Work at a large firm and there is a back office behind every hour you bill. Someone turns the timesheets into invoices, notices what is late, matches every payment and receipt, and keeps the numbers honest — not once a year, but every day. It leaves the people doing the work free to spend their time on clients, calm about the rest.
Most small firms never get that back office. Small businesses and the accounting firms that serve them still run on an idea from the 90s: someone types it in. The software moved to the cloud; the typing stayed. Every hour still has to become an invoice, every invoice a payment, every expense a receipt — by hand, in the evening, with an accountant chasing whatever is still missing.
That is about to change. When clients, firms and accountants each have agents working for them, the paperwork will travel with the work: the hour logged becoming the invoice, the payment recognised as it lands, the accountant’s question answered by whoever can answer it. The books stop being a job done after the work, and become a by-product of doing it.
Summarly is the first step toward that. Today it tracks billable time against projects, sends invoices and retainers on schedule, lines up payments with their invoices and receipts with their payments, and puts your accountant in the same books. What it cannot know, it asks you once. Summarly gives your firm that back office, so your time goes to clients and you stay calm about the rest.
