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Value Billing and Its Importance for Law Firms

Value Billing and Its Importance for Law Firms

April 28, 2023 By Dan Bowman Leave a Comment

Many law firms rely on the traditional billable hour for legal services, but there’s a growing trend for law firms to adopt value billing. More than just an alternative fee structure, value billing offers clear expectations, better client experiences, and fees for legal services that offer true value for both the client and the lawyer.

Continue reading to learn more about what value billing is, how it can benefit your firm and clients, and how to go about implementing it.

What Is Value Billing?

Value-based billing is a pricing model that’s based on the perceived value of your legal services and a successful outcome. Value is subjective, so coming up with a perceived value relies on collaboration and research.

Unlike traditional pricing models for law firms that include an hourly fee and billable hours that are invoiced, value-based billing is considered an alternative fee arrangement. Instead of tracking the number of hours performed on case-related work, the fees align with the output or outcome of a case, such as creating deliverables like contracts.

Person using laptop with Bill4Time billing and invoice feature screens

Benefits of Value Billing

Value billing offers many benefits, including:

Increased Client Satisfaction and Loyalty

The value-first pricing model ensures the best possible value for the client, which is a factor in referrals, reviews, and an influx of new clients from word-of-mouth recommendations. It’s a more client-centric approach to legal services and gives them a clear expectation for what they’ll pay, which reduces anxiety about obtaining and affording legal services.

Improved Profitability and Revenue Generation

The value-first pricing model improves profitability and revenue directly and indirectly. First, it ensures that you’re charging what you’re worth based on the value you provide for your clients, rather than the hours you spend on a case. Indirectly, value billing increases client satisfaction, facilitating referrals and new business that will keep your firm profitable in the long term.

Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity

Lawyers spend a lot of time on non-billable business tasks, including tracking, data entry, and billing for those billable hours. The rest of the time, they’re working but not earning direct revenue — even if the process is streamlined with time tracking software.

Value-based pricing can take time to set up initially as you analyze how to quantify the value your firm brings. Once the fees are determined, it eliminates a lot of the time spent on tracking time. Your firm becomes more efficient and productive with a lesser burden of administrative tasks.

Opportunities for Alternative Fee Arrangements

Value billing offers a lot of opportunities for alternative fee arrangements, such as flat-fee pricing for legal services, contingency pricing, retainers, subscriptions, and sliding-scale pricing. Each of these pricing models are suitable for different practice areas and offers benefits for both the client and the lawyer.

For example, flat fees are simple and predictable for certain cases, such as a no-fault divorce or drafting a will. Contingency, which is popular among personal injury attorneys, is a good option for cases that include a payout for a positive outcome.

Enhanced Focus on Client Outcomes and Results

With value pricing, you’re focused more on getting a favorable outcome than the time you spend on a case. Your pricing depends on your performance and the value you provide to your client, making the entire experience more positive overall.

Steps to Adopt Value Billing

If you want to adopt value billing at your firm, here are the steps:

Assess Your Firm’s Practice Areas and Client Base

To implement value-based pricing, you need to have an understanding of the client base, the commonality of work in the practice area, local competition, and the complexity involved.

Identify Suitable Cases or Matters for Value-Based Billing

Value-based billing is more appropriate for some cases than others. For example, simple and straightforward casework like completing a will and estate, reviewing and creating contracts, or drafting immigration applications.

Establish Clear Pricing Structures and Fee Arrangements

Communicating clearly with the client is important with any fee structure, but more so with value-based pricing. The ABA recommends offering tiered levels of service that vary in price to give clients options for perceived value and affordability. This also allows you to gauge price sensitivity for future pricing.

Collaborate with Clients to Define Values and Outcomes

Perceived value relies as much on how much you expect for your services as much as what the client expects to receive in return. You can talk with clients to understand their goals and motivations for seeking legal help, which in turn informs the value of your services, but it’s good to use industry benchmarks as well.

Implement Effective Tracking and Reporting Mechanisms

With Bill4Time, it’s easy to outline your tracking and billing processes with detailed invoices and statements that include payment terms, flat rates, or discounts. Whether you use value pricing across the board or for certain matters, you can customize your rates for each client to simplify the process. You can also track expenses and evaluate your firm’s performance with detailed financial reports.

