Create Your Law Firm Invoice Template for NPOs Effortlessly

Law firm invoice template for NPOs

[Music] welcome to lawyer business Advantage this podcast is dedicated to helping attorneys earn more money get better clients and spend more time with family I'm your host Al yajnik founder of Law Firm success group smart business guidance for small law firms begins in 3 2 1 and it's my pleasure to welcome back to lawyer business Advantage Bell Walker founder and CEO of Belleview Consulting B how are I am doing great it is fabulous to be back it's great to have you back what a wonderful way to wrap up the week we get to have a chat um and wrap up on Friday afternoon uh last time you were on the show we talked a lot about process and the value of process for law firms and systems now that can be really useful and I'm really excited for our conversation today because today we get to tell a story or you get to tell a story and the attorney entrepreneurs get to listen so um we're actually going to go into a case study about how process mapping has helped one of your actual clients is that right yes yeah um there's a couple of ways that this particular client was uh struggling and so I'm hoping that one or two things will resonate for some of the listeners out there well I'm really excited to be doing this with you because also this is now this podcast is now on YouTube which means we now get to show visuals which is going to be super helpful when we're talking about process map so attorney entrepreneurs if you want to see what B's talking about jump over to the YouTube channel um Warrior business Advantage you can catch it there um but let's jump into a story so I'll start once upon a time and then you jump in yeah so what once upon a time there was a law firm they were not a super large Law Firm fairly small but they've been around for quite a while um and then they had some mergers they had some growth they had some contractions they were back in growth mode and the partners looked up and realized we aren't totally clear on how money flows through the business how it's handled good news We've Got Fabulous staff we're not worried about the money but it is a little bit of a business risk to uh be completely dependent on the one or two people who do understand how this is going and it might be nice to to learn a little more about how our invoicing process works how all of these backend pieces of our business function in case something does happen and but about what size uh what size firm was it uh this was a three partner firm okay three partner firm about how many to Total attorneys do you know uh I I believe they only had four it was Prim less than 10 yeah yeah less than definitely less than 10 okay all right so we're talking small law firm and so it's a small Law Firm like there's it's not like it's this enormous Law Firm where they're trying to figure out what the money's going this is a this is a small law fir there's not a lot of places for the money to go um not lot of places for the money to go um and as as you'll see when we get into this it's not like the partners were uninvolved in the processes um but there were pieces that were just beyond their line of site uh that that benefited from a little bit of uh retrospection and introspection what was this what was the impact that this problem was having on the partners and on the firm yeah so we we discovered in the course of uh the work that we did that there were actually probably three or four hours a month per partner that they were spending on invoicing that they didn't need to be um so we will get into how we address that but they didn't even know that that was a paino going in they really didn't have an acute pain they had a sudden realization that they could end up in a really bad place if very quickly if something went wrong and so this was a little bit more proactive um than a lot of people I work with and I'll be honest I wish more of my clients were in the proactive mode because it is so nice to prevent the problems versus fixing the problems sure is sure is and all you employment law attorneys are absolutely nodding your heads but it does create more work for for Consultants we have to go in and clean up a big mess so there is that too so this firm um was was pretty smart and Savvy they brought you in you know before everything flew apart um what was kind of your approach with them or how did you how did you get how did you get started yeah so the getting started was a pretty straightforward set of conversations I really sat down with their uh kind of I would say Finance team but it was really their sort of office administrator Finance person um a key staff member who had been with the firm a long time wore all the hats uh and talk to her and her uh assistant to really understand what each of them were doing on a monthly basis how uh both the the flow as the partners were were seeing into it as the clients were impacted um and what was happening behind the scenes on the back end so really started with just words and convers and and only then did we start turning into visuals and in those conversations you were having these conversations I'm assuming the partners were off lawyering so they probably weren't in those conversations um I don't know if you've ever had a client wanting to be in those conversations with you but I'd love to get your perspective on the value you brought to those conversations versus the attorneys just saying hey we have this problem we don't know Belle exists we just know we have this problem and we're just going to go fact find and figure this out what were some of the advantages and efficiencies that you brought to the party yeah I mean one is bluntly I am less expensive than an hour of their partner's time uh so even if the partner was going to do the exact same thing it was just cheaper for it to be my hours than their hours um but realistically I think I have experience around what the right questions to ask are and hopefully that is something that resonates with the lawyers out there because I know darn well I would not know the right questions to ask in an investigation for the employment lawyers or to make sure that the Visas are filled out correctly for the immigration attorneys like people spend years practicing honing their skills and what I do is no different um but I can give some examples I one that for this particular firm is my absolute favorite I come back to regularly there was a part of their process where uh to get all of the financial information into the right places they were um taking information that was in QuickBooks printing out uh a an export from QuickBooks scanning that print out and uploading it into QuickBooks what yeah really yes now this is one of those cases where I remember I emphasized at the beginning that this was a not a new firm they had been around for for quite a long time and so if you actually traced the evolution it made perfect sense there used to be two file cabinets these were different elements of the process um then one of the file cabinets turned into software eventually you know at some point you still had to be printing information out to go in the other file cabinet eventually that was also software they didn't talk to each other so they would print and