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Itemized invoice example for Legal

thank you Karen welcome everyone I'm happy to be here with you today to kind of help you navigate these questions that I hear more and more every day about listen we realized maybe we're on a software that's not supported we want to make a change we want something that's a little bit more modern with more features but we just don't know where to start and so we have these discovery calls all day and these these webinars that we've prevent presented this third in a series is a result of us being asked the the same questions all the time and our responses with consulting with everyone about what you feel is important to your firm understanding the features that are in a product and actually looking at the features whether you choose to get a vendor or excuse me a software a demo directly with the vendor or you utilize a consultant to help you navigate those features and then more importantly probably the most important is taking a look at the features and then ranking them like what is an absolute must-have versus what is a nice to have and what is a you know what that's there and maybe that software it the foundation and the power is in that feature but you don't need it and so you may be paying for something that you don't need so there's all of these things that you need to think about so this webinar what we want to do is kind of pick out some of the cherry pick some of the top five or six features that we feel firms should always take into consideration now I'm also going to mention that you know in the last couple of years personally I cannot remember the last time that I've installed software that lives on a server and is deployed out to workstations so we'll call that premise or terrestrial software it doesn't mean that there aren't viable options out there there there are but the market is shifting towards cloud-based so I have some screenshots all throughout this presentation and they do come from some of our cloud vendors that we represent but I just say that when you are starting your exploration of what are your options you're probably going to be looking at cloud as the first option for several reasons easy easily accessible you may now have remote workers you know law firms now are presented with the unique opportunity that they don't have to necessarily hire somebody in their geographic region because remote accessibility allows you to cast a wider net and get the cream of the crop as somebody that works for your firm and so cloud applications give you an even bigger tool to be able to get to that audience of more experienced workers and allow them to work at your firm so just some things to think about so one of the features that we feel is very important is a fully integrated software and so what do we mean by that so that is a general ledger and Trust accounting and so for those of you maybe I'm just gonna say this in probably a non elegant way but it's QuickBooks in your software and so when when you're looking at products and I'll give you a perfect example Clio has case management and billing and Trust but it doesn't have a general ledger so where you track your law firm expenses and so you have to then link with QuickBooks this comment is not intended to say that that is not right for your firm which is why you need to look at these options but why do we like a fully integrated system there's error reduction so let's take a terrestrial example we've got time slips does all the billing and it does trust accounting but it doesn't do the bank reconciliations in your law firm so we're running QuickBooks and think about the duplicative data entry so now we're spending time to enter data in two places and what does that do it opens up an error for missing so if I wrote a check out of QuickBooks for a filing fee I better remember to go back into time slips or Product X and enter that expense so I can recover it back from my client and so you're just opening yourself up to to missing that data it's also one less software that you have to learn when you have an integrated system it's one less software that you have to maintain maintenance contracts or and and your your payment for whatever it is whether it's a monthly subscription or you pay one time each year and it just consolidates everything into one system so as I mentioned I've got some screenshots so this is and I'll mention the name of the software this is a cloud product fully integrated billing and accounting and case management and this is what I feel is probably one of the strongest features it's an accounting home dashboard so you know these you need to do your due diligence and make sure that a lot of these are controlled by security which they will be but imagine being able to come here and take a look at all everything your income your expenses but down at the bottom you see those red check box those boxes about things that you need to do from an accounting transactional perspective like I have to print in my vendor section I have to print three checks and I have 47 unpaid vendor bills and this is an example when you click on those numbers it drives you to the screen where you can review and do those data entries and so as it's integrated with the client side you've got the trust account so you can see that I've got a trust operating where I move money over at billing so an integrated system is really our first choice when we're recommending a software so integrated billing and accounting along with the case management and make sure that it's got a chart of accounts so when you're when you're looking at this feature you know asked can I customize this do you give me accounts out-of-the-box what can I do with this chart of accounts you may have some parent sub-account presentations where you need to roll up let's say insurance I've got insurance and then I've