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Tag Archives: legal billing and accounting software
Free Training Resources For Easy TimeBill Users
We’ve designed Easy TimeBill to have a simple and intuitive interface, allowing you to start using it confidently within minutes of installation. However simple doesn’t mean simplistic and our legal billing and accounting software includes many powerful features you might need a little help with to use to their best.
Your first stop for information would be the lawyer billing software’s extensive online help system. Just hit F1 or select Help -> How Do I from the top menu to find easy answers to most of the questions you might have on how to use the tools and reports included. You can also select Help -> PDF Manual to see a comprehensive manual you can view or print out.
If you still have questions then come to our side to view free legal billing software training videos that take you step by step through everything from initial setup to generating invoices to bank reconciliation. Here you will also find videos on our other products such as Easy Trust and Easy HUD.
Sometimes you need more personal attention or have specific questions on how our time and billing software can be used for your unique needs. In that case we suggest you attend one of our free training webinars. Every two weeks we offer a live online training session on Easy TimeBill and Easy Trust. These sessions are a great way to stay on top of the latest laws and how they might affect your practice, and are an opportunity for you to ask specific questions about the software.
Finally, you can always contact us directly with your questions. Our team of support professionals is happy to share their expert knowledge of any of our legal practice management software with you. We can help you install, configure and use our products in ways that will improve your practice’s efficiency and profits, and help you help your clients.
Trust Accounting In Large Law Firms: It’s Everybody’s Fault
The larger the firm, the more complicated trust fund management can be. It’s hard enough tracking multiple matters in one account, plus other matters each with their own accounts, but then you add multiple attorneys, paralegals and other staff members and it quickly becomes an administrative nightmare. Legal billing and accounting software simplifies, automates and centralizes the process but attorneys still need to be aware of the rules governing the accounts.
First let’s get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way. We aren’t lawyers; we merely develop and sell attorney practice management software. This article presents generic trust fund regulations. Check your state laws to find out how things work where you are. The information here isn’t legal advice–but you’re a lawyer so you should know that already.
In a large practice you have multiple attorneys handling cases with trust accounts. Although legal accounting software makes it easy for lawyers to handle their own trusts, is it permissible to centralize all trust accounting functions? Yes and no. Yes you could assign a single attorney to handle all trust matters and have the other attorneys delegate trust transactions to that one, however if a mistake is made then the attorney handling the case is ultimately the one who will be held responsible.
Is it permissible to have a non-attorney handle trust transactions? Again the answer is yes and no. A paralegal, accountant or bookkeeper could handle entering the daily transactions, generating reports, balancing accounts and so on but this person must be supervised by an attorney. Software makes oversight simple as the lawyer using time billing software reviews the work done by the staff to ensure all regulations are followed.
Remember that everyone needs to know the rules on trust account management. Even if attorneys aren’t entering their own transactions, they need to periodically use the trust accounting system to review and verify that their clients’ money is being handled correctly according to the law.
Centralized trust management and a 360-degree view of trust accounts are just two of the features that make Easy Trust an essential tool for today’s legal practice. Try the product free for 30 days and discover how much simpler escrow administration can be.
How To Hire A Staff Without Hiring A Staff
Large law firms can hire teams of specialists to handle everything from balancing the books to maintaining the office computers to making the coffee. Unfortunately small firms, especially single-attorney practices, can’t afford to bring on a host of employees. The good news is that these small businesses can get the skill they need from dedicated legal billing and accounting software like Easy TimeBill.
Time and billing software is like having a bookkeeper. The software makes it easy to record your billable hours and expenses, maintain separate billing for each matter and send out professional looking invoices to your clients. You can see at a glance the current payment status of each account, automatically calculate late fees and print checks for your vendors.
Add the Easy Trust trust accounting system to the mix and you have a dedicated escrow accountant at your fingertips. Maintain your trust accounts in full compliance with strict state and federal regulations, generate three-way reconciliation reports required by most bar associations and keep each matter’s funds separate even if they are in the same account.
Attorney practice management software acts as your personal assistant, checking for conflicts of interest that might jeopardize your case. Practice management tools like calendars, to-do lists and case notes keep you organized. Document management links electronic documents to each case file so you don’t have to worry about misplacing a key file when you need it.
Get the cloud version of our attorney time and billing software and you get your own IT department. You don’t need to concern yourself with software installation, updates, data security or backups. We handle all the technical details so you can focus on helping your clients.
With the right software tools, even a one-person practice can operate as though it was an elite team of specialized professionals. Get the skills you need at a fraction of the cost of hiring even one of these people much less all of them. Your virtual assistants work day and night, don’t take vacations and don’t need medical insurance.
But you’ll still have to make your own coffee.
Billing Software That Is Simple But Not Simple-Minded
Computers are supposed to make our lives easier. Unfortunately they often don’t. Many software packages are confusing and hard to use. They have such steep learning curves that it’s faster to scribble a few notes on paper than spend an hour figuring out how to do it with a computer. But not with Easy Soft products. Our design philosophy is to create time and billing software for lawyers, not for Computer Science majors.
