Stop chasing money on a Sunday.
Stop onboarding the same way every time. Own the system, not a subscription.
If you have been watching the consolidator pause and asking whether the independent model still works with capacity squeezed and demand outpacing supply, this page is for you.
You did not become a partner so you could spend Sunday afternoon chasing invoices. Or so the practice manager could spend Friday afternoon onboarding the same way as last time, and the time before that.
The honest answer in 2026 is that a meaningful chunk of the work fee-earners and admin staff do every week could be done by a workflow the practice owns. Not a SaaS subscription. Not an outsourced firm. Not another piece of software you have to log into.
That is what we do. We are an independent AI and automation consultancy. AI and automation is not a bolt-on for us. It is the only thing we do. We sell advice and ownership. We do not sell licences.
What “owning the system” actually means
We build on n8n, Airtable, and Claude, hosted on the practice’s own infrastructure. Your accounts. Your data. Your keys.
If you stop paying us tomorrow, the system keeps running. There is no per-seat fee that grows when the team grows. There is no vendor’s roadmap holding the firm to a ransom. The practice manager can read the workflow because it is written in plain English on the screen.
When the practice changes, you change the system. Not us. We give you the keys.
What good looks like in a small practice
A practice that has automated the right ten jobs typically sees:
- Six to ten fee-earner hours per week recovered, per partner.
- Debtor days down measurably inside a quarter.
- Onboarding time-to-first-billable-work falling from weeks to days.
- A partner dashboard that updates itself, not a Sunday-night scramble.
- A flat cost curve. Same automation cost whether the team is six or sixteen.
The system does not need AI for any of this. Some jobs benefit from AI; most are just plumbing. The point is ownership, not novelty.
Three of the 25 jobs, as examples
Before you decide whether the full list is worth your email address, here are three of the twenty-five. One from money-in, one from onboarding, one from internal admin. Each is a real job that comes up again and again at independent practices.
The partner-voice AR chase
Looking at the aged debtors report, deciding who needs the polite chase, who needs the partner-cc chase, and who has gone quiet entirely. Then writing the email.
Xero's automated reminders are too gentle. Clients ignore them. The partner ends up doing it personally, in their own voice, on a Sunday.
Reads the aged debtors report nightly. Knows the engagement letter terms. Drafts the chase in the partner's voice, mentioning the specific job that is outstanding. Escalates on a schedule. Partner approves with one click.
Four to six hours a week back per partner. Debtor days down measurably inside a quarter.
Engagement letter to first billable work
New client signs the engagement letter. Practice manager then sets up the client in Xero, requests the documents, sends the AML pack, sets up the file, books the kickoff. Three or four days, sometimes weeks.
It is the same sequence every time, done by hand every time. The information sits in five places. Nobody enjoys it. The client thinks the practice is slow.
Engagement letter triggers the lot. Client portal goes out the same day. Documents come back into the right folder, named correctly. AML check runs. Kickoff is booked from the partner's calendar. Practice manager reviews exceptions, not every step.
Time to first billable work falls from weeks to days. Onboarding feels professional, not apologetic.
The partner dashboard that updates itself
Sunday night. Partner pulls together WIP, lock-up, debtors, jobs by status, who is over budget, who has gone quiet. So Monday's partner meeting is not a fishing trip.
The numbers exist. They live in Xero, the practice management tool, the time-recording tool and someone's spreadsheet. Pulling them together is two hours nobody bills for.
Reads from each system overnight. Writes a single dashboard the partner opens on Monday morning. Flags the three things that need attention, not the forty that do not.
The partner meeting starts with the answer, not the question. Sunday night belongs to the partner again.
If those three sound familiar, the other twenty-two probably will too.
The full list, if you want it
The full 25 covers money-in, onboarding, year-end plumbing, internal admin, and the soft compounding work most practices do not get to. It is not a sales pitch. There is no “book a call” link inside it. It is a working list.
How a first engagement works
The way we work with independent practices is a paid AI and Automation Audit before any build conversation. Two days of your team’s time, one week elapsed. Monday is process discovery. Tuesday is AI maturity. Wednesday is the deadline for follow-up evidence. Thursday is the write-up. Friday is a sixty-minute walkthrough where we hand over the report.
You leave with three workflow recommendations, three AI recommendations, an AI maturity scorecard across six dimensions, and a 30-day plan. Vendor-agnostic. Runs on your stack. No commission anywhere in the chain.
The build, if you want one, is a separate decision and a separate engagement. Pricing for the audit is held for the scoping call so we can agree the audit is the right shape for your practice first.
Read the full audit page or email [email protected] to scope a 15-minute fit call.
A note on what we are not
- We are not selling AI in a box. AI and automation is what we do, but most of the work is workflow design, not prompting. AI gets used where it earns its place.
- We are not a software vendor. There is no licence. There is no recurring subscription paid to us.
- We are not the cheapest option. We are the option that leaves the practice owning the system at the end.
David Perkins, Perkins SmartOps. Independent automation consultant for UK businesses. We build it in your house, you own the keys.
Curious whether this would work in your practice?
Drop me an email. We can scope a 15-minute fit call and decide together whether the AI and Automation Audit is the right shape for your practice. A polite no is also a fine outcome.
Email David