Law Firm Cash Flow Template

Once baseline data is in, open the WIP & Billing Pipeline sheet and log your current unbilled time by timekeeper and matter. This is the step most firms skip — and why they're caught off guard by cash crunches. The sheet converts your WIP to a projected billing schedule based on your typical billing cycle. From there, use the 12-Month Projection sheet to set assumptions for the months ahead: expected new billings, your average collection lag (usually 45–75 days for well-run firms), and any planned changes to headcount or overhead.

The metrics that matter most in legal cash flow are the ones most firms track least consistently. Collection rate — the percentage of billed fees you actually collect — should ideally land between 90–95% for healthy firms. Anything below 85% signals a problem with billing practices, client selection, or collections follow-up. Realization rate — the percentage of worked hours that actually get billed — is the upstream indicator: if attorneys are writing off 20–30% of their time before the invoice even goes out, no collection process can fix the underlying revenue leak. This template tracks both automatically, so you can see where in the pipeline cash is being lost.