When Your Way is the WRONG Way
Posted June 6, 2017 to Billing.
When Your Way is the WRONG Way – Let Us Help You Make Your Office Run Better
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” could be costing your firm tens of thousands of dollars annually. Sometimes “doing it wrong” means not having efficient or effective processes in place; other times it means not knowing where the money is coming in from or how it is being spent. This is our sweet spot in helping our clients. When we manage billing for our clients, we improve cash flow and internal processes by streamlining procedures. Whether we review your system or do the billing for your firm, you will benefit from our experience by spending less time and realizing more income.
With over 25 years’ experience we can help you with:
- Evaluating and improving your processes and data collection to ensure you are using best practices, working efficiently, getting more complete data, and producing more informative reports.
- Evaluating and enhancing your billing procedures to be sure you are using the best tools available to capture more time and collect more fees while making sure you are getting paid in full as quickly as possible.
- Train you and your staff to use all the tools available correctly and effectively so that you are making the most of investments in technology you have already made!
- Manage your firms billing for you by efficiently entering time, expenses, payments and processing bills.
New services now being offered- Legal Billing!
In addition to the services you are currently using us for, we are now offering both short and long-term billing services. With short term billing solutions, we can offer a limited scope legal billing service which includes refining your billing process and improving procedures to make sure your bills are getting out and you are getting paid. Our long-term billing services also offer a look at your billing process but allow you to have the peace of mind that your bills are going out on time every month and cash flow will be maintained if not increased as a result.
Benefits of using our legal billing services include:
- Increased cash flow
- Maximized productivity and more “billable time”
- Not having to take on additional billing software or computer resources
- More time for attorneys and staff to focus on clients and grow your practice
- The ability to communicate client bills and other accounting documents in a way that works best for them with minimal impact on the firm
- Confidence that your billing will be handled with the utmost confidentiality
- Assurance that your billing data is accurate, complete, and reliable
- Knowing your monthly, quarterly, and annual reports will demonstrate better and more trustworthy data
If you are not in need of billing services we are working on adding paralegal services to our services menu. If you have an interest in these services please contact us today.
Law Office Systems News
Carol will be moderating a panel for the New Jersey State Bar Association, “Choosing a Practice Management System Panel Discussion”. This program will include a vendor showcase with representatives from Clio, MyCase, LEAP, Cosmolex and Zola Suite. The program is being held from Friday, June 16th from 1:00-3:00PM at The Renaissance, 1110 Valley Rd, Ocean, NJ 07712. To register, contact the NJSBA and sign up for meeting number BCNJB061617. If you are planning to attend, please let us know. We would love to catch up with you.
On October 20th at 2:00pm, Carol will be the guest consultant for a Lexis “Office Hours” session to answer questions about Time Matters. Save this date and expect more information to register as this event gets closer.
In March, Carol facilitated two panels of attorneys to discuss “Law Office Management – Attorneys Speak about What They Use and Why It Improves their Practices,” as part of the NJSBA Solo and Small Firm Conferences in Parsippany and Cherry Hill. Participants learned about the differences among the leading cloud legal practice management programs.
In April, Carol spoke at the Boardwalk Seminar in Atlantic City for the New Jersey Association for Justice. Entitled, “A View from the Trenches,” Carol spoke about trends in legal technology and how lawyers can make smart decisions to support and grow their practices.
If you have colleagues who could benefit from working with us to assist them with their practice management or other technology needs, please let us know we would be happy to reach out.
Social Media Updates
Like most of our clients we are updating our social media and website. We have made major updates to our Articles/ Presentations sections where you can find all our various reference materials. We have also updated our newsletter section to include our newsletters up to our most recent one.
We are posting more content on our FaceBook and LinkedIn pages. For a glimpse at what we post check out our recent Blog post “WannaCry? Don’t Go Phishing!” Follow us on our company pages to stay up to date on Law Office Systems, the services we provide, and the products we work with.
PRODUCT UPDATES
We make it our business to evaluate and recommend only the best options for our clients. While we are always on the lookout for new products, solutions to problems old and new, as well as evolving best practices, we want to make sure we keep you up to do date on some of the most popular products.
Timeslips
Timeslips has updated their obsolescence policy. Support is ending for Sage Timeslips 2015 and 2016 on July 31, 2017. This means that they will no longer support BDE versions of Timeslips and will only support the current version and the previous one rather than the current and two prior as in the past. We anticipate version 2018 will come out soon. All supported version will now run on Firebird SQL which is faster and more stable. As of now, Sage is still offering a one-time purchase option (standard) in addition to an annual subscription (premium). The subscription option requires an ongoing annual commitment. We can support your firm with all versions of Timeslips. If you have questions or think you might benefit from an upgrade or would like pricing or more information, contact us today.
Time Matters
Lexis began rewriting the underlying code for the calendar functions in Time Matters beginning with version 14. Version 14 added the work week view but eliminated the Classic Calendar. Consultants and customers were vocal in their unhappiness with these changes. We have held off upgrading firms that actively use the Time Matters calendar due to these issues. Lexis has been working on bringing back the lost functionality with version 16. Time Matters 16.2 service release is expected shortly. While we have not seen it yet, we have been informed that it will address calendar related functions. We recommend that you contact us to discuss the best time to upgrade your firm based on how your firm uses Time Matters.
Time Matters Tip
Did you know that Time Matters has its own Recycle Bin? If someone accidentally deletes a contact or matter (or any other record type), go to File/ Recycle Bin and you will see all the deleted records and can tag and restore the record back into the database. To prevent accidental deletions, you may want to have us review your security settings to make sure that only selected people in your organization have the ability to delete matter records.
PCLaw
In April, Lexis released PCLaw 16 which includes enhancements along with detect repairs. System requirements have changed so review them before upgrading. Additionally, as part of the upgrade process, Lexis has instituted a new procedure, requiring firms to complete a pre-check process to ensure the data is able to be upgraded without errors. This process is particularly important for firms upgrading from earlier versions which used a different database structure. For more information about the pre-check process, review this article. If you have questions about upgrading, or considering other options, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can assist you.