got health insurance professional liability insurance workers comp insurance and so I need to have those posting accounts of it maybe when I look at my financials I want to roll them up into one number so what what capabilities does the system have and then I'm further along the lines of the integration this is just an example of a check screen so this is Center base again where I have a check that I'm writing out of my frost banking account if you look at the bottom I'm allocating it to my matter so I'm affecting my bank balance putting it in my financial statements and I'm billing back my client again no needs to have redundancy of data entry and two systems so another feature that we feel is very important is the automation of or the ability to do we call it trust to general transfers and so it's really prevalent in certain types of practice areas so maybe in litigation or family law so think about it you take fees in from your client that go into the trust account and you want to draw on them every month as you do a bill some systems are manual especially in a system that's not fully integrated where you have to do the bill and you note on it that you've moved this money but then you have to go into your accounting program and actually move the money imagine the potential for error especially with the trust account like if you don't get it right your balances are off and so you need to analyze you know what do we have in our practice area and what can dry efficiency that it's lava rinse repeat and it's automating these steps for you so here are just some examples this is action step where when you're on a billing dashboard you can easily see in your list of matters to be billed who has money and trusts and as an example I have a matter that is set to automatically sweep money over where so it's even more important that on your matters that you have a feature that allows you to maybe not set it to be automatic that you can control the transfer so if you see that second row I don't have it set to automatically sweep over and so you want to actually control that transfer but this is an example of where you see it this is an example I'm in Saturdays where you can set it to automatically or not do it automatically and then this is an example of a bill presentation like what does it look like to your client because we have to clearly convey that we used their money and how we're using it and so it just allows you when you have the ability to do this that you don't have to maybe open up your invoice in Word and then type a line item transferred money from trust it just the system supports it and it allows you to present that information to your clients and then again going to now the accounting side of the entry this is an example from action step right we're doing the bill and we're saying look I want to post that bill and this screen kicks up and now it's allowing me to do that accounting side I can take the money out of trust and I can put it into operating so it's just wrapping a nice bow around that whole workflow that process of billing and integrated accounting and this is an example from Center base that when you do all your billing all of these transfers transfers queue up in a list and it presents you with a list of everything that you did and then you can select them here and then move them over into your operating and so you know a lot of firms will either print a check or they will just go online and make the transfer so either system you'll be able to see if it was an online transfer if you needed to do it online that total at the very bottom is what you're going to go online and transfer so it's very when you've got integrated trust with your billing this is a very important feature that you need to explore with the vendor so task based billing so I'm going to say that this is one of the commonly used terms as leads billing you TBMs task codes that's the litigation task code set and it's usually you know corporate clients or insurance defense firms where their clients require them to submit an invoice that's not a paper invoice it's more of an electronic data invoice and so the system if you have to do this you understand very well how important it is that the system that you're using it comes installed with the task codes that your clients require you to use so this is just an example of the ABA list right but then more importantly is you need to have the flexibility to capture specific information for your case that embeds itself into that electronic invoice so you can set on a matter what task code is it is it bankruptcy task code is it litigation and what electronic format does my supplier my my client require me to upload so it is very some of these cloud-based systems they all support leads 98 some of them allow you to create a variation on that either from them or for you to do it more it's along the vendor working with you to maybe create a variation if you have a client specific need that they need something a little different but the takeaway is understanding that if this is a big part of your practice you better get this right when you're looking for a product that this side of the product rock solid because the last thing that you want to do is here's another example from Center base about how on a matter level you can set codes and actually this is cosmolex you can set the code and you can restrict task codes and set the the format you better make sure that this system that you're migrating to is rock-solid and that you have looked at examples you've seen the features in action like when I do a time entry this is an action step screen does it force me to use the codes because you know where is a huge time waster systems that don't have a task code requirement and so the the poor person that is responsible for reviewing the pre bills they're having to edit all of these entries and they don't know