Helping your clients thrive with Ignition

You may be familiar with Ignition as part of an accountancy and bookkeeping tech stack. Originally conceived by an accountant, that makes sense. However you must have had those moments when creating an engagement, or even talking to a client, and thought ‘gee this would be really good for xyz to use in their business as well’ and you would be right. 

Ignition is not just for accountants. It has a huge role to play in managing sales, contracts, client relationships and cash flow in any professional service business.

But who really is a right fit for Ignition? It’s not difficult to identify across your client base who Ignition can help. You just need to look at the industry they are in, their sales process or know what problems they face.

Helping professional services businesses is where Ignition really shines. Those businesses that charge a fee for service, whether based on time or a fixed fee and the consumers of their services are usually referred to as ‘clients’ instead of ‘customers’. Some examples of professional services that love Ignition are digital and advertising agencies, marketing consultancies and financial services.

Industry isn't the only thing that determines if Ignition is a good fit. How your client sells their services also matters. Does your client do any of the following:

• Use contracts or terms that need to be signed by their clients?
• Do recurring work or provide recurring services for clients?
• Offer bundled or packaged services charged monthly?
• Pay for client subscriptions or services that they later on-charge?
• Operate in a traditionally time-based billing business that has either moved or considering moving to fixed fee?

If so, Ignition can help them streamline lots of their processes by bringing the contracts, service items, terms and conditions, invoicing and payments all into one place. 

As well as the industry and sales process, you can identify clients that would love Ignition by the problems they face. Ignition can help businesses solve common problems like: 

• High accounts receivable and cash flow problems.
• Lack of visibility over cash in-flows and inability to track sales funnel.
• Limited understanding of revenue drivers and client service take up.
• Writing off work completed without terms in place.
• Unbilled work or scope creep when services and fees have not been agreed upfront.

Accountants and bookkeepers unlock a range of benefits when helping their clients discover Ignition, including:

• Learning how to help your clients thrive with Ignition (by solving their cash flow and cash-cycle problems, for example), strengthening your position as their trusted advisor.
• Exploring new ways to add client value and revenue leveraging Ignition, including cash flow advisory, pricing advisory and Ignition implementation services.
• Getting rewarded by Ignition either as a Foundation Partner or through our Refer & Earn program.

You can also use Ignition as a tool to drive additional revenue by providing your clients additional services, powered by Ignition and increasing your own revenue per client. 

We all know the easiest way to grow revenue is through extra services to existing clients – you already have the relationship, so the hard part is done. 

Additional services = better client relationships +  increased revenue.

Better client relationships = more referrals to your business + increased services.

Using Ignition you can provide your professional service clients: 

1. More accurate cash flow forecasting.
2. KPI and metric monitoring services.
3. Pricing workshops.

When forecasting client profitability and cash flow, especially in professional service businesses, it is often the income that is the hardest to get right.

By accessing the data in your client’s Ignition file you will be able to see all of their engagements and payments data, so forecasting becomes much easier. You can also track the gap between budget and actual invoicing when setting targets for your clients in the forecast. 

Ignition has lots of information that you can use to offer a KPI monitoring service for your clients. 

You can help your clients track their: 

• Recoverability percentage: Average revenue per team member.
• Growth targets: By tracking not only growth in overall revenue, but also growth in average client revenue and revenue from new clients.
• Recurring revenue vs projects: Tracking the splits between recurring revenue streams and project work.

Using Ignition you can breakdown revenue data and help them determine if their pricing is appropriate. 

By assessing their baseline and standard pricing from their service library, you can use this along with their cost structure to determine where they need to adjust prices.

You can take this further by exporting your clients service list and segment the data to identify what services are provided to what client, helping them to sell all of their services to all of their clients by discussing upselling and cross-selling.

If you work with a lot of professional services clients, apply to be a Foundation Partner here. 

Alternatively, you can refer and earn as much as you like and at any time in Ignition – just click Refer & Earn on the bottom left of the screen when you’re in Ignition.

Not an Ignition customer? Now’s your chance to find out how the all-in-one platform for professional services can empower your practice – and your clients’ businesses –  to get paid faster, and run smarter. See how Ignition works now.