Overview
A Conveyancing and MVA Firm Reaches an 85%+ Recovery Ratio
A Pretoria practice founded in the 2000s with a strong focus on conveyancing and motor vehicle accident claims, with 35-plus staff.
The Challenge
A 35-plus staff conveyancing and MVA practice needing consistent disbursement recovery.
The Solution
nQ ZebraWorks in use since 2017, tracking and billing every disbursement automatically.
The Result
More than R135,000 a month in average recovery at an 85%-plus recovery ratio, sustained since 2017, plus a reported net fee increase over and above these disbursement recoveries.
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The complete write-up, including the figures behind these results.
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Pretoria Conveyancing Firm Cost Recovery at an 85% Ratio
Pretoria conveyancing firm cost recovery is a demanding test of any capture system, because conveyancing and motor vehicle accident work produce recoverable output in two completely different rhythms. This Pretoria practice, founded in the 2000s with more than 35 staff, has run nQ ZebraWorks since 2017 and now recovers more than R135,000 a month at a recovery ratio above 85%.
Two practice areas, two very different output patterns
Conveyancing is procedural and predictable. Each transfer produces a broadly similar set of documents, which means recoverable output per matter can be estimated with reasonable confidence and any deviation is worth investigating. Motor vehicle accident claims are the opposite: medico-legal reports, expert bundles and years-long correspondence produce output in unpredictable bursts, and a single matter can generate more paper than a dozen transfers.
A firm running both under one manual process will inevitably calibrate to one of them and lose money on the other. In practice the conveyancing side sets the expectation, because it is the higher-volume, more visible work, and the MVA output that arrives in irregular spikes is the part that gets absorbed.
Why an 85% ratio is a strong outcome across mixed work
Recovering more than 85% of recoverable output is close to the practical ceiling, and holding it across two practice areas with different production profiles is harder than reaching the same figure in a single-discipline firm. Reliable Pretoria conveyancing firm cost recovery at that level means allocation is happening per matter at the point of output, not per department at the end of the month.
It also means the firm can price transfers with confidence. When the cost profile of a standard transfer is known to within a few percent, a fixed-fee or capped-fee arrangement becomes a commercial decision rather than a gamble.
Nine years of sustained recovery
The practice has recovered more than R135,000 a month at an 85%-plus ratio, sustained since 2017, with a net fee increase reported over and above the recovered disbursements. Sustained is doing real work in that sentence. Conveyancing volumes in South Africa track the property market, so the underlying activity has risen and fallen several times since 2017 while the ratio held.
That is the distinction between a recovery result and a recovery process. A result reflects a good year. A process holds its shape when the year is poor, which is precisely when recovering what you are owed matters most.
What mixed-discipline firms should measure
Report the recovery ratio by practice area rather than firm-wide, because a strong conveyancing figure will mask a weak litigation one. Track expected output per standard matter so exceptions surface on their own, keep an eye on unallocated output as the leading indicator of process drift, and make sure scan and telephone are captured, since MVA correspondence generates heavy volumes of both.
Related South African case studies
Another Pretoria practice with a longer history is covered in our Pretoria law firm disbursement recovery case study, and a multi-office comparison appears in the Gauteng multi-branch case study. For the platform behind these results, see nQ ZebraWorks and how it compares with PaperCut.
nQ ZebraWorks is developed by Zebraworks, whose invoices-to-cash platform underpins the disbursement capture described above. Khwezi Holdings implements and supports it for law firms across South Africa and the region.