Controlling the Behavior of Timeslips: Part 2

In our first article on Sage Timeslips preferences, we covered some  time-saving options which primarily involved turning off settings for individual users that are unnecessary when opening and closing Timeslips, closing reports, and the like.

Another way to streamline the use of Timeslips is by customizing the way information is entered and displayed in the Time and Expense entry screens.  In this installment, we will cover some of these options.

In the Slips panel in Personal Preferences, the Options selection contains two important settings. Show time in slips as decimal was added recently in response to user requests. It has always been possible to show time in decimal format on bills and worksheets, but now you can show decimal time on the slip display as well. So for example, 1:30:00 could now be shown as 1.5 on the slip display and the Timesheet display, a format many firms are comfortable with (and use on their timesheets). Bills have long had the ability to display decimal formats for time; this new setting affects only the slip entry display.

Another setting has been added to assist users who may be pasting slip descriptions into the time entry window from other sources and encountering slips which, due to rich text formatting, appear to have “invisible” descriptions. Timeslips now has a setting to Paste descriptions as plain text, to lessen the chance of this happening in the future. There are other settings here that may be of interest to some users.

Users may be accustomed to seeing the slip fields in a particular order, such as Timekeeper, Client, Task. The Slip Entry page allows each individual user to select the Field Order in Slip Entry to be Client/Task or Task/Client.

One area that is often overlooked is the Tab order for time and expense entry. If you enter slips primarily via the keyboard, this list determines the order in which the various fields gain focus as you Tab your way through a slip entry screen. For example, if you rarely or never enter an End Date that is different from the slip’s Start Date, you may want to move the End Date to the bottom of the Tab Order. To do so, highlight that field and click the “Move to End” link. The next time you enter a slip, your Tab key will take you from the Start Date to the Time Estimated field. (As an aside, we typically disable Time Estimated completely, and often disable End Date as well,  since in our experience most firms never use these two fields. Contact us to learn how to do this!) Now, outfitted with a customized Tab order, it can be much faster to enter slips using the keyboard only than to reach for the mouse after each entry. Try it!

Finally, the New Slip Rules page has check boxes that allow the user to copy various fields from the previous slip entered to the new one being created. You will almost always want Timekeeper to be checked. The Dates check box can make a big difference: for users making entries in real time; leaving the box unchecked automatically inserts the current date for each new slip entry. For entries on past dates, such as an assistant making entries from a time sheet, keeping that box checked will copy the date of the previous slip onto each new slip; the user needs to manually change the date only when switching to a different day’s entries.

When first installing Timeslips on a workstation everyone gets the same set of default Preferences. However, there is really no “one size fits all” for these settings. If Timeslips is installed on a workstation by someone not familiar with these Preference settings, the user often ends up with Preference settings which are not ideally suited for that user’s particular role. Timeslips preferences can be highly “individualized” by user, increasing efficiency for the time entry process.

The Timeslips Certified Consultants at Eastern Legal Systems can help you customize these and other Preferences to each user’s specific job responsibilities, minimizing extra clicks and keystrokes and streamlining the entry of slips and preparation of bills. Stay tuned for our third installment on Preferences: Spelling, Grammar, Paths, and Miscellaneous settings.

Have a Timeslips question? Get in touch at [email protected], or at 877-357-0555.

Jack Schaller

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.