For UK firms watching billable hours slip away unrecorded
Turn unbilled hours into business purchasing power.
The hours you never invoice, the weeks between projects, the junior time that sits on the bench — put them to work and earn Silva to spend across the network.
Utilisation never hits 100%, and the hours you lose are gone for good — so put that spare capacity to work and spend it back.
No cash changes hands for Silva · You choose which work you take on · UK members only
Sound familiar?
No firm goes looking for a capacity exchange. You want these solved.
Every firm feels at least one of these. Almost none connect them to the capacity already sitting on their own timesheets.
Does utilisation never quite hit target?
There is always a slice of the week nobody manages to bill.
Is junior time sitting idle?
Salaried people you are paying for whether the work comes in or not.
Do the quiet months bite?
The lull after year-end or the end of a project cycle, every year.
Is business development eating unbillable hours?
Partners chasing work in time no client ever pays for.
Is fee pressure grinding rates down?
Clients comparison-shopping until the margin has all but gone.
Are overheads climbing while revenue flatlines?
Rent, salaries and software creep up — the fee note does not.
What almost every firm misses
The bench time, the quiet weeks, the hours that never make it onto an invoice — that idle capacity is real value already sitting inside your firm. Silvatree is the mechanism that turns those unbilled hours into business purchasing power you can spend.
The idea
One week’s work. Two pots, not one.
The old way: work hard, cash in, cash out, bills paid, nothing left. With Silvatree you generate the same cash, but you also fill a second pot by selling idle capacity to Silvatree members. The two-pot way is: cash in, less cash out, some cash remaining — and Silva in, Silva out, paying the rest of the bills. The second pot is business purchasing power.
Wages, rent and tax drain it. A full week of work — and nothing left to show for it.
Your cash pays the expenses that can only be paid in cash — rent, wages, electricity, leases, taxes. A second pot fills from idle capacity you'd have wasted, and pays for marketing, repairs, printing, accounting, cleaning and tradesmen.
1 Silva = £1 for tax & accounting · spending power inside the network, never exchanged for cash.
How it works
Three steps, from bench time to purchasing power.
You have spare capacity
Bench weeks between engagements, idle junior hours, the quiet stretch after year-end — professional time that expires unbilled.
Silvatree puts it to work
We match the work you can take on to members who need an accountant, a solicitor, an agency or a consultant. You earn Silva for hours that earned you nothing before.
You spend your Silva
On what the firm already buys — software, recruitment, marketing, professional development, office costs — keeping your cash in the bank.
New to the idea? What is a Capacity Exchange?
Find your kind of spare capacity
Find the spare capacity inside your firm.
If your firm has professional time that earns nothing when it isn't billed, it belongs here.
Hours between engagements
The weeks after one project ends and before the next signs.
Unbilled trainee hours
Salaried people you pay for whether the work lands or not.
Post-year-end lulls
The predictable trough once the busy period is behind you.
Spare consulting days
Days in the diary a retained client never took up.
Idle design & production
Studio time that runs quiet between client briefs.
Unbooked project capacity
Developer or support hours between build phases.
Open retainer room
Campaign capacity a client did not use this month.
Fee-earner slack
Chargeable time that slips by without a matter to bill it to.
Why it's safer
Business trading, without the borrowed money.
Most trade exchanges quietly let the owner/operator run up a large negative trade balance it never has to repay — diluting the value of every other member’s credits. Silvatree is built so that can never happen.
We can never owe the network
Silvatree's own accounts have a hard zero floor. We can't hold a negative balance or extend ourselves a line of credit — full stop.
Silva is earned, never printed
A Silva only exists because a real trade happened between two members. It can't be created out of thin air or bought for cash.
A Reserve Fund stands behind you
If a member ever leaves owing, the Reserve Fund absorbs it immediately — so positive balances stay protected whatever happens next.
If we ever wind down, we go last
Our own balance is wiped out first, leaving more in the pot for members. We put the network ahead of ourselves by design.
How we prove it
Our ledger is built so the network always sums to zero.
This isn't a choice — it's how we protect the system, and it's how the ledger was constructed. Here's what that means for your balance.
