I often receive emails and phone calls from clients with questions such as:
- How many new clients have we added this year?
- How much revenue has our new practice group generated so far?
- We need help calculating bonuses. Can we allocate revenue based on who brought in each client?
- How much in receivables has been outstanding for more than 90 days? Can I get a list of these clients and their phone numbers so a staff person can follow up?
- I need to print mailing labels for all of the contacts we want to send holiday greetings or gifts to.
- What are all of the dates on which I have met with this client in the past 18 months?
- What is my average billing rate?
- We have a “not-to exceed” agreement with a client. How much have we billed them so far?
There are many more such examples of information software users need on a regular basis. Most legal software has the capability to answer questions such as these and more.
Sample To-Do Report
When we begin the implementation of a new program for one of our clients, one of the first questions I ask, often even before deciding on which program to buy, is “What information do you need to get out of your database?”
If the program has the capability to customize or add fields to hold specific information needed by the firm, it is easy to set those up during implementation. Even after the fact, we have done a lot of tweaking of custom fields to be able to track and report on needed information.
Just the other day, a Timeslips user had set up a new client and needed to keep track of how much was being disbursed with each vendor for transcripts, couriers, and so forth. We set up the Extra field on the slip entry screen to track the vendor on each expense slip. This will make it easy in the future to generate reports for a client and date period, showing expenses subtotaled by vendor.
Most sophisticated time and billing programs have capabilities similar to the above. Practice management programs can take things a step further since they often have the capacity to store more non-financial information than billing programs have. But chances are that your firm is under-utilizing the reporting capabilities available in-house from existing software tools. To take things a step further, take a look at Michael Gaines’s article about our advanced custom reporting capability.
Sample Caseload Report
Whether you decide to use “canned” reports, custom reports, or a combination, there is much to gain from leveraging the capabilities of your software. Try it. Open your favorite legal program and look for the Reports menu. Look at the various categories and start thinking about how you could use these reports to better manage your practice.
The consultants at Eastern Legal Systems are all experts in using and designing reports in the programs on which we are certified. Call us at 877-357-0555, or email us at [email protected]
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.