Consulting, agency and professional-services firms sell time, and time is the hardest thing to keep accurate between the system that plans it and the system that bills it. Accounting Seed puts general ledger, project accounting, time and expense, and billing on the Salesforce platform — the same records that hold the client and the engagement. Twopir Consulting designs the project and revenue architecture, configures it around your fee models, and writes the custom logic when configuration runs out. One ledger, from timesheet to project P&L.
All four figures are from a single Accounting Seed engagement with a 150-employee US professional-services firm — not a blended average across clients. Read the full case study.
Twopir Consulting has delivered Salesforce and finance systems for 500+ organizations across 12+ years — including professional-services firms running projects, time, billing and the general ledger on one platform.
Systems We Build On
A professional-services firm's financial problems are almost never accounting problems. They are handoff problems — between the system where the work is planned, the system where time is recorded, and the system where the money is booked. Every gap below is one of those handoffs, and each one costs realized revenue.
Timesheets arrive days after the work, approvals sit with a partner, and the invoice goes out a fortnight after the value was delivered. WIP ages quietly and cash arrives a month later than it should.
Billable hours, capacity and bench time are reconstructed in Excel each month from timesheets, resourcing plans and gut feel. By the time the number exists, the staffing decision it was meant to inform has already been made.
A fixed-price engagement is profitable or not depending on hours consumed, but hours live in one system and revenue in another. Overruns are discovered at the end of the project instead of at 40% of budget.
Time and materials, fixed fee, milestone, retainer, capped fee and success fee are genuinely different revenue mechanics. Forcing them into one billing template turns the workaround into the process.
An engagement closed in Salesforce is still open in accounting. Two systems hold two versions of the same client, and leadership ends up trusting neither number enough to act on it.
Revenue, labour cost, subcontractor cost and expenses by client, project, practice and office require a quarterly rebuild. Pricing and hiring decisions get made on a number that is already out of date.
Accounting Seed is an accounting platform built natively on the Salesforce platform. It provides general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, billing and invoicing, project accounting, time and expense capture, financial reporting and online payment processing — and because it is native rather than integrated, the firm's financial records sit on the same platform as its client, opportunity and engagement records. It has been listed on the Salesforce AppExchange for over a decade and is used by finance teams in more than 30 countries.
For a professional-services firm the practical consequence is specific: there is no nightly sync to reconcile, no middleware to maintain, and no second definition of "client" to keep in step. A project and its invoices are the same record hierarchy, so utilization, WIP and project margin can be reported next to pipeline and delivery status without an export. Accounting Seed does not publish public pricing; licensing is quoted per firm by the vendor. Accounting Seed's own project accounting documentation covers the product surface; this page covers what we build with it.
The platform's own capability. None of this is something Twopir built — it ships with the product.
The service. We design the financial architecture, then implement, configure and extend the product to match it.
The operating change. This is what partners actually notice in the first two quarters after go-live.
"We work with Accounting Seed" hides the only question that matters to a buyer: which of these do you actually need? Twopir Consulting offers all four, and the boundary between configuration and custom development is stated below rather than discovered halfway through a project.
| Engagement | What it covers | Where the boundary sits |
|---|---|---|
| Implement | Standing the product up: ledger structure, chart of accounts, project and task hierarchy, tax and entity setup, users and permissions, opening balances, and migration of historical AR, AP and WIP."Accounting Seed implementation partner" | Ends when the firm can run a full billing cycle and close a period on the new ledger. Everything here is standard product setup — no custom code is involved. |
| Configure | Shaping the product to the firm's process: rate tables, billing formats, fee models, project templates, timesheet and expense approval routing, recurring and retainer billing, reports and dashboards."Accounting Seed configuration for professional services" | Declarative only — Flow, formula fields, page layouts, permission sets and native settings. If it can be built without Apex, it belongs in this tier and it stays upgrade-safe. |
| Build on | Custom development where the product's configuration surface runs out: percentage-of-completion revenue rules, capped-fee and success-fee logic, bespoke invoice formats, utilization models, external system APIs."custom Accounting Seed development" | Starts the moment a requirement needs Apex, Lightning Web Components or an API integration. We write it as tested, bulk-safe code against the product's supported objects, never by modifying the managed package. |
| Rescue | Fixing an existing deployment: unwinding workarounds, correcting ledger and project structure, repairing broken integrations, and rebuilding reporting the firm stopped trusting."Accounting Seed implementation not working" | Begins with an assessment, not a rebuild. Most of what's wrong is architecture, not the product — we keep the org wherever the data and structure can be corrected in place. |
Most firms need two of the four. The purpose of discovery is to tell you which two before you commit budget to the wrong one. If your firm is a law practice, the trust and matter-billing version of this page is Accounting Seed for law firms.