what code or activities should be assigned so we're wasting a significant amount of time internally getting that information correct when our time can be better spent in other areas of the firm so is that is the mandatory that we if a matter is set and that is a huge time saver and then this is an example for those of you that aren't aware but you never know corporate clients they they're they're starting to impose this requirement on firms this is an example of a leads amore it's like this is not something that you would print it's just this is the raw electronic data but it takes all of that data and it puts it into each line and each field that's read electronically by an upload process and if this is not correct for those of you that do this you understand the pain it is to address all of the validation error so make sure that that in your due diligence you've fully vetted out those features and so there's a lot of acronyms or terminology that's floating around and one of them is like a billing and you're like wait that's what my vendor calls task based billing you know how does the software vendor describe it because you may think a billing is task based billing far from the truth when the vendor defines it something differently so make sure you understand the terminology and what it means and that you don't think you're getting something that you're not getting but I mean it could cover a variety of things it could be that maybe when you create a bill that that bill is uploaded to a portal that your client has access to Clio does this very elegantly on that it can just go to a portal so what's the benefit of that well now I don't have to email it now I don't have to print it and mail it like you've just reduced the amount of time that it takes to deliver your invoice and hopefully that translates into a reduction of payment from your clients so just understand what the vendor feels or describes their billing but here's an example in action step of a client portal where if you save the invoice there the client just they have access to it immediately and they can go and open up their invoice and make a payment so one of the features though that we absolutely encourage that you look for is emailing bills now obviously you know today our clients your clients are more tech savvy you know they don't want to get stuff in the mail they want things email they want an online review an easy way to pay their bills and so a step towards that and a big change has been emailing bills and so it really does help get the bill where it needs to be in a shorter amount of time and so one of the things that you need to look for when you are considering that so first of all your system has to have the ability to on a matter level say does this client get the email buy the bill by email so you have to be able to specify an email address or maybe multiple email addresses maybe you know you there's a co-counsel or maybe you know you need to hat send it to multiple two parties does my system allow that I can put in multiple email addresses and then further icing on the cake would be to have can I custom is the email language so an email template and if so is that something that I can change on a matter by matter basis so if you look at the bottom graphic that is action step and there's actually an email template drop-down right and so you can have different language and here's an example of the email so when you go to send that email this is that standard but you can on a matter level have different like maybe one attorney would like to have their email message different than another or maybe for the type of case that it is you need to have different so that's important and it really I think goes to a quicker adoption rate internally I mean obviously maybe if you do elder law those features are not important that's another excellent example of you know what emailing bills is not we're just not going to do it because our client that client base doesn't do that so again something to consider but it's really where a lot of firms are moving to online payments and so you know what does this mean so it could mean a couple of things some firms accept paypal right that clients can pay their bill some firms accept credit cards and so when you're reviewing features you know if you give it I always say it's like the staples easy button if you give your clients an easy way to pay your bill click of a button I accept credit cards I know that I pay everything with my Hilton honors American Express because I want to get those points and I need to have an easy way to make that payment and that's where this is moving and so you know the when we talk about credit card payments is it integrated with the software can I give my clients a button that when they click it pays the bill and it goes into my system both action step and Center base have that and then the industry standard is la Paix and center-based does integrate with la Paix and so does Clio I mean Clio does it as well so here's an example of the center base when they get the web copy I say pay with card and I click it and I'm able to enter in my information now some firms some if you don't accept maybe la pay but on your website you have a URL that you want to direct clients to that site that they can enter them maybe your bank has set up a special ACH payment page right and you can just drive people to that page here is an example where you know you send these bills out via PDF and that here in blue is a hyperlink and that nothing that's nothing more than a URL WWE or law firm com that lives behind that URL that when the client clicks on that URL it just magically takes them to your homepage enter your payment here so there's a couple of levels how can you easily drive clients to make the payment and then second is icing on the cake is that integrated to your system so you don't have to type the payment