How an audit firm Runs a 1,000-Clients on ZenWorkflow

The Firm

A mid-sized professional services firm serving more than 1,000 clients across a wide range of industries. Its work is dominated by recurring, deadline-driven engagements: statutory audits, IFRS financial statements, group consolidations, corporate tax returns, VAT, payroll and annual returns filed with the Cyprus Registrar of Companies.

Every one of those engagements follows a predictable path, and every one of them has a date attached. Multiply that by more than a thousand clients and the real challenge of the practice is not the technical work. It is knowing, on any given day, exactly where each job stands, who is on it, and what has already been billed.

The Challenge

Before ZenWorkflow, that picture lived in several places at once. Job tracking, time recording, invoicing and client onboarding each had their own tool or spreadsheet, and each one held a slightly different version of the client list.

That created the problems every growing firm recognises:
- Partners could not see the status of all engagements for a client without asking around
- Time was recorded in one system and billed from another, so unbilled work was easy to miss
- Annual deadlines were tracked manually, client by client
- AML and KYC files were kept separately from the client record they related to
- Every new team member had to learn several tools before becoming productive

ZenWorkflow was built to solve exactly these problems. The firm was its first user, and it still runs the entire practice on it today.

The Approach

The audit firm did not start from an empty database. The firm imported its full history so that the new system was useful from the first day:

- Ten years of invoicing history, from 2016 to today, so client statements and balances were correct immediately
- Every historic engagement, so completed work sits alongside current jobs in each client's record
- All clients, directors, shareholders and contacts, with their relationships preserved

Services were then set up once, at the firm level, and assigned to each client. It runs 37 services in ZenWorkflow, including Cyprus-specific filings such as IR4, IR7, HE32 annual returns, VAT and Intrastat, alongside audit, accounting, payroll, advisory and consolidation work. Over 6,000 client-service assignments define what the firm does for whom.

Every engagement is a workflow

Each audit, tax return or accounting engagement is a workflow created from a firm template, with the same checklist, fields and stages every time. Recurring engagements are generated in bulk for the year rather than created one at a time.

The result is close to 40,000 workflows in the system, covering both historic and live work. Partners filter by client, service, assignee or status to see exactly what is open, and staff work from a personal list of what is assigned to them.

Time is captured where the work happens

Staff record time against a client, a service and, where relevant, a specific workflow. Timesheets are submitted weekly and approved by managers. More than 57,000 time entries have been recorded, and because each one is tied to a client and a service, unbilled time is visible rather than forgotten.

Billing starts from the work, not from memory

Invoices are raised from completed workflows, approved time and fixed-fee services. Line descriptions come from the engagement itself, so an invoice reads the way the client expects. Recurring fixed fees, ad-hoc charges and out-of-pocket expenses all flow into the same document. More than 10,000 invoices now live in the system with their full payment history.

AML and KYC sit on the client record

Risk assessments, identity and address verification, PEP and sanction screening and adverse-media checks are completed against the client, next to the engagements and documents they relate to. Reviews are scheduled and approved inside the same system the rest of the firm uses every day.

What Changed

- One client list. Clients, contacts, engagements, time, invoices and AML files are all attached to a single record.
- Deadlines are visible by default. Every recurring filing is a workflow with a due date, so nothing depends on a spreadsheet being up to date.
- Nothing goes unbilled by accident. Time and completed work are visible until they are invoiced or written off.
- Faster onboarding. New staff learn one system, and templates carry the firm's way of working into every job.
- Compliance is part of the workflow. AML reviews are scheduled, tracked and approved in the same place as the engagement.

What Comes Next

The audit firm continues to shape ZenWorkflow around the daily reality of a busy practice, from client portals and document management to reporting across the whole firm. Every feature on this site was first used, and often first requested, by the team in Cyprus.

If your firm is juggling the same mix of recurring deadlines, tracked time and compliance reviews, book a demo and we will walk you through how you can run your firm on ZenWorkflow.