Journal
WIP and aged debt on one sheet
Lock-up is a single idea that practices split across three reports. Putting WIP and debtors on one sheet does not require a new system; it requires agreeing what ‘old’ means.
Work in progress and unpaid fees are the same conversation: time and invoices that have not yet become cash. When they live in separate exports, the partner meeting treats them as separate moods — busy versus unpaid — and misses the combined weight.
On one sheet we show WIP by age band and debtors by age band, using the same bands. Thirty / sixty / ninety / older is enough. Finer bands look precise and are rarely maintained. If time recording is weak, the WIP side of the sheet says ‘incomplete’ rather than displaying a comforting round number.
Names belong on the oldest band. A practice that will not name the five oldest debtor balances is not ready for a lock-up wall, and we will say so in the briefing. The sheet is not a public shaming; it is a list of calls that have not been made.
Credit balances and unallocated receipts confuse aged lists. We ask the compiler to clear or note them before we draw. A panel that includes a large unallocated credit as if it were a negative debtor will be argued over until the meeting is spent.
Advisory teams working on client lock-up use the same layout with the client’s name in the title and the practice’s own lock-up kept off the page. Mixing the two is how a client meeting slides into an internal post-mortem.
We reprint this sheet monthly, not live on a wall that nobody updates. A faded print in the accounts room is still more honest than a screen nobody opens.