Build a  ‘Professional Service Firm ‘  Excel Workbook.

Another series in our Practical use of Excel in the real world.  Download Link to Workbook   at end of Page .

It guides you through building Excel worksheets to manage clients, track jobs, invoices and monitor performance.
While designed with UK accountancy practices in mind, its framework and excel techniques are similar to the workflows used by other professional service firms in the UK.

If your business tracks client projects against tight deadlines, bills for time or fixed fees, and needs an instant view of operational health, this workbook is for you. It is perfectly suited for:

• Solicitors and Law Firms (Tracking cases, court dates, and billing)
• Tax Consultants (Managing filing deadlines and client data)
• Financial Advisors (Overseeing portfolio reviews and client onboarding)
• Management Consultants (Tracking project milestones and invoices)
• Architects & Engineers (Managing project stages and design timelines)
• Marketing & PR Agencies (Retainer tracking and campaign deliverables)

Too often people learn about Excel functions  and spreadsheet design in isolation, the series uses them to solve real problems faced by  accountancy practices and other service providers : Its easier to understand real practical  spreadsheet construction when you see them in use in work  situations  familiar to you.  Tasks like..

• Tracking client work.
• Managing deadlines.
• Retrieving client information.
• Planning workloads.
• Monitoring practice performance.

You’ll see how functions including XLOOKUP, FILTER, SORT, IF, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, SUMPRODUCT and TODAY can be combined with Excel Tables, dynamic drop-down lists, conditional formatting and check controls to create a durable real-world business spreadsheet.

Lesson 1 –

Building the Excel Workbook Structure for a Service Business.

The workbook contains separate areas for clients, jobs and deadlines, client records, fees and payments, workload planning and management reporting. Rather than trying to put everything into one enormous worksheet, the data is separated into logical Excel Tables and connected using unique IDs.

We look at why one row should represent one record, how Client IDs and Job IDs allow information to be linked across different Tables, and how drop-down lists help control the information entered into the workbook.

We also look at an important principle for building durable business spreadsheets: using Excel Tables and structured references rather than fixed cell ranges wherever appropriate. As new records are added, Tables expand automatically and formulas can continue to reference the correct data. This first lesson establishes the structure that everything else in the series will build upon.

Lesson 2 – Using Excel Spreadsheets to Track Jobs, Deadlines and Client Records.

Video lesson 2 turns our underlying data into practical working trackers.
In the Jobs & Deadlines Tracker, we record who is responsible for each job, its current status, priority and deadline.

Rather than expecting somebody to scan hundreds of rows looking for problems,  the IF formulas identify jobs that need attention and display messages such as OVERDUE and DUE THIS WEEK. Conditional Formatting then makes those exceptions immediately visible.

We also track the client records required to complete the work. This allows the practice to see not only that a job is delayed, but why it is delayed – for example, because information is still required from the client. The lesson demonstrates an important difference between simply storing data and actually tracking a business process. A good tracker should tell users what has happened, what is outstanding and, most importantly, what requires action.

Lesson 3 – Build a Client Enquiry Screen using Excel .

As the workbook grows, searching through several large Tables every time somebody needs information becomes inefficient. In Lesson 3, we solve that problem by building a Client Enquiry Screen.

The user selects a Client ID/ Client Name  and Excel automatically brings together useful information about that client in one place. We use XLOOKUP function to retrieve specific pieces of information like – client’s name, manager, status and calculated practice information.

We then use theFILTER  Function ( note not the filter  tool ) to solve a different problem – returning all the open jobs belonging to the selected client. This gives us an opportunity to look properly at how FILTER works, including multiple conditions, dynamic arrays, spill behaviour.

An equally important part of this lesson is the ” workings “worksheet. Rather than putting complicated calculations directly into every reporting or enquiry screen, the  ” workings “worksheet performs useful calculations once for each client., such as  Open Jobs, Overdue Jobs, Jobs Waiting on Client and Records to Chase. Those calculated results can then be retrieved by XLOOKUP wherever they’re needed. This introduces a very useful spreadsheet-design principle: Calculate once – use the result many times.

Lesson 4 – How to Build a Business Work Planner  using Excel.

Lesson 4 changes our perspective again.

The Client Enquiry Screen answers:     What’s happening with this client?

The Work Planner we build in this lesson  answers:

What work needs our attention?  VAT returns, Annual returns need filing ??

At the top of the worksheet, users can select criteria such as Staff Member, Job Type, Status, Due Within and Priority. Excel then creates a live working list containing only the jobs that match those selections. We build this using FILTER function with multiple criteria and the SORT functions to build most of it.

Lesson 5 – Build a ‘Service Business’ Dashboard and Check Controls using Excel.

In the final lesson, we bring the workbook together by building a Practice Dashboard and a set of Check Controls.

The Dashboard gives managers a clear overview of the practice, including Active Clients, Open Jobs, Overdue Jobs, Jobs Waiting on Clients, Outstanding Fees, Overdue Fees and Records to Chase.
We also create a dynamic list of the jobs requiring immediate attention, so the dashboard doesn’t just tell us how many problems there are – it shows us where they are.

Finally, we build a Check Controls worksheet to identify potential data problems such as duplicate IDs, missing information and invalid values. We need to be able trust the information we’re looking at.
The result is a dashboard that not only reports what’s happening across the accountancy practice, but is supported by controls designed to help us trust the information we’re looking at.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL Accountancy Practice Excel Workbook..

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