Common Challenges with Value Billing

Though there are benefits to value billing, it can be difficult to determine exactly how much a client may value your services in monetary terms. It takes some calculating, benchmarking, and time to determine your pricing and expenses. There’s also the potential to undercharge your work.

With value billing, as with hourly billing, the paramount benchmark is ABA Model Rule 1.5(a). Lawyers are not permitted to charge an unreasonable fee for expenses, no matter the fee structure.

It will also take work to set up legal billing processes to adjust to a new fee structure and ensure that it’s clear and compliant. Legal software like Bill4Time simplifies your billing process with custom billing rates and structures tailored to your firm’s needs.

Person sitting at desk speaking with two other people

How to Manage Client Expectations with Value Billing

Value billing can provide transparency and satisfaction for clients, but it’s essential that you communicate your fees and services clearly. Instead of focusing on the time involved, communicate in terms of the value that you provide to your client in addressing their legal issues.

Setting up expectations from the start builds trust and transparency in the billing process. When your client receives an invoice, there will be no surprises. They understand exactly what they’re getting for their money.

In focusing on your value, it may be helpful to provide examples in the form of client feedback and testimonials to validate and promote your value-based billing. This forms social proof that gives your client confidence that they’re getting actual value for your services.

Final Thoughts on Value Billing

Legal services are all about value. Using value-based billing gives clients more predictability and transparency in paying for legal services, supporting a client-centric experience that drives word-of-mouth referrals and client acquisition. For firms, value billing is more efficient and productive, providing real value for services without compromising client experience, making it the future of billing in the legal industry.

Filed Under: Blog

How to Create an Attorney Billing Statement: Step-by-Step

April 25, 2023 By Nina Lee Leave a Comment

Efficient billing practices are essential for the success of your law firm. However, the time spent on billing can often become time-consuming, detracting from the productive hours of your day. Furthermore, this time spent on billing is typically not included in your billable hours, resulting in potential revenue loss. 

Fortunately, there are ways to streamline your billing process and optimize your attorney billing statement, enabling you to expedite the invoicing process and ultimately enhance the profitability of your firm.

What Is an Attorney Billing Statement?

An attorney billing statement is a versatile and customizable invoice template that your law firm can utilize to bill your clients in an efficient manner. 

With an attorney billing statement, you have the flexibility to tailor the invoice to meet the specific needs and requirements of each client, ensuring that it accurately reflects the services rendered and the associated costs. 

This enables you to create professional and comprehensive invoices that clearly communicate the details of the legal services provided, the corresponding charges, and any other relevant information in a clear and concise manner.

What Is in an Attorney Billing Statement?

Your billing statement will be tailored to your firm, but in general, all invoice templates should have the following elements:

Details of the Firm and Client

The billing statement should always have the information about your law firm and your client, including:

  • Names
  • Addresses
  • Phone numbers
  • Email addresses

The Date

Including the date of issue on an invoice is crucial for proper financial management and communication with clients. It serves as a reference point for payment terms, evidences timely delivery of the invoice, streamlines communication, and supports accurate record-keeping.

Itemized Services and Costs

The most time-consuming part of an invoice is recording the details of the services and their costs. This is important, however, as clients have a better understanding of what they’re paying for and are less likely to raise disputes.

The descriptions of the services should be brief, such as “prepared documents for court” or “researched case law” with the amount of time spent on each. Lawyers traditionally track time in six-minute increments for accuracy. The costs are based on your fees, which may be flat or hourly.

Expenses

If you have expenses associated with the client’s case, such as filing fees, include them on the invoice. You’ll want to include detailed descriptions of each expense so clients understand the value add. Hard costs are often easier to communicate than soft costs that are typically associated with the administrative brunt work needed for a client case. 

Totals and Taxes

After itemizing the services, you should be able to calculate the subtotals and total easily. If you have legal billing software, these calculations may be done automatically.

Once you have the total for all the services, include the appropriate service tax for your state on the billing form. You may wish to include the tax rate and total tax amount. Then, add the subtotal and total with the tax amount for the final balance.

Statement Due Date

Putting a clear due date on your invoice is important for law firm collections and getting paid on time. If you add late fees for overdue payments, include those on the invoice as well.

