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Author Archives: Rick Kabra
Avoid Costly Trust Account Mistakes
If there is any one item you don’t want to mismanage, it is your escrow account.
Best practices indicate that simply reconciling your trust account bank statements at the end of every month is not enough to avoid costly mistakes.
Trust accounting software for attorneys can help you minimize the risk of an overdrawn IOLTA account or an individual excess withdrawal from co-mingled IOLTA funds. Easy Soft programmed their trust fund accounting software for attorneys to reflect the ethics rules governing the handling of client trust accounts, from advance retainer deposits to real estate closing funds.
There is simply no reason to put off adopting “Easy Trust,” the attorney trust account software designed by Easy Soft, especially for attorneys. Just purchase the software, install, and from the first screen, you will be guided to input basic information like your clients’ names, the current trust account balances, and any escrow agents. Then, each time you are hired by a new client who makes a deposit, in less than five minutes, you can click to open the trust accounting software, and input that new client into the existing information. It really is that easy to know who has what amount of money in trust with your firm.
Used with Easy Soft’s Legal billing software for attorneys, this powerful duo eliminates your trust accounting worries and helps you achieve full ethical compliance. This law office trust accounting software is also designed for you to track the withdrawals against client deposits. Because you are responsible for tracking each client’s IOLTA balance as if it were a separate bank account, you need this itemized information at your fingertips.
See your client’s current deposit balance each time you think about billing on a file. Automatically see the balance and all activity each time you issue a client invoice. Get a computer warning before you overdraw a trust account. When you use Easy Soft’s trust fund accounting software for attorneys and attorney billing software, your accuracy goes up and your worries go down.
Now that’s a balance we bet you’d like to achieve.
One Batch Processing to Speed Up Collections – Law Firm Billing Software
Collections against your own clients are no fun. You’ve been in battle together and now you’re in battle with each other.
The key to successful collections is continued billing and communication, but you need to simplify that so you don’t loose time you could be billing on a file with a client who has money on deposit.
When you select Easy Soft’s lawyer billing software you receive a suite of products that will simplify your billing and collection needs.
As soon as you install the software, “Easy Time Bill” will guide you through input of existing clients, mailing information, and account balances – including overdue accounts. This law office billing software was designed to help you collect the fees that you have earned.
At the end of the month, simply enter the names of the clients to bill, and let Easy Soft’s billing software for attorneys do the rest. Easy Soft’s law office billing software will automatically compute interest on overdue accounts, update any payments made, and show the balance due and owing. This important feature of automated interest charges means that Easy Soft’s law office billing software saves you time punching digits and formulas into a calculator, as well as the possibility you make a math mistake in the process.
An additional tool to get your client’s attention is e-billing through this same legal billing software. If you have your client’s e-mail address, “Easy Time Bill” allows you to select a print version of an invoice or an e-mail version of an invoice. You might even choose to do both for your overdue accounts.
The simplicity of operating this time and billing software for attorneys means you to stop wasting time on collections that you could be spending on files with advance retainer deposits waiting to be earned.
Instead of reaching for that calculator, why not make it easy on yourself? Click on “Buy Program Now” to get started with the attorney billing software that will let you look forward to the end of the month.
Stop Estimating, Start Recovering! – Divorce Settlement Software
You may be in a bad habit without even realizing that it is costing your client money.
When you are negotiating a matrimonial settlement, do you concentrate on two or three big assets, use estimates, and say each party ‘keeps their own’ for everything else?
The problem with the approach of concentrating on only two or three obvious assets, like the house and a couple of retirement accounts, is that you miss out on how much everything else is worth.
Use Easy Soft’s “Divorce Software” to enter and add up checking accounts, savings accounts, savings bonds, stock certificates, rental deposits, and even cash in the cookie jar. On the other side of the divorce settlement negotiations ledger, major credit cards, store credit cards, deferred store loans on furniture, and overdue income taxes are just some of the bills that may only be in only one party’s name.
When you use the Easy Soft networth statement, you start to systematically add up the details that can be worth thousands of dollars. The client starts by filling out a questionnaire that is included with the Easy Soft Divorce Financials Software. You then have a thorough and systematic approach to begin inserting that client information into the networth statement.
Once that data is input to the networth statement, your divorce settlement negotiations are easy. Assign the asset and liability distribution and see the distribution lists and totals per party. Now those “little” items reveal themselves as the not-so-little totals in the overall divorce settlement negotiations.
At Easy Soft, we design our family law software with a low cost to you for a solid rate of return for each one of your clients. It’s no wonder “easy” is part of our name.
Cash Me Out! – Family Law Software
You’re working cases causing you to pull your hair out. You win a good temporary alimony figure for one client, but it isn’t regularly paid. Another client has a good case for an award of long-term alimony, but the breadwinner is on a short-term employment contract. And then there’s the client who suddenly says remarriage is already in the cards.
