Streamline Your Document Workflow with Prospect Management Software for Legal

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welcome to the demo of matter 365 the only legal practice management platform fully integrated with microsoft 365. our idea is that technology should be simple to use and with that in mind we're leveraging microsoft apps that you already have access to enabling you to get the most out of the subscription you're already paying for at the same time we're adding the value in organizing data and the workflows and providing extra features like time and expense tracking billing and invoicing trust account management or conflict check before we show it in action let's first explain how it all works whenever a new matter is created in matter 365 we will automatically provision the spaces in these microsoft apps dedicated exclusively to this matter this means every matter will have its own team and teams enhancing real-time communication folder for email communication separate email address and calendar in outlook a board for task management called plan in planner folder for all documents and files in onedrive separate notebook in onenote a sharepoint site and optionally a separate account in quickbooks online holding clients trust funds through office 365 groups you'll be able to choose which team members should have access to this matter both in matter 365 and in microsoft applications listed here from the security standpoint it's important to mention that all data from the microsoft apps shown here like documents emails tasks or notes resides inside of your own microsoft tenant and other than client names matter metadata and activities that you will create in matter 365 nothing else is stored in our database to log in you're using your microsoft credentials and this is the home dashboard here we can see some recently created matters task status for all work assigned to yourself pulled from microsoft planner shortcuts to your favorite apps a breakdown of the work you delivered recently and next events in your calendar pulled from outlook to create a matter you need to specify the client responsible attorney matter name some of the details like matter type and matter source which are fully customizable lists or you can add any custom fields based on your needs adding matter members and owners will invite the selected colleagues to work with you on this case here's an example of a matter with some data already in it matter dashboard sums up the matter details shows recent documents task status showing not just your tasks but all tasks on this case shortcuts to the matter specific resources in these microsoft applications we mentioned previously and a short summary of the financials like work in progress or current trust account balance from here we can easily access documents either in native onedrive app or through the matter 365 interface we can create new files starting from scratch or basing our document on a template we can open documents online or in desktop apps and have them synced to cloud at all times or we can do all of this in one drive if you're used to the look and feel of it important to see is that every matter has its own space for documents so there won't be any confusion about where's a certain document who can access it or which version is the latest as documents don't need to be checked out and back in in order to edit them you can even collaborate on the same documents at the same time with your colleagues all changes will be saved in the cloud and you're able to track them using version history for example let's see the version history of this coach's contract we can see all of the changes and who were the people that made those changes at certain times the same principle as applied with other microsoft applications for example in planner we can see that every matter has its own plan which is a task board with customizable buckets where you can create tasks with descriptions labels checklists and file attachments assign them to team members and collaborate you can set up notifications reminding you of the tasks coming up tasks overdue or any comments received on tasks assigned to you my tasks view will effectively display everything assigned to yourself on all cases you're a member of this matter centric organization of resources works similarly in other microsoft apps as well so we won't get into all of them now let's head over to outlook though because there we have more to offer in terms of automating your daily activities and supporting you even outside of matter 365. if your inbox looks something like this it's problematic both because there's a lot of things going on and it's hard to sort emails by their originating matter but also because it's your personal inbox and no one else from the team knows about this communication while some of your colleagues might be interested in the email info or be able to respond to the client before you are this is one of the problems that can be solved using the outlook add-in we have built while reading the email i'll choose the matter that it relates to and click store email this will forward the email to the right group created in outlook so all my team members are aware of it there's an option to save the email in onedrive folder of this matter so we have an archive of all email communication and all attachments will be stored in onedrive folder of this matter in a subfolder named attachments this add-in can also help you quickly attach a file that's already somewhere in the cloud you can browse through all your matters and select any of the documents stored in them another use case for this add-in as time tracking we know that you won't be spending your whole workday in matter 365 so this add-in will allow you to track your activities in outlook but also in word excel and powerpoint the add-in is available on the web so you can use it in browser like i am now but it's also present in desktop versions of word excel powerpoint and outlook let's start the stopwatch it's automatically synced between different apps and wherever we stop it for the first time a dialogue will show asking us to provide more info about the time tracked we'll select a matter we were working on predefined billing rate will automatically load and we can change this value if needed there's a list of activity codes or we can enter a custom value here and we can also change the date or the duration of the activity after adding the description we can save the record in time tracking page we can see all of the time tracked and if the activity isn't already added to an invoice we're able to click here and continue working on it resuming and editing the activities as possible in the add-in as well and if we pause the stopwatch now the total time is updated automatically besides time we can also track expenses that occurred on different matters the difference with creating an expense is that we can also add an attachment which is usually a pdf of the invoice or a photo of a receipt for something we paid for so we would be able to later attach it with the invoice our customers will appreciate the transparency and these attachments will automatically be stored in the appropriate onedrive folder of the matter they relate to once all the work is tracked if you're using quickbooks online you can quickly create and send out invoices from matter 365. while creating an invoice we'll select the matter and all client information will be populated automatically while adding invoice lines we will see only time and expenses that occurred on this matter and aren't billed for already this will prevent forgetting to bill some records or double billing them by mistake usual invoice options like setting the type of service sales tax or applying a discount are available here as well if this matter has a trust account balance you can add an invoice message showing your customer updated balance left or if you're using gravity legal integration for accepting credit card payments that way a direct payment link can automatically be generated here once we're done we can either save this as a draft in matter 365 or sync it to quickbooks other than invoicing quickbooks integration provides a few different report types statements of account and trust account management setting up trust accounts manually in quickbooks as a process of many steps and usually it's error prone so it might require some accounting knowledge we integrated trust accounts management into matter 365 so it's done with a few clicks while everything else is happening in the background with minimal chance of making a mistake while creating trust accounts you need to specify only the matter name date and amount of trust deposit and an optional message on the other hand to record a payment you simply need to select existing unpaid invoices in any of the matters like this and confirm money will be moved across different accounts and your accounting records will remain accurate at all times when it comes to contacts for each of the existing contacts in the system you can see their roles in previous engagements with your company and when it comes to acquiring new clients since we're so deeply integrated into microsoft a very detailed conflict check can be performed it will look not only in your current contacts and existing matters but it can also search through documents emails group emails planner and calendar tasks time trackings and expenses it will be up to you to decide if something is a conflict of interest or not but it's very valuable to have these insights while making a decision the same powerful search will be applied when you're looking for your documents sometimes you won't remember the exact document name or the matter the document is in but no worries the search will take full document content into the account and get you the right results although this concludes the list of features we wanted to present in this demo make sure to check our knowledge base for more feature explanations how to articles and video trainings covering not just matter 365 but also core microsoft apps that work well combined with matter 365. feel free to sign up for a free trial on our website dot matter 365. or email us your thoughts and questions to info sales or support at matter365.com