Depending on the state, you may be able to assess late fees at a percentage of the invoice amount or a flat fee up to a certain amount, but be sure to check with your state bar association.

Payment Methods

Include the options for payment on your invoice. If you accept checks, provide the name and mailing address. If you have an online payment portal, include the details to simplify it for the client.

Your accepted payment methods should be discussed prior to taking on your client’s case, but it’s good to have them listed as a reminder on your invoice.

Sample Attorney Billing Statement

Here is a sample billing statement:

sample attorney billing statement

How to Prepare a Billing Statement for Attorneys in 4 Steps

Creating a process for billing statements makes invoicing and billing can make the processes more straightforward in the future. Here’s how:

Step 1: Set Your Fees

Your fees are usually based on competitors and what’s appropriate for your practice area, experience level, and reputation. You’ll want to research and analyze what’s fair in the market along with your firm’s value proposition. 

Step 2: Capture Time

Accurate invoices have every minute tracked accurately. With Bill4Time’s timekeeping software, you can ditch the spreadsheets and capture time in real-time with timers on your phone, desk, or tablet. This not only ensures you get paid, but it helps present more accurate information about the work you do for your clients.  

Step 3: Automate Invoicing

Create, print, or email professional invoices with Bill4Time software, complete with payment terms, late fees, discounts, and more. You can also include custom payment links on your invoices for clients to pay online. 

Step 4: Communicate with Clients

A positive client experience starts with effective communication at intake. Proactively communicate your invoicing and billing details in advance, including fees, schedules, payment terms, and payment methods.

3 Attorney Best Practices for Legal Billing

Billing and invoicing software like Bill4Time makes it a breeze to create a customizable billing template to free up your time. Here are some of the best practices for legal billing:

Offer Multiple Payment Options

Clients want to be able to pay using the method they’re most comfortable with, and as a result, your firm gets paid faster. With Bill4Time Payments, your clients can pay using eChecks or major credit and debit cards for the fastest and most convenient payments.

Offer Custom Payment Plans

Payment plans make it easier for clients to afford legal services by reducing large bills. Bill4Time Payments allows you to create custom payment plans with weekly or monthly installments and automated payment reminders.

Show Consistency

It’s important to set up billing expectations with your clients from the start. You should communicate your billing timelines and send your invoices based on this cadence, so clients know when to expect a bill. This also ensures that your cash flow is more predictable.

Streamline Your Billing Statements

Invoicing and billing are often the most time-consuming and cumbersome part of running your law firm, but it doesn’t have to be. With law firm invoicing software, you can create a streamlined billing process that saves you time, creates a better client experience, and gets your firm paid faster.

Filed Under: Blog

Billing on the Go: Bill4Time Mobile App

April 21, 2023 By Carole Poster Leave a Comment

With court cases, client meetings, and other business that lawyers may need to address outside of the office, relying on manual time tracking or being tied to a desktop to track time can be a burden when it comes to accurately recording hours. Managing partners of law firms are looking for ways to get staff on the same page when it comes to time tracking no matter where they are. Let’s discuss how mobile time tracking can be one of the most productive systems to implement in your practice.

Mobile Time Tracking for Law Firms

Mobile time tracking is vital to an accurate record of billable and nonbillable hours. With increasing work hours outside of the office, lawyers need a way to track time for billing while they’re on the go.

When you track your time as it happens, you are more likely to have a clear picture of what work was done and for how long, which increases accuracy and reduces lost billable hours. Bill4Time’s mobile app gives firms the ability to track their time from anywhere and helps maintain a systematic time tracking system. 

Customize Bill4Time’s Mobile App to Fit Your Business Needs

Bill4Time’s mobile app is the easiest way to track time, manage projects, and organize expenses on the go. From the dashboard and one-tap timer, to client and project management, the Bill4Time mobile app has all the features law firms look for in any time tracking software.

Mobile Dashboard

When you’re on the go, you should still be able to have a good idea of your firms operations. The Bill4Time app can provide a quick snapshot of a business’s daily, weekly, or monthly progress. More importantly, the Bill4Time mobile dashboard is where users spend most of their time as it summarizes and charts all of the most important billable hours and account balances — right at your fingertips.