Easy TimeBill has been developed from the ground up with the end user in mind. You’re an attorney not a computer programmer. You just want to open up the lawyer billing software and enter your hours and expenses without a lot of fuss, complicated commands, or confusing menus. That’s exactly what you can do with our software. You’ll be up and running within minutes.
“Easy” doesn’t mean Easy TimeBill is dumbed down. This isn’t “baby’s first legal billing and accounting software“. It’s a robust and full-featured financial program tailored to the billing, reporting and trust accounting needs of the modern law practice. However the complexity is in the underlying program and not in the interface. Using the software is quick and easy, with plenty of help included in the program and lots of videos and articles on our website to help you get the most from the software.
We’ve even taken away most of the technical headaches innate in traditional software by offering our attorney time and billing software in a cloud version. You don’t have to worry about installation, updates, system compatibility, backups or any of those other details. We handle all of that. You can focus on running your practice rather than tearing your hair out trying to figure out why your computer hates you. This is a huge bonus for small practices that can’t afford to hire professional IT personnel but is also a great help to larger firms since they can operate with a smaller technical staff.
The role of law practice management software should be to make your job easier rather than harder. If your current software isn’t doing that–or if you aren’t using software at all–then it’s time for you to discover the software tools essential for today’s law firms. Try any of our titles free for 30 days and you’ll see how easy and valuable these products are.
How To Handle Special Trust Transactions
Trust management is complicated even at its simplest–and real trust accounts are never simple. This is why it is essential that attorneys use dedicated escrow software designed to handle the unique needs of trust accounts. These tools make it easy to administer even complex transactions.
For example, it’s pretty straightforward that when you receive a deposit for Matter A then you assign it to Matter A in the legal billing and accounting software. But what if you get a check that has payments for Matters A, B and C? It’s not like you can tear the check into pieces and deposit each amount separately, and yet you must keep the funds from intermingling.
Legal accounting software allows you to assign a single deposit to multiple matters from a single screen. The software carefully tracks every penny to the right account so when you print a report on Matter A, you will see only transactions for Matter A including the partial deposit from that check.
It works for withdrawals as well as deposits. Let’s say an attorney hires an outside investigator to research some cases. The attorney pays the investigator once a month but might be paying on a dozen different matters. You need each payment to come from the proper fund but don’t want to issue a dozen checks. Instead you can issue one check and when you record it in the trust accounting system then you can allot each portion of your payment to the correct matters so they will come from the appropriate funds.
Sure you can do these things by hand. Ever since we’ve been recording monetary transactions by making marks on clay tablets, there have been bookkeepers and accountants who meticulously track complex accounts. However you don’t need to do laborious and tedious manual tracking if you use dedicated legal practice software that handles these transactions routinely.
Most of us don’t balance our checkbooks without software, so why wouldn’t you do the same for something as important as a trust account? Explore our site to find out more about how Easy Trust makes trust administration easy and safe for your firm.
March 12, 2013 in Attorney Trust Accounting, Legal Software, Legal Technologies
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Technorati Tagged : escrow software, legal accounting software, legal billing and accounting software, legal practice software, trust accounting system
Technorati Tagged : escrow software, legal accounting software, legal billing and accounting software, legal practice software, trust accounting system
Keep Your Facts Straight Using Easy Soft Legal Billing Software
Accuracy is essential in legal practice, and nowhere more so than in your billing. Easy TimeBill, our legal billing and accounting software, includes a host of features designed to help you avoid mistakes.
There is simply no reason to keep manual books anymore. Computers and dedicated billing software for lawyers are affordable enough that even a one-attorney office can–in fact must–use computerized financial tools. Enter the information and let the machine do the math so you know the totals you are billing are correct. However Easy TimeBill is more than a glorified calculator.
Easily categorize expenses and billable hours so they are linked to the right matter. The software works over your office network to allow anyone working on a case to enter their expenses into a central database. The cloud version of the legal practice management software takes centralization a step further, allowing attorneys and other personnel to enter information from outside the office. No more does a lawyer have to paw through a stack of unlabeled receipts trying to remember what expense belongs to which client.
Record payments as they come in. See client balances at a glance. Reconcile with the bank statement, even balancing multiple matters held in a single account without having to laboriously separate out individual transactions by hand.
Invoices are more than just numbers though. Easy Soft’s legal time billing software protects you from embarrassing typos with a built-in spell checker. Misspellings on your invoices and other documents at best make you look foolish and at worst can have serious legal consequences. Our customers who use the cloud version from a tablet computer really appreciate this feature, since it’s much easier to make a typo from one of those touch-screen keyboards than from a regular keyboard.
If you are still using manual billing or trying to tailor generic business finance program to the unique needs of a legal practice, then download a free legal billing software demo. Take our software through its paces and discover how simple legal billing can be.
