Time is money. Understanding and accounting for the use of your lawyer's time is vital to the success of your law firm.
Time is money. Understanding and accounting for the use of your lawyer's time is vital to the success of your law firm.
Many lawyers waste hours doing tasks that can be easily automated, while others forget to bill clients for the extra hours they spend working on their accounts. As a result, there’s a growing need for law firms to track time and costs more effectively and increase their overall revenue and productivity.
Time and cost recording are used in many different industries, especially industries that work on an hourly basis. We have included a selection of the more commonly used time recording methods and have listed them below.
A timesheet is a data table used by someone to track their time. It’s generally used to track the time a person has worked on a particular task for an organisation. This is the method that most freelancers, small businesses, educational institutions, construction workers, and even lawyers use to track their time.
Timesheets are usually created in an excel spreadsheet as their tabular nature makes it easy to categorise the time spent on tasks.
Time recording software allows employees to track time using a web-based, desktop, or mobile app. It also helps managers capture the time employees have spent on assigned tasks.
The benefits of time recording software don’t stop there. It also removes unnecessary manual administrative work and provides insights into budgeting, invoicing cost of operations, and your business's overall growth.
Most data-driven firms use time recording software. And with all-in-one software like mattero’s, you can help your firm manage time more efficiently.
You may opt to run your law firm on a fixed cost model, eliminating a lot of the need for time recording. Charging fixed costs for legal services is becoming more commonplace in law firms, with clients preferring to know what they will be charged upfront. Fixed cost pricing involves charging a fixed fee for services, such as a flat fee for drafting a privacy policy or drafting a will.
With mattero’s all-in-one software, you can easily manage fixed cost services.
Practice management refers to the management of all activities within a legal practice. For small legal firms, incorporating good practice management can increase performance exponentially.
Thanks to practice management software, you can streamline the practice lifecycle. You don’t have to do it manually.
A good practice management software oversees the following:
Effective legal software assists small firms in managing every sector of their business and keeps important information in one place.
Every firm needs an all-in-one platform that can oversee practice management and integrates with relevant platforms to improve other operations within the firm.
mattero legal software seamlessly integrates with Office 365, Outlook, Xero, Infotrack and Zapier. Software integration is an important tool that can help you become a data-driven law firm.
Time recording is never an easy task, especially when you need to factor in staff working remotely.
mattero’s features allow you to record time from anywhere, with real-time visibility across your firm.
With mattero’s practice management software, you can easily set up cost codes for billable and non-billable fees while billing using editable units or fixed costs. Also, you can use flexible costing templates or user default charge rates.
Xero is cloud-based accounting software that allows small businesses to manage their finances. It performs bookkeeping functions like invoicing, budgeting, and payroll.
mattero’s two-way integration with Xero brings together your legal and accounting divisions. It synchronises contacts, invoices, payments, bank accounts, general ledger accounts, and tax rates to offer you and your clients an impeccable experience.
Payments made in Xero sync to mattero (including pre-payments, overpayments, and credit notes), while trust invoice payments made in mattero will seamlessly sync with Xero.
Whether you choose an automated routine or a manual synchronisation process, mattero puts you in complete control of your data.
Most law firms are swamped with work, making it too easy to neglect time recording and maintain good record keeping. Unfortunately, failure to keep track of time means your revenue will go down the drain.
That makes it critical for your law firm to use a system that records time efficiently.
With legal software like mattero, you can enter time from anywhere—with just the push of a button. Start a free trial today.
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