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Track Time & Expenses by Client and Projects

Time tracking is one of the best ways firms can ensure their billing is accurate. The easier firms make time tracking, the more accurate and efficient their billing can be.

In order to make time tracking a habit, it should be a quick and easy process.

Bill4Time’s mobile app has a one-tap timer that allows you to easily track billable and nonbillable time quickly and efficiently. The mobile app also syncs any offline data, so you don’t have to worry about missing any billable hours when you’re out of the office.

Providing this simple way to track time on the go should instill a habit of tracking all hours no matter where someone is working. This allows you to bill your clients more accurately, increasing trust and transparency in your billing process — while ultimately saving you time and money.

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Client & Matters Project Management

With a firm’s growing to-do list, there are always a variety of clients and matters to organize and manage. Having your firm’s docket in your pocket allows you to easily manage your practice on the go. With Bill4Time’s mobile app,  you can access, add, and edit client or project details wherever you are.

Being able to access your clients and their matters directly on your phone means you can handle any updates while you’re away from your desk. In addition to having your case and client information at your fingertips, you can access any finances related to your cases through the “Projects” page on the Bill4Time mobile.

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Get a Demo

Bill4Time offers plenty of tools for time tracking, project management, and document management. Bill4Time ensures you can organize files, plan your calendar and tasks, communicate with clients, and manage your firm from anywhere. You can download the Bill4Time app on Apple Store or Google Play today. If you want to learn more about Bill4Time and how it can help your firm implement time tracking to reach your firm’s goals, schedule a demo today.

Filed Under: Blog

Task Management for Law Firms: Increase Productivity with Bill4Time

April 14, 2023 By Carole Poster Leave a Comment

It’s no secret that law firms can have a large number of tasks to complete at any given time. From administrative duties and court cases, to client intake meetings and discovery calls, there’s no shortage of tasks. With the intricacies of a law firm’s workload, it’s no surprise that many small legal firms are looking to task management software to help manage their ever-growing to-do list.

Bill4Time makes task management easy by storing all your business’s tasks, creating your own custom workflows, and tracking time, all in one platform. Below, we’ll discuss the importance of task management for small businesses and law firms and why Bill4Time is the perfect solution for your task management needs.

How Bill4Time Simplifies Task Management

Firms have a lot going on. That’s why it’s important to have the proper task management software to keep your business running efficiently. Bill4Time has many different features to help manage tasks, follow workflows, track time, and more.

Workflow Automation

Prioritizing tasks is one of the most important steps you can take when managing your firm’s workload. Firms are running nonstop, so it’s easy for staff to get distracted when new tasks or cases get added to their plate. Prioritizing tasks allows you to get what’s most important done first, then follow up with other tasks. If firms don’t have a solid system in place to do so, they can find themselves overwhelmed with to-do lists and overdue tasks.

Bill4Time’s customizable workflow automation allows you to create custom workflows for tasks that are repeated often — syncing those tasks with your calendar — ensuring you don’t miss a step in the process. Firms can even make relative due dates for each task, designing a comprehensive workflow that will keep employees on track from intake to project conclusion.

Task Assignment and Delegation

When choosing software to assist with task management for small businesses, it’s helpful to look at the big picture. Large projects and cases require a detail-oriented approach, one that needs frequent attention and management. Using digital task management software can help your projects be completed on time.

Using the tasks tab in Bill4Time gives you the ability to create and assign tasks for specific projects. With custom descriptions and details; high, medium, or low priorities to be designated to individual staff; and due date customization, Bill4Time gives you complete control over your project task lists — ensuring all your tasks are completed by their due date.

Time Tracking and Reporting

Bill4Time enables you to capture lost revenue by accurately tracking time. Some businesses lose more than 30% of billable time due to poor time tracking. Without knowing the essentials of time tracking, some may look to sticky notes, Word documents, or even mental time tracking to record their hours. Digital time tracking software like Bill4Time can create an efficient time tracking system for your firm.

Track how much time each task takes and manage your firm’s productivity with Bill4Time’s time tracking feature. Know how much time each task takes to complete, then send it directly to an invoice.

Managing Tasks on the Go and Staying Productive Anywhere

Task management software is most effective when users can access it from anywhere. Pairing your task management software to a mobile device allows you to stay up-to-date on any and all tasks on the go.