The network always sums to zero. Every Silva earned is a Silva owed — the whole system balances to nothing, by construction.
No outsized balances. No member is allowed to sit on a large positive or negative position that could destabilise the network.
Silvatree's own accounts are always positive. The company can never hold a negative balance. It can never owe the system. It cannot issue itself Silva — it can only earn it like every other member. Both the rules and the platform architecture enforce this.
These rules are set out in the Silvatree Exchange Terms & Conditions — the rules the whole network runs on.
Straight talk on fees
Three fees. The same for every member.
There are no tiers at Silvatree — no bronze, silver or gold, and no badge attached to how much you trade. Every member pays the same three fees, worked out the same way, and what you pay turns on one thing: how much of your existing spending you decide to route through the network. Charging by size of business would be arbitrary, because a large firm might trade very little and a small one a great deal. A flat fee would mean the smallest members subsidise the largest.
Joining fee
2%
of the spending you declare
- Minimum £200, maximum £6,000
- Paid once, on admission
Monthly subscription
£20
a month, plus 0.2% of your declared spend ÷ 12
- £24.17 a month on a £25,000 declaration
- £20 more in months you put nothing into the network
Transaction fee
6% + 1%
in cash, and in Silva
- Paid by the seller on each exchange
- The 1% in Silva funds the Reserve Fund
That is the whole structure. There is nothing else to pay — no tier to upgrade to, no charge for finding you buyers, and no fee for closing your account.
- ✓All fees are exclusive of VAT.
- ✓We never charge interest on Trading Headroom, and never take security or personal guarantees.
- ✓If a full year of genuine engagement has not delivered, we refund your joining fee.
What members say
From members
“I joined Silvatree 2 months ago and have already accumulated three new clients for my digital marketing services.”
I have been able to go from operating at 50% capacity to 75% and have subsequently been able to use my Silva to pay for a business coach who is helping me to scale my business and attract more clients, as well as paying for my accounting services and bookkeeping.
“As accountants we have experienced a great influx of new clients that we would never have previously had.”
This has increased our bottom line, and enabled us to help many who would otherwise not have had the cash to pay for our services — which means we can pay for many business expenses in Silva that we would otherwise have paid for in cash.
Questions
Professional services: common questions
- What counts as spare capacity for a professional firm?
- The professional time that earns nothing when it isn’t billed: bench weeks between engagements, idle junior hours, the quiet stretch after year-end and unbillable business-development time. Utilisation never hits 100%, and the hours you lose are gone for good.
- Do we control how much work we take on?
- Yes. You choose exactly which work you accept, so you can prioritise fee-paying clients and only take on exchange work in the bench time that would otherwise go unbilled.
- What can we spend the Silva we earn on?
- On what the firm already buys from other members — software, recruitment, marketing, professional development and office costs. Silva is a unit of account (1 Silva = £1 for record-keeping) and is spending power inside the network, not cash you withdraw.
- Who would we be doing this work for?
- Other UK member businesses who need an accountant, solicitor, agency or consultant, matched to the capacity you choose to offer. Silvatree is UK members only, so you're billing genuine work in hours that would otherwise go idle.
Silvatree works across sectors
One model, told through the spare capacity in each industry.
- Hotels & staysMidweek rooms, off-season nights and unsold spa slots.
- RestaurantsQuiet midweek covers and dark private dining rooms.
- Salons & clinicsUnbooked chairs, quiet treatment rooms and slow mornings.
- RetailSlow-moving stock, quiet hours and empty shelf space.
- Print & productionIdle press hours, quiet studio and finishing time.
- Media & outdoorUnsold billboards, unbooked airtime and blank pages.
- Trades & servicesGaps between jobs, cancelled bookings and quiet weeks.
Find out if Silvatree is right for your business.
Book a free suitability call. We run an expense analysis, share a capacity & profit report, and tell you honestly whether it's a fit — we'll be the first to say if it isn't.
Not ready to join? No pressure. Go on our standby list and we'll get in touch whenever there's business we can send your way.
Not sure yet? Take the 2-minute readiness test.
Short of time? Talk it through with our AI capacity adviser — available 24/7. It'll cover most of what we'd discuss on the call.