Keep Practice CS and Ignition in step automatically. The Practice CS Connector is a Windows app that links Thomson Reuters Practice CS with Ignition: clients, services, and invoices flow between the two systems, and payments collected in Ignition post straight back into Practice CS as receipts. No CSV exports, no re-keying, and no month-end reconciliation marathon.

Practice CS stays your system of record for time and billing. Ignition handles engagement, invoicing, and payment collection. The connector keeps the two in step, and nothing is written to either system until you select rows and press an action button, or an automation you have turned on runs.

US accounting and tax firms that run Practice CS for time and billing and use Ignition for proposals, engagement letters, billing, and payment collection, especially firms where someone currently spends hours each week posting payments and reconciling accounts receivable by hand.

Looking for the older, manual Practice CS workflow? That import and export process using custom report files is covered in Ignition and Practice CS. This connector replaces that manual back and forth with a live, automatic sync.

Setup takes about 30 minutes and is done once, from the connector app's Settings page. For the full walkthrough, including the SQL Server permissions your IT team will need to grant, see Set up the Practice CS Connector.

Refresh from both sides to see which clients are Synced, Not linked, or Only in Practice CS. Link records one by one, match them in bulk by name, or round-trip a CSV export and import. Ignition remembers every match, so you only link a client once. Clients that exist only in Practice CS can also be added to Ignition from this page, with your firm's approval.

[Screenshot: Clients page with sync status filters]

Import your Practice CS service list into Ignition so you do not have to rebuild it by hand, then map each Ignition service to the Practice CS engagement and project it bills against. Pushing an invoice stays blocked for any service that is not mapped, so it is worth doing this before you start pushing invoices.

Invoices flow in both directions. Import unpaid Practice CS invoices, with line and description detail, into Ignition so you can collect on them. Push issued Ignition invoices into Practice CS, and optionally turn on Engagement/project attribution to tie them to the mapped engagement and project.

Payments collected in Ignition post into Practice CS as receipts, applied to the oldest open invoice first. Anything that does not match an invoice posts as an unapplied credit on the client and stays visible for reconciliation. Every receipt carries a marker so a retry is skipped rather than posted twice, and anything that cannot post cleanly is marked Needs review with a plain-language reason.

Schedule daily invoice import and receipt posting at a time you choose. Automations only touch rows that are fully ready. Anything needing review is left for you to handle manually. If the app is closed at the scheduled time, the run happens the next time it opens.

Turn these on from Settings → Experimental features.

Projects creates Practice CS projects directly from accepted Ignition proposals. Choose a template, responsible staff, and dates per service, then push.

WIP shows the agreed fee from Ignition next to hours and work in progress at standard rates from Practice CS, per service per client. Set a threshold to flag services whose unbilled work in progress has reached a share of the agreed fee you choose. A separate cost lens can show staff cost rates and margins. Leave it off unless everyone using the app should see that data.

The Home page shows a setup checklist and banners for invoices waiting to import, payments ready to post, and clients that still need syncing. Every page uses the same status filters: Ready, Needs review, Posted/Created, Failed, and On hold. A connection log in Settings records every call and warning from the latest refresh, which is useful if you need to raise a support ticket.

What does the connector write to Practice CS?
Only the rows you select and post or push: payment receipts and invoices, plus projects if you turn on that experimental feature. Refreshes are read-only and never change anything in either system.

Where are my credentials and data stored?
Locally on the computer running the connector. It talks directly to your SQL server and to Ignition, and your Practice CS data is not sent anywhere else.

Why is a row marked "Needs review"?
Something it depends on is missing, usually an unmatched client, an unmapped service, or a posting default that has not been set. The row tells you what to fix. Fix it, refresh, and the row becomes ready.

Can the same payment post twice?
No. A payment that has already posted shows as Posted and cannot be selected again, and every receipt carries a marker so a retry is skipped rather than duplicated.

What happens if a payment does not match an invoice?
It posts as an unapplied credit on the client and stays visible for reconciliation.

What about ACH payments?
Since Ignition has already collected the funds, the connector posts bank payments in a way that will not trigger Practice CS's own electronic funds processing. They are clearly referenced as Ignition payments.

Do I need to leave the app open for automations to run?
No. If the app is closed at the scheduled time, the run happens the next time it opens.

Something in Practice CS does not look right. What should I do?
Since the connector is in beta, check anything it writes to Practice CS. If an entry looks wrong, note the client and the payment or invoice involved and contact support before correcting it yourself. The details help identify the cause.

Set up the Practice CS Connector

Ignition and Practice CS (manual import workflow)

Still stuck? Contact support at help@ignitionapp.com with what you were doing, the page you were on, and any error message you saw.