Bill4Time’s mobile app creates an adaptable environment for task management. Features users can access on Bill4Time’s desktop software can also be accessed on the mobile app. This allows your firm to create time entries, manage your workflow, and even send invoices while away from the office – adding productivity from the mobile-friendly environment.

Integrate with All Your Systems

One of the best ways to increase firm efficiency is making sure all of your tools can sync with the task management software you use. With the Bill4Time Partner Program, users can further excel by better managing different aspects of their business. With integrations like QuickBooks, Google Calendar for mobile calendaring, and Box and NetDocuments for document management, your business is set for success.

Use the Search Function to Manage Work

There’s no easy way to manually search through the tasks on your firm’s to-do list. That’s why having a search function to easily filter by priority, due date, client, matter, status, and even assignee allows users to make the most of their task list without having to comb through every one.

Bill4Time has a search function for both task management and workflows, getting you to the task you’re looking for as fast as possible. Being able to find information quickly makes business easier, freeing up time to complete tasks instead of constantly searching for them.

Get a Demo

Want to take a deep dive into all the features Bill4Time can bring to the table? Schedule a demo today to speak with a Bill4Time expert and learn how Bill4Time can increase your small business’s productivity and help with task management.

Filed Under: Blog

Simplify Accounting with Bill4Time’s Automatic Payment Allocation

April 12, 2023 By Carole Poster Leave a Comment

As a business owner, you have a variety of skills that make your business successful. The knowledge of your services, your expansive prior experience, and passion for your business. Out of the many business operations, one that some may shy away from is accounting, but it doesn’t have to be scary or seem impossible. If accounting is taking up a majority of your time, the simplest answer could be accounting software. Bill4Time simplifies your accounting to free up time that you can dedicate to other areas of your business requiring your attention.

Let’s dive into our payment allocations feature and discuss how Bill4Time has made it easy for your business to get paid in full and faster.

What is payment allocation?

Payment allocation is when a payment has been applied to an invoice line’s balance on a certain account. As a business, keeping up with your accounting is important to maintain the reins of your income and spending.

In layman’s terms, when you apply a payment from a client to an account or invoice, you essentially tie both the payment and the account together. Keeping track of the spending and payments with specific accounts is crucial to staying on top of your accounting. If you discover a client is behind on a payment, you can catch it quickly rather than months down the road.

Importance of Payment Allocation

Payment allocation is important for a variety of reasons. If you properly allocate payments to your business’s invoices, your reports will be much more accurate. This allows you to make well-informed decisions when it comes to the future of your business.

Having an updated and clear report of your business income allows you to easily run reports, get information on your business, and even make filing taxes easier.

As a business owner, you should be focused on the big picture decisions. Payment allocation frees up your time from chasing payments and instead allows you to focus on the important tasks for your business. Most businesses find that clients pay quickly if given an online payment option.

How to Automatically Allocate Payments in Bill4Time

Allocating payments in Bill4Time is easy because we understand how important this step in your billing process is. Getting paid in full and on time is key to keeping your business running efficiently. Here’s what it looks like to allocate payments within Bill4Time. 

In order to allocate payments, you first must send an invoice to a client. As soon as an invoice is sent to your client, any payment made towards that balance will automatically be allocated to the account tied to the invoice, no further action needed on your end.

Your client will receive an invoice that looks similar to the picture below. All they have to do to start the payment process is select the “Pay Now” button.

After they initiate payment, they’ll see a payment screen to enter their payment amount and first and last name. Once they do, they will be taken to a screen (like the one below) to enter their payment details and submit payment.

Once an online payment has been processed, all payment information will be automatically displayed in your Bill4Time account and the allocation will be complete. 

In the event that you receive a paper check, or one off payment not directly attached to an invoice, you can manually allocate payments on the accounting tab in Bill4Time.

You can receive and apply payments faster and easier in multiple places with Bill4Time. You can learn more about receiving and applying payments in your account by reading our help article, Receiving and Applying Payments to Client Accounting.

This process is quick and easy, allowing you and your clients to enjoy the added benefit of streamlined online payments. Whether they use eCheck or a credit card, clients can pay in just a few clicks and you get access to your funds.