These are the modules we actually deliver on Accounting Seed for services firms — described in project and engagement vocabulary rather than as a restatement of the vendor's feature list. Which of them you need is a discovery question, not a package.
Capture through review, approval and write-down into a billable line, so unbilled WIP is a live number on the project rather than a month-end discovery.
Budget by phase and task, with labour, subcontractor and expense cost posting against the same project record the revenue does, so margin is a report rather than a reconstruction.
Billable, non-billable and bench hours reported per person, team, practice and office directly from approved time — the same source the invoice is raised from.
Time and materials, fixed fee, milestone, retainer, capped fee and blended-rate arrangements configured as real billing rules instead of an hourly template with exceptions.
Recognition on delivery, milestone or percentage of completion, scheduled against the engagement rather than adjusted by journal entry at the end of each quarter.
Vendor bills, contractor invoices and pass-through expenses recorded against the engagement that incurred them, so recoverable costs are actually recovered.
Evergreen retainers with replenishment thresholds, subscription and managed-service arrangements, and scheduled billing runs that do not need a person to remember them.
Realization, WIP, AR aging and profitability by engagement, client, practice group, office and entity — reported from the ledger, on the same platform as pipeline and delivery status.
A firm's finance stack is only as good as its weakest handoff. This is the integration surface we build around Accounting Seed in professional-services engagements — and the one relationship on the list that needs no integration at all.
| Systems | Business purpose | What moves, and which way |
|---|---|---|
| Salesforce · Accounting Seed | Keep the client, the engagement and the money on one record so delivery and finance argue about scope rather than about whose number is right. | No integration Native — same platform, same database. Accounts, contacts, opportunities and projects are shared objects, not synchronised copies. Nothing to reconcile and no middleware to maintain. |
| Salesforce CPQ · Revenue Cloud | Turn a signed quote into a project, a billing schedule and a revenue schedule without anyone re-keying the commercial terms. | Quote → ledger Quote lines, rates and terms create the project structure and billing schedule; billed and recognised amounts report back against the opportunity. Consumed by finance and the engagement lead. |
| Professional services automation | Serve firms running a separate resourcing or PSA tool that owns the delivery plan, so the ledger bills what was actually delivered. | Delivery → ledger Approved time, expenses and milestone completion flow into billing; invoice and WIP status returns to the project. Consumed by delivery managers and billing staff. Built per firm — the mapping is the work, not the connector. |
| Chargent · payment gateways | Take client payments inside Salesforce and have them land against the right invoice without a manual cash-application step. | Payments → ledger Payment events and settlement detail post to the invoice and cash receipt. Consumed by finance, with the balance visible to whoever is on the client call. |
| Bank feeds | Reconcile operating accounts against the ledger continuously, so a discrepancy surfaces in days rather than at year end. | Bank → ledger Cleared transactions import for matching against cash receipts and disbursements. Consumed by the controller or bookkeeper. |
| QuickBooks · corporate ERP | Serve firms that keep a separate corporate or group ledger, or that are running Accounting Seed alongside an incumbent system during a phased move. | Bi-directional Journal summaries, vendor bills and consolidation entries move both ways on an agreed cut. Consumed by group finance. Built per firm — the mapping is the work, not the connector. |
Building one of these into an existing Salesforce org? See our Salesforce integration, or the wider Salesforce for professional services architecture this sits inside.
Most failed accounting implementations are configuration exercises that skipped the architecture. We do the financial design before anyone opens a setup screen — because a chart of accounts is very expensive to change once a year of transactions sits on top of it.
We map how the firm actually earns and collects: fee models in use, how time is approved, the project hierarchy, entity and office structure, the close calendar, and which reports partners genuinely act on. Output is an architecture, not a task list. Typically 1–2 weeks.
Chart of accounts, project and task hierarchy, revenue recognition rules, rate structures, and the reporting dimensions the firm will need in three years — agreed with finance before a single object is configured. Typically 2–3 weeks.
Native configuration first — rate tables, billing formats, approval routing, dashboards. Custom Apex and Lightning Web Components only where the requirement genuinely exceeds the configuration surface, written against supported objects so upgrades stay clean. Typically 4–8 weeks.
Opening balances, historical AR and AP, open WIP and unbilled time migrate and are reconciled line by line. The firm then runs a full billing cycle in both systems and the numbers must agree before anything is switched off. Typically 2–4 weeks.
We stay through the first billing runs and the first period close, fix what real transaction volume exposes, and hand over to a finance team that can administer the system themselves rather than one that has to call us.
Durations are typical ranges for a single-entity firm and are confirmed in discovery. Multi-entity, multi-office and multi-currency programmes run longer — see multi-entity and multi-currency consolidation — and a rescue engagement starts with an assessment before any timeline is quoted.