scan to get it into PDF and then there was an and now QuickBooks own both pieces of it and so it was actually different sections of QuickBooks but they did eventually realize no we don't really need to be going through this whole so you could see how they got there um the what the key Point here is that the way that was originally told to me was we take the information from this client report and we input it into the separate database and it would have been perfectly reasonable to just kind of check and say move the information copy the information to make an assumption around what it took for that information to get from place a to place B part of my job is to dig in on off-hand comments like that one and say tell me more what does it mean to to have this information go from your client report into the database where does this database live and that's how we revealed that whole little subprocess and you know of course the people working in this firm are competent rational right humans when they actually had to stop and spell it out for me and think about what they were doing the woman I was talking to pretty much paused and looked at me and was like I don't think we're going to do that anymore I don't know that we need to write this down this is not a process that's going to survive this conversation but there had never been a reason to stop and think about it yeah yeah you know that a firm like that that's been around for a long time and people that have been around for a long time they're used to doing things a certain way and they don't often have the luxury of stepping aside and seeing if there's a better way to do things and even if they did have the luxury to do that they probably wouldn't know how to go about identifying you know what to do better and where there's duplication where there's waste um oh and that's a great segue into some of the visuals I actually have for this client so so moving away from my my favorite little tiny anecdote into a slightly deeper story around their invoicing process I we actually created for them this invoicing flow to help the partners really see what does it take to create all of the invoices that go out to clients every month this looks familiar I mean this is a lot of law firms have something like this for their invoicing flow but take us through it please yeah so at the start of the invoicing cycle I I think theirs was monthly but um this is a as you might be able to tell a little bit of a genericized version to protect their intellectual property uh at the start of their invoicing cycle they created something called pre- bills the partners were reviewing the pre- bills this is probably familiar to a lot of your listeners when there were Corrections needed the corrections were made then the invoices were generated then the partners would review the invoices if there were more Corrections those were made then the partners would review the corrections and you go through that Loop until everything looks good and then off it goes to clients so this is the initial flow this is the initial flow um and so here's where we get into the fun little counterintuitive part what's about to pop up is the revised flow and it has more boxes it does it does um and so this is one of the cases where fewer steps does not always mean higher overall efficiency because part of what we realized was that uh pre- bills especially in the format that they were generating were a phenomenal pain to review and the reason they needed to be reviewed was because some of the I not the invoices coming out of the operating expense uh account but there were other invoices where generating the invoice triggered the accounting software to move the money and so the pre-bell had better be correct for those invoices because as soon as you click generate the money's gone it's moved um but only those invoices for the vast majority at this point in the practice life it used to be a lot of their clients were on that type of agreement now was only a few um and so actually there was really no need to review the pre- bills for all the other accounts and so the first change we made was to only review the pre- bills for those I call them type A here accounts okay let me back you up right there I want to make sure we're all clear on the initial and the revised so the initial is what they were doing and revised are I guess sounds like after you've mapped out the process then these are your recommendations and changes to the process um and when you started this whole project the idea was that these Partners just wanted to get some visibility into how this whole thing works so that's the initial piece yeah and and that's a that's a really good call that thank you for sort of pausing and and slowing down there because as I was getting these different perspectives I heard a lot of complaining for lack of a better word about the pre-b bills um when we asked talked about the stage it was oh these are so messy and it takes forever to review them and it's such a pain and but it's so important from a quality perspective and here's why um and so it was that is something that I I try to listen for if something is everybody's favorite thing to complain about does it actually have to exist does it have to exist at the volume it currently exists I I know it takes away some of the fun if we don't get to complain about it anymore but maybe there's something that uh that we could be doing to have a little less complaining nice nice yeah because people complain because oftentimes they think the stuff is a waste of their time right and and in this case I or or it's in that intersection where it's they do not think it's a waste of their time but it's painful and miserable and that's actually what this pre-bill section was again because once upon a time in this business the vast majority of their clients were on this type of account like there was a time when this shift would have made almost no difference got it but where we were today so that's that initial piece please continue taking us through this yeah so the invoicing cycle would start the pre- bills would be generated for just those type A accounts the partners would review the pre-b bills just for those accounts Corrections will be made and then all the invoices get generated that part was still the same got it the next step also the same Partners review all the invoices pretty important step right I think every lawyer out there wants to get at least an eye on the invoices make sure that what's being buil is correct no surprises for your clients um and if there were Corrections Corrections needed to be made the big change that we made on this new flow was that once those Corrections were made only the invoices that had changes or Corrections went back to the partners for review um and there I bet there are largely two camps of listeners out there there are the partners uh and listeners who are saying well duh I already looked at the other ones why why weren't they doing that before and there are the folks who are saying oh my goodness you have a chance to look at all those invoices again and make sure they make sure sure sure they're all correct why aren't you know why wouldn't you do that and so that was that second mindset was where these Partners really started