Legal Specific Billing and Accounting Self-Evaluation Questions Scorecard

Transcription

1 Legal Specific Billing and Accounting Self-Evaluation Questions Scorecard By: Loretta Ruppert, Senior Director LexisNexis Selecting the right tools for your law firm includes more than just a set of features. As a former CFO of a 50+ attorney law firm and business advisor to hundreds of small law firms, other considerations like prioritization for your tolerance of technology, timeframe for when you need it, focus of people resources and your budget, matter. Let s begin this process with a set of self-evaluation questions to help you get in the right frame of mind of what is important to you. 1) What is the event or situation that triggered your reason for looking for a billing and accounting solution? a. A client mandated request for a specific billing format that our system does not currently handle or handle well b. A change in business entity (law firm split or merge) c. A new partner profit distribution agreement d. A request from law firm management or accountant e. Tired of manually preparing reports from excel, takes too much time f. It is taking us too long to get our bills out the door g. Cash flow or other law firm business challenges forcing us to look at how we work h. Our current system does not provide us with what we need i. 2) Do you currently use a billing and accounting solution? 3) What are the gaps or deficiencies your current solution has that aren t addressing your need? 4) If you were to describe the billers in your office, would you describe them as: a. Very technically savvy, high adoption of smartphones and tablets, and they enter their own time b. Half and half some are technically savvy, and some are low tech, but enter their own time c. Half and half some are technically savvy, and some are low tech, and have someone else enter their time d. Low tech most of our billers are not technical in nature, they use staff to do most tasks on the computer to include entering their time 5) What are your accessibility needs? Remote access, from smartphones, tablets? 6) How much is your annual spend on IT support for your office? 7) Do you have a capital budget that replaces computers? 8) Do you have a dedicated person or department that only focuses on billing and collecting? 9) Who produces your financial statements? 1

2 a. An outside bookkeeper b. An outside accountant c. An internal bookkeeper d. An internal accountant, controller, CFO e. An office manager or firm administrator 10) Does your firm have written policies and procedures pertaining to office and billing protocols? (ex: billing protocol write-offs must be approved by responsible attorney, any write-off over a specified amount should be approved by managing partner) a. We don t have written policies and procedures, just word of mouth protocols b. We have some written policies and procedures, but don t always follow them c. We have some written policies and procedures, and mostly abide by them d. We have written policies and procedures, train our employees, hold them accountable if they don t follow them 11) Who in your firm would be involved with the implementation and set up of the system? 12) Would you consider using an external consulting service to help implement the solution? 13) How willing are your employees to change? 14) When would you ideally have this new system in place? (Keep in mind that you likely want to have data converted from your old system to the new, there is a period for quality control to ensure you have your clients set up properly to save yourself from embarrassing billing errors, and of course, you need time to train employees to provide them confidence to do their job. ) Obviously, this is not an inclusive list of questions, but it does provide you with answers to help you narrow down a solution and puts you in the mind-set to help prioritize those items that solve the biggest problems for your law firm using the scorecard. 2

3 Use this scorecard on the following page to weigh-in what s important to your firm as it pertains to features and/or services. Scorecard - Identify Firm s must haves, productivity enhancers and nice to haves for each product being reviewed Billing Features Systemic Level Features: Integrated billing and accounting system Billing system that integrates with external accounting program i.e. QuickBooks Security profiles based on roles in firm Billing Preference Features: Variety of Bill Arrangements i.e. Hourly, flat fee, contingency, consolidated, retainer, split billing, etc. Sales and Service Tax system Interest simple & compound Spell checker Auto text (shortcut expansion of common words and phrases) Time Rounding Preferences e.g. 1/10 th BILL CODES / TASKS / ACTIVITIES Pre-defined list of bill codes (editable) Definable bill codes Ability to set a rate by bill code Ability to set a bill code as a flat rate regardless of time associated with it 3

4 BILL RATES Assign bill rates by client, matter, staff, bill code/task Auto assign rate based on preference at client or matter level BILL LAYOUTS Pre-defined layouts Easy interface to modify or develop new bill layouts LEDES (electronic bill formats) Billing: TIME AND EXPENSE ENTRY/CAPTURE Timesheet entry view Time slip entry view Web or mobile device entry Set up recurring time or expense entries Ability to override rates Track adjustments i.e. write-downs/ups Bill from other recorded activities, i.e. appointments, phone calls, case notes, s, documents, timers, etc. 3 rd party integration for expense recovery Ability to import expenses Timer capabilities PRE-BILL PROCESS OR WORKFLOW Quick Bill / Demand Invoice Mass bills based on specified criteria Drill-down pre-bill view, edit in place Workflow approval process i.e. which bills have been distributed, approved, need edits, on hold or passed for next billing cycle TRUST ACCOUNTING Multiple trust account setup Ability to set auto transfer with billing by 4

5 fees, expenses, or both Trust transfer from one matter to another Reporting: BILLING AND FINANCIAL REPORTING Standard billing reports - WIP, AR, Productivity, Profitability, Effective bill rates, Billing target reports Advanced billing reports - Fee & Receipt allocations, Realization reports Client / Matter ledger (transactional history) Overhead analysis reports Trust accounting reports by account, client, matters, in detail and summary Sales and Service Tax reports Standard financial report Balance sheet, Income statement, Cashflow statement, General Ledger, Trial balance Advanced financial reports sliced and diced by a number of criteria to include office or department, practice area, etc. Integrated easy to use report writer Export to excel ACCOUNTS PAYABLE / VENDOR MANAGEMENT Standard vendor forms Customized fields Set up recurring payables Demand check printing Mass check printing based on criteria 1099 tracking & reporting Miscellaneous vendor tracking Standard check layouts Definable check layouts Vendor analysis report BANK RECONCILATION Easy to use interface 5

6 Add bank fees and charges, missing checks, corrections to transactions on the fly Import transaction from financial institutions Ability to undo a reconciliation OVERALL Ease of Use Flexibility for law firm users Customer support External consulting channel Professional Services by Vendor Trusted Vendor 6