These scenarios and more are why we invented Easy Soft’s alimony buyout software. When you’re unsure whether a stream of alimony payments is going to benefit your client and there are assets against which to take an offset, why not use the Easy Soft Divorce Settlement Software, including its alimony buyout calculator to figure out the best divorce financial settlement for your client?
While you may end up using an accountant or CPA to arrive at the final figures before signing a deal, at the least, the Easy Soft Divorce Financial Settlement Software will give you figures you can use for estimates, negotiations, and agreements in principle – even for an alimony buyout computation.
Using the Divorce Software, you can enter up to five asset and liability configurations side-by-side and make comparisons. You can also change variables for the amount, duration, and discount rate used in performing the alimony buyout computation. During divorce settlement negotiations, use the alimony buyout computations as potential asset values and you can imagine how the payor can compensate your client for the value of the alimony claim.
So What is an Alimony Buy-Out, Anyway?
You’ve heard the phrase before “alimony buy-out,” but what does that really mean?
Alimony is typically a periodic payment, paid monthly or per paycheck, over a period of years.
When you “buyout” alimony, a calculation is made of how much that stream of periodic payments would be worth if it was paid in full today. In an alimony buy-out, a lump sum is given to compensate the receipt all-at-once instead of waiting for the string of periodic payments.
In fancier language, the alimony buy-out is a math formula known as a “present value”. The calculation of the total of the string of payments is the easier part; it’s amount times duration. The calculation for the “discount” is the harder part. The “discount” is the percentage deduction to reduce the string of payments into its value all-at-once, today.
Aren’t you glad Easy Soft has alimony buyout software so that you don’t have to do this on your own?
Included in Easy Soft’s “Divorce Financials Software” is an alimony buyout calculator. Perhaps you are looking for an estimated alimony buyout, early in the divorce settlement negotiations. Or perhaps you have a report from the opposing party, and you’re interesting in spinning up to five alimony buyout computations, side-by-side.
Performing the alimony buyout computation takes on value when it is readily available for you to consider how it might fit into the overall divorce financials settlement. For example, will your client be awarded a stream of payments that she never collects in full or will she get to keep all of the house equity, outright? Only when you have Easy Soft’s alimony buyout software will you be able to insert the buyout figure into the equitable distribution mix to maximize your client’s financial position.
Easy Soft’s alimony buyout software is so indispensable that there’s even a divorce financials App version for your smart phone and tablet. We don’t want you to find yourself in divorce settlement negotiations without it.
And, who knows? By the time you play around enough with Easy Soft’s Divorce Financials Software you might decide that you do like math, after all.
Marital Lifestyle & Alimony
One of the topics discussed at the 2012 Family Law Symposium under section “Arguments Lawyers Fail to Make” was related to the inadequacy of New Jersey’s official CIS form in the budget’s left hand column labeled “Joint Life Style” for the purpose of an alimony claim trial.
The logic goes like this; Marital Lifestyle figures for the supported spouse are likely to include the supporting spouse’s expenses that will not be paid by the supported spouse after the divorce. Normally, marital lifestyle figures play a critical role in alimony determination, but these figures are meant to include marital lifestyle of the supported spouse only.
The proposed supported spouse’s attorney questions the supported spouse, who says, “Yes, those are my expenses.” Then, the other party’s attorney should point out that the line item is, in fact, for the entire family before the separation. The supported spouse is put in a situation where he/she has to subtract from each line item, expenditures for the supporting spouse and the children. After all, why should the supported spouse receive alimony for expenditures that he/she would not and could not incur post judgment? However, is this common flaw in marital lifestyle budget presentations picked up and argued by lawyers regularly?
As your technology provider, we routinely work with lawyers and pro-actively provide practice solutions. We cannot and do not practice law, but we do provide you tools to solve issues like marital lifestyle and alimony issues very easily within our CIS software, New Jersey’s most popular child support program.
In your CIS program, section Part-D, click on “Show Individual Historical Expenditure.” Here, you can breakdown marital expenses – Expenses for the plaintiff only or for the defendant and children. You can then print a separate Lifestyle Expenditure report, which will show five columns side by side and is ready to enter as a trial exhibit, for an Early Settlement Panel or Economic Mediation. (Click here for an example sheet).
For trial preparation, have the litigant break down the marital lifestyle figures individually, so you do not count the supporting spouse’s expenses and the children’s expenses in the supported spouse’s lifestyle figures, thereby avoiding the aforementioned trap.
While we are on this topic, for the purpose of breakdown, children’s expenditures might be less critical because they are not expected to have separate expenses in each category. However, categorizing children’s expenses separately may be helpful because they will be useful for other purposes, such as quantifying extraordinary expenses for children, i.e. automobile insurance.
To learn more about this topic as well as many other program features you may not be utilizing or to watch an overview video, visit CIS Software’s web page.
February 1, 2012 in Family Law Software
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Technorati Tagged : child support for ny, CIS form, CIS program, CIS Software, divorce settlements
Technorati Tagged : child support for ny, CIS form, CIS program, CIS Software, divorce settlements
