Cash is often talked about as a constraint. In reality, it is one of the greatest strategic enablers a professional services firm has.
Yet in many firms, lock-up is treated as an operational irritation — something for finance to manage rather than leadership to own. If lock-up doesn’t feature in the board pack, it isn’t being actively managed. It’s being quietly accepted.
Lock-Up Isn’t One Problem
When firms say they have “120 days of lock-up”, they’re disguising the real issue. Lock-up is not a single number. It’s a collection of specific, fixable causes, including:
Late or inconsistent time capture
Slow prebilling cycles
Client-specific billing rules that no one challenges
Approval bottlenecks
Disputes caused by weak billing narratives
Until those causes are named, nothing moves. The work isn’t heroic or complex — it’s diagnostic. Break the number down, assign ownership, and fix issues one by one.
Visibility Changes Behaviour
Complex dashboards rarely change how people act. Simple, regular visibility does. High-performing firms focus on weekly WIP and AR by partner and by client. They use clear red, amber and green signals, supported by short narratives and explicit actions. When partners can see, in real time, the impact of delayed decisions or weak discipline, behaviour shifts quickly.
Small Improvements Unlock Strategic Freedom
You don’t need perfection. Taking even 10–20 days out of lock-up can unlock meaningful strategic freedom — whether that’s investment capacity, resilience in a downturn, or optionality for growth.
The real question for leadership teams isn’t whether lock-up matters. It’s this: if you could halve just one cause of lock-up this year, which would it be?