Software Development for UK Professional Services Firms

Professional firms sell time and trust

Accountants, solicitors, surveyors, architects and consultancies sell expertise by the hour or by the job, and they hold sensitive client data. Their software has two jobs: stop non-billable admin eating fee-earner time, and prove that the firm handled client money, identity and data properly.

Most firms already have a practice management system. Law firms use Clio, LEAP, Actionstep or Proclaim. Accountants use Xero Practice Manager, Karbon, IRIS, CCH or TaxCalc. These are good products. The gaps are at the edges: onboarding, client communication, reporting across systems, and the workflow that makes your firm different. dijitul developments fills those gaps with bespoke tools and integrations rather than asking you to switch platforms.

Client portals and onboarding

A client portal replaces email attachments with secure upload, request lists ("please send your P60"), status tracking and e-signatures. Files are stored encrypted with access logs, and the portal can push documents into SharePoint, your document management system or your practice system via its API.

Onboarding is where most time goes. We build flows that collect client details once, run identity, PEP and sanctions checks through a verification provider's API, record the firm's risk assessment and source of funds evidence, and generate the engagement letter. That gives you a complete, dated record for the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 and for your supervisor, whether that is the SRA, ICAEW, ACCA or HMRC.

Rules that shape the software

• Money Laundering Regulations 2017: customer due diligence, ongoing monitoring and record keeping for at least five years after the relationship ends.
• SRA Accounts Rules for law firms: client money must be kept separate and reconciled at least every five weeks. Software touching client account data needs strict controls and audit trails.
• Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: from 6 April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 must keep digital records and send quarterly updates, with the threshold falling to £30,000 in April 2027 and £20,000 in April 2028, according to GOV.UK. Accountants need workflows to chase, check and submit quarterly figures across many clients.
• Companies House identity verification: mandatory from 18 November 2025 under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, phased over 12 months, according to Companies House guidance summarised by Hill Dickinson. Company secretarial tools need to track who is verified.
• UK GDPR: role-based access, retention schedules and subject access request handling.

Integrations we build

• Practice management APIs: Clio, Actionstep, LEAP, Xero Practice Manager, Karbon
• Accounting: Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage
• Microsoft 365 via Microsoft Graph: Outlook, SharePoint, Teams and calendars. See Microsoft 365 integration.
• E-signature providers and ID verification services
• Payment links through Stripe or GoCardless for fees on account

We also add AI where it does a measurable job, such as extracting data from bank statements or drafting first-pass summaries of documents. See AI document processing, always with human review for anything client-facing.

Reporting partners will actually read

Partners want a short list of numbers: work in progress, lock-up, recovery and realisation by fee earner and client, and which matters or jobs are drifting over budget. Those figures usually exist, but across the practice system, the accounts package and timesheets, so someone builds them in Excel each month.

We pull time entries, fees, disbursements and invoices through the practice system and accounting APIs into a reporting database, then present a small number of dashboards with drill-down to the matter or job. Alerts are often more useful than dashboards: a weekly email listing matters over 80% of their fixed fee, or clients with unbilled time older than 60 days, gets action without anyone having to log in.

For accountancy practices, the same approach tracks the compliance calendar across clients: year ends, filing deadlines, VAT quarters and, from 2026, Making Tax Digital quarterly updates, with status per client and a clear view of what is at risk this month.

How we work with firms

A free chat, then a short scoping stage with a partner and someone who does the admin. We write up the workflow and data model and give a fixed-price quote. Confidentiality is built in from the start: we sign NDAs and work within your information security policy. See how we work.

What we deliver

• A secure client portal with document exchange, requests and e-signatures
• Digital onboarding with ID verification, AML and risk assessment records
• Integrations with your practice management, accounting and Microsoft 365
• Time, fee, WIP and recovery dashboards
• Automated workflows for deadlines, reminders and recurring jobs
• Document generation from templates with client data merged in

How it works and what it costs

Every project gets a fixed-price quote after a free initial chat and a short scoping stage. You own the code and the data.

1. Free chat

   Tell us the problem in plain English: what you do now, what goes wrong and what "better" looks like. No charge, no obligation.

2. Scoping

   We map the processes, systems and data involved, agree what is in and out, and write it down so there are no surprises.

3. Fixed-price quote

   You get a fixed price for the agreed scope, or a phased plan for bigger builds, so you can start small and prove it works.

4. Build and test

   We build in short stages you can see and try, test against real data, then go live carefully with a rollback plan.

5. Hand over and look after

   You own the code and the data. We can host it, support it and keep improving it, or hand it to your own team.

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