Why does the Fee Earner Summary Report not match the accrual P&L

It is highly unlikely that the Fee Earner Summary Report will ever match your P&L.

Many firms look to confirm the information on the P&L is accurate by comparing it to the Fee Earner Summary Report, however it is highly unlikely that those two reports will ever match. Rather, it would be more beneficial to compare the P&L to the invoices issued report.

The reason why the Fee Earner wont match the P&L is because this report gives you information based on the date the work was done (not invoiced). The P&L provides information based on when the invoice was issued, not when the work was done.

Eg an item of work was done in June but invoiced in September, so if you run a Fee Earner Summary report for the Apr-Jun period it will appear, if you run the Fee earner report for the Jul-Sep it will not appear.

Conversely if you run the P&L report for Apr-Jun it will not be included as this uses when the invoice was issued (not when the work was done) and it will appear in the Jul-Sep report.

Another example is if an invoice was issued on July 1st , presumably all the work was done before July 1st i.e. in the previous financial year. This means on the Fee Earner Summary report, all the work will appear in the previous financial year's reports, but on the invoices issued and accrual P&L, that work will appear on the current financial year's reports.