out they knew that there weren't usually a ton of changes but they were really concerned that they might have missed something in their initial review and so they were looking forward to that well they hated but valued that opportunity to look at the invoices again and so we went back through their records and checked how often were they actually finding errors in an invoice the second time they looked at it so they had it had passed that first review but then when they were looking through it again they saw something wrong and it turned out the answer was about one error per partner per year and when they had that metric in place that gave them the confidence for their firm for their process to say yeah okay we we are willing to accept that one error in all of the invoices for all of my clients per year might sneak through given the benefit of only looking at the invoices that have been modified for the second check really cool that's a nice way of getting everyone on board but oh my gosh going through all the records and invoices and conducting that that data analysis wow that sounds like a lot of work uh it it wasn't actually as hard as it could have been because of the way the finance team had been tracking the errors they could actually see through the emails and the way the reporting went through so um fortunately it was not quite as big a lift as it could have been but it also in part because there were so few additional errors um it was pretty easy to see yeah when we look at these approval chains we send it out the second time and then off it goes lovely thank you for sharing this with us B it's it's so awesome to look at this um in a visual medium for those of you that are on audio just follow along but it's a fairly standard invoicing flow and Bell's described the typ a pre-b bills that were different and the idea of reviewing the edited invoices rather than reviewing all the invoices a second time and a third time and what have you this was great Bell and how did um what was the value that the firm got from the from implementing your recommendations so a couple key things um one the partners understood what were all the steps I mean this is just a small piece of all of the backend accounting that was happening and I'm pretty confident that after they reviewed the full set of documents the partners promptly forgot almost everything that they had read and that's okay because they had the process maps in this documentation and could come back to it at any time um so they had that sort of immediate knowledge to be able to sanity check and feel confident and then they knew that they had this documentation that was not going anywhere that they could refer back to if they needed it so that was kind of piece one that met the initial paino um piece two there were some efficiencies we found for the finance team for that the staff members to uh not print scan upload back into QuickBooks um realistically those were not huge cost savings but every little bit helps um that last one the visuals I showed ended up saving the partners about three hours per partner per month that was a pretty big lift that's awesome so the ROI and your service in the first year is probably I don't know well over 30X [Laughter] yes wow that is really cool B and tell us a little bit about um some things that you're looking forward to and in your Consulting business over the next year or so oh things that I'm looking forward to I am I'm excited to start bringing on more team members I feel like this is a a good forum to talk about growth uh for my own firm as well um to support with this type of process mapping work um this is maybe not something that's super familiar to a lot of lawyers but it's a really common practice in a lot of industrial systems engineering um technical fields and I find that that is a really great intersection with lawyers because both sets of people tend to think very systemically uh and in great detail but I can bring in folks with that uh more process mapping process oriented background uh and expose them to all these fun challenges so that's one thing I'm super looking forward to yeah that sounds awesome and really exciting yes I think um one of the cool things about these these kinds of exercises is um you know the attorneys don't know that they have these inefficiencies they have no idea um until that you're able to jump in there and uncover it for them and so if you are an attorney entrepreneur and you have a law firm really of any size and you're thinking oh yeah yeah that's not me well you don't really know so um B I know we're running out of time here today but what are a couple of maybe symptoms or yellow flags that indicate you know actually I I might have I might benefit from some process mapping to address some of my issues in my firm yeah um one great symptom is I'm not sure how this works and I would like to know um coming back to that initial question you asked around could one of the partners really sit down and and track and learn all of this probably um is that going to be the most efficient way to get that knowledge delivered into your brain probably not um is that syp and then symptom two just feeling like there is something there that isn't as efficient as it could be but darned if you know what it is um because often we have that instinct we we can feel it you hear yourself complaining but you're not sure what to do about about it and you've got clients to serve you don't have the time to really go hunting it down absolutely uh I don't know if you've encountered this or not but the other one might be that um they maybe they you know you maybe as a as a firm they've been running Cleo for a while and they're using it for certain things and they feel like they could be using more but they don't really know how they would adopt the additional functionality already built into Cleo yeah that's a great example right because the the more clearly you can articulate all the work that's being done the easier it is to then ask is this specific piece something Cleo can support yep yep very cool and Belle if people want to reach out to you what's the best way for them to do that uh through my website or through Linkedin the website is Bellview consulting.com B VW like bsview consulting.com uh and Linkedin I'm b k Walker Belle thank you so much for being on lawyer business advantage today thanks for having me and that's a wrap for this episode of the lawyer business Advantage podcast one thing that would really help both Us and other new potential listeners is for you to rate this show and leave a comment in iTunes Stitcher or wherever you tune in to listen and I want to hear from you so connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know what you think of this episode and if you are a solo or an owner of a small law firm and you're looking to earn earn more money attract better clients or reduce your stress we would love to talk with you to see how we can help request your free law firm assessment by visiting law firms suuccess group.com again that URL is Law Firm success group.com we look forward to talking with you soon thank you for listening my name is Al yajnik until next time remember you can seize Freedom you can Embrace happiness you can build your perfect practice