Here's the uncomfortable truth: Professional services firms have an average 5% gap between "revenue sold" and "revenue earned". That means: You deliver the work, but you don't bill for it.

For a company with €500,000 in annual revenue? €25,000 lost. With €5 million? €250,000. Just like that.

The numbers are brutal:

• 45% of companies say revenue leakage is a systemic problem in their business (Boston Consulting Group, 2020)

• 64% have no tools to manage revenue leakage (Boston Consulting Group, 2020)

• The most common cause: Unbilled or underbilled work

The problem isn't that clients won't pay. The problem is that the work never makes it onto the invoice in the first place.

The Four Biggest Revenue Leaks

1. Unbilled Work: The Forgotten Hours

The Problem: Your team delivers. Every day. Tickets get handled, calls get made, support gets provided. But at the end of the month? 20% of hours are missing from billing.

An IT consultancy in Frankfurt – about 30 consultants, specialized in SAP implementations – discovered in 2023 that an average of 18% of delivered work hours were never billed. Not because they weren't billable. Because they were forgotten. A consultant handled a quick-fix ticket, invested 45 minutes, closed the ticket – and forgot to log the time. Another made a spontaneous client call, talked for 30 minutes, took no notes. At month-end, during manual invoice building: These hours are no longer traceable. Over 12 months: Over €120,000 in unbilled work.

The Leadtime Solution:

In Leadtime, everything your team works on automatically lands in the Invoice Review. Tickets? As soon as they're closed, they move to the billing queue. Time entries? Automatically assigned to projects or tickets. Manual items? Can be added directly.

At the end of the month, you open Invoice Review. There you see all billable items that haven't been invoiced yet. You review them quickly, click "Generate Invoice" – done. No Excel lists. No forgotten hours. No manual collection exercises.

2. Scope Creep: The Unpaid Extras

The Problem: The client asks: "Could you just quickly...?" Your team says: "Sure, we'll do it." Two weeks later, the feature is done. But on the invoice? It's not there.

A web development studio in Hamburg – about 20 developers, specialized in e-commerce shops – built additional features in every second project in 2022 that weren't in the original scope. Example: A client ordered an online shop. Midway through: "Would be cool if we also had a wishlist." The team built it – three days of work. But nobody created a formal change request. The project was billed at a fixed price. The wishlist? Was free. Over 15 projects per year: Estimated €45,000 given away.

The Leadtime Solution:

Leadtime cleanly separates original scope and Change Requests. When a project starts, it's based on the original proposal with defined work packages. As soon as the client wants something additional, a Change Request is created – with description, effort, and price.

During project billing, two separate line items appear: Base project (fixed price) and Change Request (additional). Everything documented. Everything traceable. Nothing given away.

3. Delayed Invoices: The Cash Flow Problem

The Problem: The work is done. The invoice gets written three weeks later. The client pays four weeks after that. Cash flow? Disaster.

A SaaS company in Berlin – about 35 employees, specialized in HR software – took an average of 18 days in 2023 to create an invoice after project completion. Why? Because someone had to manually collect all the data: Which tasks were completed? How many hours were logged? What third-party costs came up? That took time. In the meantime: No cash. Only costs. The company was effectively financing its own clients – even though the work was long done.

The Leadtime Solution:

Leadtime has a structured billing process in three steps:

1. Invoice Review: All billable items are automatically collected. You immediately see: What's finished? What can be billed?

2. Billing & Dispatch: You click "Generate Invoice," the invoice is created, gets a sequential number, and can be sent directly to the client.

3. Receivables Management: The invoice automatically lands in open receivables. When the payment deadline is exceeded, it appears in the overdue list. One click: Reminder goes out.

From "work finished" to "invoice sent": Minutes instead of weeks.

4. Manual Errors: The Expensive Typos

The Problem: Invoices are built manually. Copy-paste from old PDFs. Numbers get typed in. Hourly rates get copied from Excel. And at every step: Error risk.

A management consultancy in Stuttgart – about 25 consultants, specialized in change management – found in 2022 that every fourth invoice had an error. Sometimes the hourly rate was wrong (€80 instead of €120). Sometimes a line item was missing. Sometimes the wrong project title was on it. Every correction cost time. Some errors were never caught – and the company billed less than it should have. Estimated annual loss from billing errors: €30,000.

The Leadtime Solution:

Leadtime generates invoices automatically from system data. The hourly rates? Come from the client contract. The hours delivered? Come from time tracking. The project description? Comes from the project itself. Everything is linked. Nothing is manually typed.

The result: No typos. No wrong rates. No forgotten items. The invoice is exactly as accurate as the data in the system – and that's current because your team works with it daily.

The Real Problem Isn't the Software

Revenue leakage isn't a tool problem. It's a process problem.

Most companies treat billing as a separate step at the end of the month. Operations teams work. Finance teams bill. In between? A black hole where work disappears.

Leadtime closes that hole. It connects operations and finance directly. Everything your team does – tickets, projects, time tracking, change requests – flows automatically into Invoice Review. Nothing gets lost. Nothing gets forgotten.

The result: More billed revenue. Faster cash flow. Less admin effort.

And those 5% you've been losing? They land where they belong: On your invoice.