Professional Services Accounting and Advisory
Accounting, tax and informed business advisory for law firms, medical practices, estate agents, consultancies and other professional service businesses.
The Challenges Facing Professional Services
Professional services firms — medical, legal, engineering, accounting, allied health, estate agents — operate on leverage, selling partner and staff time at premium rates. Success depends on how much of your team’s time converts to revenue, what you can actually charge, keeping good people, what your practice is worth, and how the partnership is structured.
Like construction and manufacturing businesses, professional service firms have financial dynamics that generic firms overlook. We do the accounting and tax in-house — the returns, the activity statements, the entity and trust compliance — and we do it so you understand it. From there: how much of your team’s time converts to revenue, what you can actually charge, managing work in progress, turning invoices into cash, structuring partnerships fairly, planning partner entry and exit, valuing the practice, and keeping your best people.
Your value lives in leverage, utilisation and retention — not in bricks or stock. You need an adviser who can read a practice’s P&L and knows exactly where the next dollar comes from.
We bring that expertise.
How We Help Professional Services
Four pillars, each one built on the one before it.
Clarity
- Annual financial statements and income tax returns — practice, partners and associated entities
- Activity statements, GST and PAYG instalments
- Entity and trust compliance — ASIC review, corporate secretarial, trustee resolutions
- ATO liaison, including payment arrangements
Capacity
- Bookkeeping and payroll, including Single Touch Payroll and superannuation guarantee
- Xero setup and training for time and billing
- WIP and billing administration that keeps invoices moving
- Systems that free the principal from the admin bottleneck
Courage
- Monthly utilisation and realisation reports
- Partner vs associate productivity analysis
- WIP tracking and cash conversion cycle
- Realisable billing rate benchmarking, and pricing for margin
Confidence
- Partnership agreement structuring and tax planning
- Profit distribution, salary and superannuation contribution strategy
- Buy-sell agreement structuring
- Practice valuation, buy-in/buy-out economics, and associate-to-partner carry modelling
- Merger or acquisition evaluation, and debt facility structuring for acquisition financing
- Retiring partner succession and payout planning; sale of practice; intergenerational succession for family-based practices
Example: Partnership Buy-In
A legal firm (5 partners, 12 associates, ~$2M annual profit) wanted to bring in an associate as a new partner but didn’t have a framework for equity, buy-in, profit sharing, or earn-out.
Cyre Partners approach:
- Analysed practice profitability by partner using monthly reporting data
- Modelled various partner carry structures and buy-in scenarios
- Compared to market practice and drafted a buy-in agreement with a profit-sharing framework
Outcome:
- Clear partnership agreement aligned partners’ expectations
- New partner buy-in completed with confidence
- Profit-sharing structure incentivised growth
- Partners had clarity on future succession paths
Ready to talk about your practice?
Let’s talk about utilisation, valuation, partnership structuring, and growing your professional services firm.
Where Professional Services Businesses Usually Need Help Most
Every business sits across all four pillars — but for practice owners, two tend to carry the most weight. See all four →
Capacity
Owner-bottleneck and capacity constraints.
Courage
Scaling beyond the founder’s billable hours.
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Common questions from professional services business owners
How do I improve profitability without just working longer hours?
In professional services, profitability comes down to a few key levers: how much of your team’s time converts to revenue, what you can actually charge, and how efficiently work moves through the practice. We help you identify which lever will make the biggest difference — and make sure you can see it in the numbers yourself.
What does a professional services business need before bringing in a partner?
Partnership changes everything — decision rights, profit sharing, liability and culture. Before you bring someone in, you need clarity on what the practice is worth, what the buy-in structure looks like, and how the partnership agreement handles disagreement. We help you think through the questions most owners skip.
How is a professional services practice valued differently from other businesses?
Unlike product businesses, practices are valued heavily on recurring revenue, client concentration, key-person risk and the strength of the team. A practice that depends entirely on the principal is worth less than one with transferable client relationships. We help you understand how buyers think so you can build value now.
Explore our advisory services, see how we work with property and development and retail and hospitality businesses, or book a discovery call to discuss your situation.