Awesome Cashroom!

Hard to believe, but 30 years ago I qualified as a solicitor and joined a top 50 law firm in the defendant PI market. That first day I sat down at my desk and worked through a pile of envelopes containing letters relating to matters I was working on. I then rooted through creaky metal filing cabinets to locate the files for each matter. I placed each letter with each file, in a row of piles on my desk, next to my office telephone with its curly cord.

My secretary would come in and collect the pile of files I had worked on, with a tiny cassette tape attached, on which I had dictated my efforts on each matter. A paper diary sat on my desk too- my means of checking dates and meetings or court visits. Beside it was a plastic box containing business cards with alphabetic dividers. My time recording sheets would be completed each day in pen.

I’d have a pad of pink slips and a pad of blue slips which I’d fill in by hand and send to the accounts team for the cashiers to make things happen. The finance team faced a daily challenge to keep track of the business’s accounts- even more tricky given the banks’ continued use of paper statements at that time.

For anyone of a more recent vintage, some of this will seem bizarre- archaic, even. Almost every element is now either automated, or on a computer, or a mobile, or one way or another is tech and service enabled.

In my present role I can look back with nostalgia, but also in proud amazement at the distance the profession has travelled, and that pace with which it continues to progress.

At Cashroom I believe we epitomise the strides the profession has made-

We have grown a team of 140 staff featuring experienced cashiers, a training academy, a technology team, operations, projects, and a team of qualified accountants. Our 250 client firms use our outsourced finance function services to enable efficient and risk avoidant cashiering processes, compliant methods of operating, and market leading expertise to provide advice and reports on business performance.

Our clients are of all shapes and sizes- top 100; general practice; boutiques; volume litigators; volume conveyancers; start ups….every type of firm imaginable really.

Most law firms these days have resolved many of my prehistoric inefficiencies with one of a huge array of Practice Management Systems available in the legal market. Cashroom has remained system agnostic- we support any PMS so firms coming to us for our services don’t need to change their tech.

We augment our services with the award winning technology that we have developed to enable secure and efficient communication with our clients- into the bin go the pink and blue slips! The Cashroom portal is loved by our clients for its simplicity and innovation, and the certainty and clarity it brings to the interaction between a firm and its finance function.

Cashroom also recently became the first outsourced provider to develop and implement open banking functionality into our client portal- it means we can monitor our clients’ bank accounts more easily and help them achieve smooth, secure and efficient money movement, to the benefit of their end clients.

We resolve resourcing issues, we cover holidays and sickness. We are recommended by the PII market. We provide process and system expertise unique in our market.

We are proud to be operating in the USA now.

The world of law has changed- I’m proud to be part of a business that is actively helping the legal sector seize the opportunities presented by the new world, even if I do still use a pad and pen now and again (I’m too fond of doodling not to!).