Learn how to connect Smokeball with MiNumbers, a firm performance reporting engine by FWO Chartered Accountants.
What is MiNumbers?
Minumbers provides a fee earner budgeting and reporting solution that connects key systems and automates fee earner budget calculations, then compares budgets to actual results.
MiNumbers uses your firm's payroll records instead of static budgets to aid you in making financial decisions based off accurate data.Â
Who are FWO Chartered Accountants?
FWO Chartered Accountants are strategic financial partners for SME law firms across Australia. They combine over 20 years of legal industry expertise with insight-led advisory to help firms improve profitability and cash flow, using MiNumbers as the reporting engine that turns payroll, financial and fee earner data into clear budget vs actual performance reporting.
How does MiNumbers work?
MiNumbers integrates the following information to paint a comprehensive picture of your firm's performance:
- Smokeball fee earner data (time, fees, write-offs, billable hours)
- Xero financial data
- Xero payroll data
Because fee earner budgets in MiNumbers are based on actual payroll hours captured from Xero payroll, the budgets are dynamic and not static.
Once connected, MiNumbers:
- Compares fee earner budgets to actual results (based on actual payroll hours)
- Connects fees billed data per fee earner
- Measures recoverability of WIP against billings
MiNumbers then measures the headline KPI: Average rate = fees billed / actual paid hours and the underlying KPIs:
- Productivity = billable hours / actual hours at work.
- Write-off% = write-off / total WIP on matter.
You can run these KPIs globally, by department, by employee type, or by individual.
Worked example of fee earner budget logic in MiNumbers
Typically, a fee earner budget will be calculated based on, say:
44 weeks a year × 38 hours per week = 1,672 hours
If their billable hours target is 5 hours per day, you’d expect them to bill:
1,672 hours × 5 ÷ 7.6 = 1,100 hours
With a charge rate of $400 per hour, their budget is then:
1,100 × $400 = $440,000
If a staff member is away for 15 days out of the 20 workdays in that month, budgets are rarely adjusted to reflect this, as firms often work on yearly averages. This static calculation is not accurate and can lead your firm down the wrong path in decision-making.
What MiNumbers does is set a budget only based on 5 days × 5 hours × $400 (using the above figures as an example). This means the actual hours entered can be compared to budget, but only for the actual days at work.
Connecting Smokeball to MiNumbers
FWO Chartered Accountants oversees the setup of connecting Smokeball and Xero to MiNumbers, so the reporting reflects accurate payroll records and consistent fee earner definitions.
The process involves:
- Confirming your firm’s Xero subscription and access arrangements (financial + payroll).
- Confirming Smokeball access arrangements and how fee earner data is structured (users, matters, time recording, billing, write-offs).
- Mapping fee earners between Xero payroll and Smokeball (so paid hours align to the right fee earner performance data).
- Validating the data outputs so budget vs actual and fee earner KPIs reconcile to known reference points.
Once connected to Smokeball, MiNumbers runs on an automatic schedule, pulling data from your Smokeball account at regular intervals and storing it securely in your firm's dedicated data environment on Azure Data Lake Storage.
Is my data secure on MiNumbers?
Yes. the connection between Smokeball and MiNumbers is:
- Read-only (MiNumbers cannot modify any Smokeball data)
- Built on Microsoft Azure, within your firm's own Azure environment
- Using OAuth 2.0, no Smokeball passwords are ever stored or shared
- Fully auditable, with a log of every data sync
How do I get started with MiNumbers?
To get started with MiNumbers or learn more about the integration, contact FWO Chartered Accountants for a free consultation.