For law firms, maintaining compliance is vital to keeping your business credible and reputable. Bill4Time Payments is 100% compliant with the American Bar Association (ABA), IOLTA, PCI, and all 50 state bar associations. Payment allocation in Bill4Time has a butterfly effect. It makes accounting and billing easier, syncs data easily, and matches payments to client accounts so you can focus on other business operations that need your attention.

You can find more information on payment allocation and learn about other features Bill4Time has to offer by getting a custom demo today.

Filed Under: Blog

Why Systematic Time Tracking for Lawyers is a Must in Every Modern Law Firm

April 6, 2023 By Carole Poster Leave a Comment

In today’s fast-paced and dynamic legal industry, time is more valuable than ever before. As a law firm’s book of business grows, it becomes increasingly important for lawyers to track their time accurately and efficiently. This is why firms should incorporate systematic time tracking for lawyers.

Systematic time tracking is any time tracking system accessible in one place, whether digital, a software, or on a network. Ensuring all time tracking is done in the same software increases the clarity of the records. Using the same time tracking system across your firm allows you to see the work being done in real time, not divorced from other platforms, and in a format any staff member can understand.

Law firms can benefit from systematic time tracking because of the increased efficiency, productivity, transparency, and client trust and satisfaction it provides when done successfully. On the other side of the coin, law firms without a reliable and consistent time tracking process leave themselves at risk for billing disputes, and missing out on billable hours due to simple mistakes.

Systematic time tracking allows anyone at your firm to track time quickly, from anywhere, and in the same structured format. Below, we outline some of the benefits and ways to start systematic time tracking for lawyers.

Benefits of Systematic Time Tracking

While time tracking for lawyers may seem like it is purely administrative, there are also quantifiable reasons to incorporate this process into daily tasks for your law firm. With lawyers working long hours to keep up with client demand, it’s essential to track time spent on each task accurately. Let’s explore these benefits in depth.

Boost your Firm’s Efficiency

There are quite a few ways that law firms can boost their efficiency, systematic time tracking may be the simplest way to do so. As managers, understanding what takes the most time and what’s most profitable for your firm can help you delegate tasks in the future — allowing you to focus on what’s most important to your firm.

With Bill4Time, your firm can batch invoices, apply payments to current invoices, create invoice summaries and more quickly and easily.

Increase Staff Productivity

Additionally, for those that manage law firms, systematic time tracking can help you get the most out of your staff and increase the firm’s overall productivity. As managers review work reports from time sheets, there’s an opportunity to evaluate productivity levels.

Are staff able to complete tasks within a scheduled timeframe? What changes could be implemented to increase productivity? These questions can help managers assess staff performance as business increases, reducing bottlenecks and increasing productivity.

Provide Transparent Billing to Clients

When firms can accurately bill and back up their work with detailed reports, they have an easier time billing. Having the ability to provide records of time spent and details on those tasks on an invoice, helps foster trust between firms and their clients. When clients trust firms, they are more likely to pay their invoices in full, and in a timely manner.

Firms that keep a clear and organized record of work completed and by who that work was done can bill clients with transparency and confidence in their billing process.

Clients often delay remitting payment if they don’t understand the invoice. Bill4Time allows you to provide clients the details needed to pay you quickly and offer online payment options to get paid quickly.

Maintain Cost-Effective Practices

Instead of having a million different ways of time tracking across your firm, uniting staff to use one helpful time tracking software like Bill4Time can save time and money. Bill4Time reduces the risk of billing disputes, lost billable hours, and administrative costs.

Risks of Manual Time Tracking

While there are many benefits of time tracking for lawyers, there are also risks associated with not keeping a solid record of your firm’s billable hours. Manual time tracking can be extremely unorganized, leaving your firm at risk of losing potential billable time, high administrative costs, and more. Manual time tracking can be anything from scribbling on a piece of paper, trying to master Microsoft Excel, or even keeping track of your time mentally.

Without keeping an organized and clear record of billable hours, you can leave your firm vulnerable to billing disputes, high administrative costs, and other risks that cost your firm money.

