As a lawyer or legal consultant, your entire day is spent on constantly brainstorming about your client’s legal issues, solutions and potential risks involved in their daily business activities.
But how often do you think about potential business risks in your business activities? The money that you’re losing right now? How much time do you get to think about that? Zero! Because your clients are always calling, mailing, and messaging for meetings and consultation.
Every small or big consultation session that you take is a service that you’re offering. Are you well paid for that? Were you paid for the last call you attended? But, let me tell you I can assure you will get paid for the next call you take. Want to earn that? Keep on reading!
First of all, know the current market status of challenges that invoicing and billing present to law firms:
- 73% of law firms experience unpaid overdue
- 58% of firms spend too much time on billing
- 50% of small law firms witness 4 out of 10 unpaid accounts
- 82% report financial burdens of clients as a root cause
You must be experiencing similar challenges too. Well, the solution lies in taking assistance from technology. The artificial intelligence of technology helps in automating processes that are consistent and time-consuming. The areas that need the most assistance are:
- Time tracking
- Project management
- Client management
- Invoice management
- Payment process management
- Task management
- Reports for analysis
- AR & AP management
Following are the features that you must look for while selecting a legal billing software:
An Automated Time Tracker:
You’re doing it all to earn money. The entire business process, meetings, client calls, brainstorming, etc are all carried out on an everyday basis to earn enough profit to grow. The foremost thing to understand here is the importance of time. As a lawyer your services are time-based. And it is every minute invested that contributes to earning money.
A time tracker works in the backend of your mobile or computer devices to track time spent on every project. In a legal billing software like Invoicera you can:
- Track time
- Segregate projects
- Select specific projects and track time
- Convert time to payable invoices in a click
- Find all the time reports in the dashboard
It is important to opt for a time tracker as a law firm to precisely keep a track of your time so as to accurately bill clients and earn enough revenue.
Invoicing Assistance:
One of the major features that one must consider in their legal invoicing software is the ability to assist, automate, and customize. Whether it’s something simple that is often overlooked, such as the ability to customize an invoice with your own logo, or something more advanced, such as automatic interest or tax calculations, you need flexibility in your invoicing to meet your customers’ needs.
While it may be obvious to check that certain electronic billing codes are supported, other features may not catch your eye until they are absolutely essential. For example, the ability to edit invoices after the fact in MS Word. It is these features that really show that the software has anticipated your needs and is trying to anticipate them. When it comes to something as important as invoicing, you can’t afford to neglect a detailed review of invoicing features.
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Also Read: How To Avoid Late Payments Issue For A Healthy Cash Flow?
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Detailed Reports with Filters:
Reports in the software are often given the least amount of importance while choosing the right billing software for the business. But, this ever for granted taken feature holds the most important for any business. Its importance is only known when you actually start using the services. The time after you’ve recorded all the time, sent all the invoices and now you want to know the big picture of your business, then reports come in handy. Detailed reports with filters of time duration, clients, projects, and more help you understand your business and its growth in a certain period of time, or over the years.
Online Project Planning and Task Allocation:
An online project management and task allocation feature come in handy for managers who have to assign tasks to subordinates. It helps in controlling and managing the overall workflow of the organization. Managers can assign meetings, cases, consulting, and hearings to subordinates so that none of the important tasks goes unattended and every client is given superior attention.
Project planning and task allocation will also update you about your team’s daily activities and time investment so as to yield maximum ROI from your every resource.
Accounts Receivables & Payables Management:
Payments/cashflow keep the business alive. It is like the blood that needs to constantly flow in the body at the right rate to keep it sound. Therefore, it becomes equally mandatory to keep track of its reports, analyze it frequently, and make amendments as and how required.
AR & AP reports automatically get updated, as soon, as you receive or send a payment. Later, you can use these reports to segregate a client, project, ROI in a period, or simply track overall payables and receivables carried in a month. In a nutshell, it makes money management and life easier.
Implementation & Customization:
Don’t look for regular, generalized legal e-billing software for your law firm. It will never suffice to every single need of your business. Such online billing systems for legal businesses categorize and concentrate on just a few common areas of concern. You might only get solutions for invoicing, time tracking, and few reports with them. Trust us, this will not even cater to your 50% needs.
The right decision is to invest in custom legal billing software that can be tailor-made for your business at almost similar costs. A custom software development will lead to personalized invoicing, chosen payment gateways, more reports, streamlined workflow with altered processes, automation of almost every process in the organization, and layers of security to keep the data utmost safe. Invoicera is a leading choice of more than 100 enterprises to get their own system customized and installed without even moving an inch to adjust.
Assistance & Guidance:
It is okay to take your own time to understand technology. It might seem difficult in the beginning, but once you understand it thoroughly there will be no looking back. You will enjoy it and even promote it. But during this time you will need an expert to help you understand the nitty-gritty of it. Look out for prompt assistance and guidance from the experts throughout the process. Invest your time in finding out how well you get assistance from the developers. Invoicera offers uninterrupted assistance throughout the customization, installation, and lifelong assistance to its customers in case they face any roadblock with the software. It is super necessary and makes acceptance viable.
Finally,
You will certainly find the best legal billing software that will fit your criteria of needs with a little research work online. The above features are most crucial in any law firm and make sure you do not skip even one of these. No matter how much you get told to overlook or compromise on them, stick to your statements and only settle with the best.
If you’re unable to find all in one, then opt for tailor-made software. There is nothing that can match customization. Its pros are many and cons can not even be witnessed. Make a wise choice and only invest in the right software for your law firm. Try for free now.
