharePoint host the team’s work and the documentation of each project or matter, with permissions aligned to who is actually on it.

4. 4

   Automation layer: Power Platform enables time, expense, and purchase approvals, plus capture forms, without creating systems parallel to the ERP.

5. 5

   Commercial layer: Dynamics 365 Sales to track opportunities and proposals, so what is sold and what is delivered share the same structure from the start.

6. 6

   Security and governance layer: identity and conditional access in Microsoft Entra, classification and retention of client information, and audit logging, which matters especially in law firms bound by confidentiality duties.

Case studies pending client authorization.

Does Business Central work for a firm that carries no inventory?

Yes. Business Central includes project, resource, time, purchasing, and billing management, which is the core of a services business. In these implementations the inventory module plays a minor role or is simply not used, and the effort goes into the project structure, the rates, and the billing rules.

Can it bill by milestone, by progress, and by time and materials?

Yes. All three models, along with retainers and reimbursable expenses, are configured to match how your firm contracts. What matters is defining them during design with your real contracts on the table, including the mixed cases, which are usually the ones that create rework at billing time.

How do I get the team to enter their hours?

With simple entry, available from the browser or the phone, with the project list filtered to the ones each person is assigned to, and with an approval that closes the loop. It is also measured: the share of hours entered within the deadline is one of the metrics we track during adoption, because everything else depends on it.

We are a law firm. Does this replace my matter management system?

Not necessarily. Business Central covers the economic management of the matter (budget, time, expenses, billing, and profitability) and can coexist with a specialized document or case management system through integration. Whether to replace or integrate is decided during the assessment, based on what your current system already handles well.

How is confidential client information protected?

With the controls of the Microsoft cloud: identity and conditional access, permissions by project or matter, information classification and labeling, retention policies, and audit logging. Designing access and retention is part of the project and is defined with your legal or compliance team.

Does it integrate with the tools we already use?

Business Central is native to Microsoft 365, Teams, and Outlook, and exposes standard APIs to integrate with document management systems, electronic signature platforms, or industry tools. Every integration is defined with a clear data contract so the same piece of data is not maintained in two places.

How long does an implementation take?

It depends on the number of practices, how complex your billing schemes are, and the state of the information being migrated. We do not publish generic timelines: the complimentary assessment delivers a phased schedule with the assumptions stated.