Losing Billable Time (and Revenue)

Law firm profitability is top-of-mind for many partners and managers. One of the easiest ways to lose revenue is to not bill for hours worked. Seems simple, right? However, it’s estimated firms may lose up to 10% of their billable time if they wait until the end of the day to record it, according to the American Bar Association. If they wait days — that number could jump up to 25%. A quarter of your revenue could be lost due to a lack of organization.

Vulnerability to Billing Disputes

What happens when a client disputes an invoice? If firms don’t keep a coordinated record of what’s been worked on and done, how can they ethically bill a client? If firms get billing disputes and can’t find accurate records of work done, client trust is lost and word can spread quickly — ultimately costing your firm money either in litigation or time.

High Administrative Costs

The billing process can take up a large portion of time that could be spent doing more productive (or lucrative) tasks. With each record needing to be sorted through and billed directly to the client, this process can take weeks if it’s done manually. Without using an effective time tracking software, you may have to pay high administrative costs to keep up-to-date on client billing and getting your firm paid on time.

Decreased Client Experience

Losing a client’s trust often means the end of a working professional relationship. With inaccurate or unreliable time tracking for lawyers, clients may not be billed properly, work can get lost, or tasks may not be finished in time, leading to late work and potentially lost cases. Time is of the essence for you and your clients. The best way to respect a client’s time spent working with you is to accurately track yours so they feel as comfortable as possible using your services now and in the future.

How to Start Systematic Time Tracking

Luckily, implementing processes that keep time can be as easy as incorporating software into your firm’s operations. You can start by getting organized and take into account the benefits and risks mentioned earlier. Whether you’re new to time tracking completely or just now implementing it into your firm, it’s never too late to start.

What to Look for in Digital Time Tracking Software

There’s a lot to look for in your digital time tracking software to make sure it’s the best fit for your law firm. Some key features may include reporting, task management, customer support, billing and invoicing, expense tracking, online payments and more. The more your digital time tracking software can do, the better your law firm can focus on your clients, taking advantage of the time you get back.

Track Time Across Devices

With today’s fast-paced work environment, having access to your time tracking software from anywhere can be crucial to maintaining accurate records. Bill4Time’s mobile app keeps you connected on the go. You can access data in Bill4Time from any device, giving you access to client and matter details from anywhere. With the one-tap timer you can track time and expenses easily, granting your firm the advantage of being mobile.

The Bill4Time mobile app allows you to work on-the-go. Record billable and non-billable time, separately track internal non client time, and track staff, contractors and consultants for precision and accuracy.

Online Payments

The more ways you offer your clients to pay your firm, the more likely you are to get paid. With credit card or ACH payment options, you and your clients will enjoy the added benefit of quick and easy online payments with Bill4Time Payments.

Don’t forget about Bill4Time’s billing and invoicing features. You can create, print, or email professional, detailed, and branded invoices in minutes. Bill4Time Payments makes it easy to set payment terms, currency, and late fees and know the status of any invoice with a single click. 

Maintaining firm compliance is as important as your reputation. Being a reputable firm means complying with all local, state, and federal regulations. To ease your mind and keep your firm in compliance, Bill4Time Payments is 100% compliant with the American Bar Association (ABA), IOLTA, PCI, and all 50 state bar associations.

Ease of Use

Law firms commonly don’t have the luxury of time with pressing deadlines and client matters. Time wasted trying to learn software that should be intuitive isn’t worth the effort. Bill4Time’s easy-to-use interface and integrations allow your firm to quickly make the most of digital time tracking software.

Whether you’re on the go or at the office, Bill4Time makes time entry simple — simultaneously run timers, record multiple time entries in one screen and automatically convert appointments into time entries.

Customer/Software Support

If any issues arise with your time tracking software, you want to have a team that has your firm’s back. Bill4Time’s incredible customer support team is here to help. With phone, email, and live chat options, a 24/7 knowledge base, and training videos, Bill4Time wants you and your firm to be successful.

Use Bill4Time For All Your Time Tracking Needs

Adding time tracking software to your firm is as simple as signing up for Bill4Time.

Bill4Time offers plenty of tools for time tracking, project management, and document management to ensure you can organize files, plan your calendar and tasks, communicate with clients, and track time to improve your productivity from anywhere.

If you want to learn more about Bill4Time and how it can help your firm implement time tracking to reach your firm’s goals, schedule a demo today.

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