Field notes.
Essays for billing partners on WIP write-offs, the pre-billing review, evaluating an AI tool that reads your billing data, and what to have in place before moving off the billable hour. We add to the series when there is something worth saying.
- 01
Published · 2026.08.26
What CPA Firms Need Before They Move Off the Billable Hour
Hourly billing is a small minority in every service line Ignition tracks and fixed fee is the default. The part that does not ship with the pricing model is the cost-to-deliver baseline the new price has to sit on, and where a firm on CCH Axcess Practice gets it.
6-minute read
Read → - 02
Published · 2026.08.17
What to Ask Any Vendor Before You Let AI Touch Your WIP and Billing Data
A vendor-neutral checklist for CPA firm partners evaluating AI tools that read work-in-process and billing data: the data-residency, deployment, §7216, audit-trail, and approval-gate questions to get answered in writing before you sign.
6-minute read
Read → - 03
Published · 2026.08.06
A Practical CCH Axcess WIP Review Workflow Before You Bill
A repeatable pre-billing WIP review workflow for CPA firms running CCH Axcess Practice: the steps a billing admin or partner follows in the tool they already own to catch misposted time, stale WIP, silent write-downs, and thin descriptions before an invoice goes out.
5-minute read
Read → - 04
Published · 2026.07.22
How CPA Firms Reduce WIP Write-Offs Before the Bill Goes Out
Most write-offs get decided long before the invoice, in the gap between the day work is logged and the day a partner reviews WIP. An operational playbook for catching that leakage while you can still bill for it.
6-minute read
Read →
New pieces go out as they ship. Follow by RSS, or email austin.eisenman@billswarm.com.