Both are published Twopir Consulting engagements delivered on Accounting Seed and Salesforce. Both are professional-services firms that bill for time — the mechanics below are the same ones a consultancy or agency needs, described in the vocabulary of the firms they were built for. Every figure is scoped to the firm it was measured at; follow the link for the full story rather than reading these as an average.
Twopir's specialized Salesforce customization enabled efficient integration of third-party systems and streamlined administration and billing, leading to seamless financial operations and enhanced productivity. Automated mass billing and matter management minimized errors across our entire legal workflow.
Manual billing eliminated and engagement management automated with Accounting Seed and Salesforce — 17 automation modules delivered.
Twopir provided Salesforce customisation and integration services to help us build a robust, compliant, and scalable legal operations platform — connecting case management, document processing, and financial systems into one unified workflow. The result was transformative for how we run case-to-cash operations.
Streamlining work-to-cash operations across Salesforce, AWS and QuickBooks.
Accounting Seed implementations fail in one of two directions: an accounting firm that cannot build on the Salesforce platform, or a Salesforce partner that has never closed a period. This work needs both, on the same team.
Chart of accounts, project hierarchy and reporting dimensions are agreed with your finance team first. It is the cheapest hour of the project and the most expensive one to skip.
Utilization, realization, leverage, blended rates and fixed-fee risk are not concepts we look up mid-project. We have built revenue infrastructure for consulting, legal and multi-practice firms.
When a requirement exceeds what native setup can do, the same team writes the Apex. No second vendor, no handoff, and no argument about whose scope a revenue rule falls into.
Go-live is not the finish line for a finance system. We are there for the first billing runs and the first period close, when real volume finds what testing did not.
A large share of this work is rescue — firms already on Accounting Seed whose structure or integrations were never right. We assess before we rebuild, and we keep what can be corrected in place.
Configuration is anything achievable declaratively — rate tables, billing formats, project templates, approval routing, Flow automation, reports and dashboards. Custom development starts when a requirement needs Apex, a Lightning Web Component or an API integration: percentage-of-completion revenue rules, capped-fee and success-fee logic, bespoke invoice formats, or custom utilization models. We always exhaust the configuration surface first, because declarative work stays upgrade-safe and your team can maintain it without us.
Twopir Consulting is a Salesforce Partner and a HubSpot Partner, and we implement, configure and build on Accounting Seed for professional-services firms. Accounting Seed licences are bought from Accounting Seed directly — the vendor does not publish public pricing and quotes per firm. We deliver the implementation and the custom development around it; we are not reselling the product.
Yes. Accounting Seed's project accounting and billing modules support time and materials, fixed fee, milestone and recurring arrangements, and the same project can carry more than one. The work is in the design: which milestones create a billable event, how unbilled time on a fixed-fee engagement is treated for WIP, and whether revenue is recognised on delivery, on milestone or on percentage of completion. Those are architecture decisions we make with your finance team before configuring anything.
Sometimes you should not. QuickBooks is capable general accounting software, and a small firm with simple hourly billing may be well served by it plus a sync. The case for moving changes when projects, fee models and utilization become the thing you need to report on: with Accounting Seed the ledger sits on the same platform as the client and engagement records, so there is no sync to reconcile and no second definition of a client. Some firms keep QuickBooks or a corporate ERP as a group ledger and run Accounting Seed for operations — we build that arrangement too.
Yes, when the dimensions are designed for it. Because approved time, labour cost, subcontractor cost, expenses and revenue all post against the same project records inside Salesforce, utilization and margin can be reported with native Salesforce reports and dashboards. Firms that need cross-entity consolidation or long historical trending often still add a BI layer, but the day-to-day partner and practice reporting does not require one. What determines this is the reporting dimensions agreed in Phase 02, not the reporting tool.
For a single-entity firm, the phases on this page typically run around three to four months end to end, including a parallel run before anything is switched off. Multi-entity, multi-office and multi-currency programmes run longer, and the honest answer is that the timeline is set by two things we cannot see before discovery: the state of your historical data, and how many distinct fee models are genuinely in use. We confirm the schedule after the architecture phase, not before it.
That is where a lot of these engagements start. A deployment can be technically live and still operationally wrong — usually because the ledger structure, project hierarchy or reporting dimensions were set up without a financial architecture behind them. We assess the ledger, the configuration, the integrations and the data before proposing anything, then correct in place wherever the structure can be repaired without a rebuild. Starting from a blank org is the last option, not the first.
Whether you are choosing Accounting Seed, midway through configuring it, or living with a deployment that never quite worked — the first conversation is about your chart of accounts and your fee models, not about software.
Project accounting, utilization & services billing on Salesforce