in against the bill so a couple of things to consider integrated system is expensed tracking so I already shown you when you're writing checks you know can you link it to your link it to your file so you're affecting the bank balance and you're also allocating it but can I do soft costs like this is an example of Center days with photocopies like can I track maybe it's mileage maybe I want to have something that has a value a quantity value ing to the type of expense so maybe it mileage when we use the code mileage it'll do 58 cents and then I can put in 242 miles and it just does the math for me so can it capture those type of types of expenses and just a repeat of the screen shop integrated check writing and allocating it to your matter and then timers like if we don't enter our time we don't give people an easy way to do that they're not gonna do it contemporaneously and so how what kind of time or examples do you have so here's um center base with a screen shot of like if I'm a user I can go to my timesheet calendar I can see each day of the week where I've entered time I've got an easy screen to enter in my time right there and at the bottom right I've got a list of all the time entries that I've entered and then if I'm using a timer I can see a column that says timers and I've actually got one running that's active right there and I can start a timer so what tools do we have to allow our users to contemporaneously capture their time and better this is an example of an action step timer I can have multiple timers and I can turn one on and turn one off at any time and then just save it and then what about Bill templates you know a lot of times your bill is a communication of how the case is going and you know does your system allow for some customization can you add a logo can you turn things on and turn things off how customizable is it am I locked into a certain layout because you only offer one or two layouts can I can I use you to help me can I pay a developer fee maybe to come up with some more customized layouts for the firm so I find all the time that sometimes objections or heated discussions if you will are the bill templates like it needs to look this way and a lot of times there's attorneys that have a different preference so I I tell firms don't die on the mountain of bill templates if there are other features that are rock-solid and are going to kill it for your firm and we have a build template that is well you know what again it's designed to convey the information if we have who cares if we have area ten point font or Tahoma I mean let's not die on the font now but so just though make sure that that what you need at a minimum the information that you want to convey how much money is in trust is it transferred is accommodated by these templates and so mobility does it have an app which all of these cloud programs do some of the terrestrial ones you may rely on another vendor like I time keep so you know this again is is it all my phone is it on my iPad what does it look like what can I do is it only Apple is it the other one Samsung those types of devices and what are the limitations like can do I only enter time or can I get to my matters um can I enter time from those again making it easy to do the work when you're away from the office and then you know if you're choosing to not go with a fully integrated system okay I have to link to QuickBooks or zero which one is best for me and I already have the discussion about you know redundancies and data entry duplicate if so I'm not going to rehash that but then you need to decide well okay does your system link with one and which one does it link with and and what kind of data does it transfer back and forth is it bi-directional is it a one-way push is it automatic or do I have to intentionally send information over a lot of things to consider if you're not going to go with an integrated system and what about bank and credit card transactions how fantastic is it that I can set up in a system that I say go look at my bank account online feed and this is something that is huge in QuickBooks that a lot of people ask me when they're leaving when they're considering going to a case management time billing an accounting system can I pull in my credit card transaction so I can just say match or enter it so I'm not reaching in information center has that it's fantastic you could do credit cards you can do bank accounts cosmolex has it but this is just an example of my bank account where it's pulling in all the transactions that were in the bank account and it tells me what's unmatched I can go and match it or is it already in the system so I hope that you've found this useful and gives you some food for thought when your firm is considering a change and maybe more a more modern approach to the way that you're handling what you need in your firm I'm gonna turn it back over to Karen so she can wrap this up great thanks Cindy um with all the time billing and accounting options your insights are really helpful thank you so much great job and thanks to all of you for attending if you were intrigued by Cindy's presentation today but would like to discuss it further I encourage you to take advantage of our free 30-minute consultation this gives you a chance to dig deeper and explore those time billing and accounting solutions even more and or ask any question you might have just reply to my follow-up email and I'll take care of the rest and don't forget we have more great webinars coming soon our word styles our hour is next week followed by how to find what you need fast shortly after that just head over to affinity consulting comm slash webinars and take a look at what's coming up watch for my follow-up email shortly with the recording and slide deck from today's session and please do share your feedback with us on the survey that follows thank you and join us again soon