Bill4Time Launches Mobile Time Billing App with “At-a-Glance” Features for On-Demand Insight to Business Operations

October 13, 2015 By Bill4Time Staff Leave a Comment

SMBs can Now Easily Manage Critical Time Billing Activities On-the-Go

October 13, 2015 — Bill4Time (www.bill4time.com), a leader in time billing software for legal, accounting, consulting and service businesses, announced today the release of Bill4Time mobile v2.3 “At-a-Glance” features for Apple^® iPhone and Android^® smartphones. These new features provide mobile users the ability to better navigate the ever-changing landscape of managing a small business. Bill4Time “At-a-Glance” features offer maximum flexibility and unparalleled control of any legal practice, accounting firm or service business through a mobile device. Staying in touch with clients while accurately tracking and invoicing billable time has never been easier. V2.3 of the Bill4Time app for iPhone is available now at the iTunes store or at the Google Play Store for Android.

As mobile usage continues to rise, running a business via a mobile device has not only become commonplace, it has become a necessity. A PeoplePerHour poll found that a staggering 73 percent of business owners use apps to run their business on a daily basis. Further, a recent report conducted by AT&T and the Small Business & Entrepreneurship (SBE) Council, small business owners have netted $67.5 billion a year from implementing smart phones and tablets in their day to day business activities. The study found that smartphones are saving business owners time (124 billion hours) and money ($32.3 billion) annually. Bill4Time recognized this trend and created “At-a-Glance” features to enable service businesses of all sizes to conduct business and service clients while in the office or on the go.

“These new ‘At-a-Glance’ features make it so much easier to run my construction business, especially when traveling from one job site to the next,” said Barin Yoder, general contractor of Yoder Construction. “With just a click of my Android phone, I can stay on top of time, materials and other expenses to ensure each project is on-schedule. Bill4Time makes it easier for me to run my business.”

New Bill4Time Mobile At-a-Glance Features include:

Time & Expenses. Users can review entered time and expenses for a client or specific project with a quick touch and a swipe from any iPhone or Android device. With the new search bar at the top of the Bill4Time app, users can quickly filter by client or project, and retrieve time and expenses while on the go.
Matters/Projects. Mobile users can click on the new Matters/Projects tab and enter the project description as an entry field. Businesses can stay abreast of client activity on-demand and respond to client inquiries quickly.
Client Management. Businesses expect to use technology anywhere, anytime to interact with clients. This release provides first glance access to client telephone and email information. Through the Client tab, users can quickly search for a client and place a call directly from their smartphone screen by simply clicking the telephone number. Users can also create and send an email by simply clicking the client’s email address. Staying connected with clients has never been so easy.
Balance. Bill4Time legal and business users can better manage business while on the go. Easily search and review account history, outstanding balances and more. Click to view invoices and quickly email invoices directly from your smartphone. When a client pays the invoice through the BIll4Time client portal, users can view the update to the account on their mobile device. With the new Balance tab feature, insight to a business’ financial health is available 24/7.
Scheduling. The Bill4Time Scheduler has been redesigned to provide “At-a-Glance” viewing. The monthly scheduler or weekly tasks display is larger and easier to read, allowing users to immediately view time commitments. Bill4Time offers users easily customizable event types and a color coded display for instantaneous information.

“Bill4Time is a fast, secure, cloud-based business management software that helps lawyers, accountants and service providers of all types better manage their business while staying connected to clients,” said Jeremy Diviney, president of Bill4Time. “The new Bill4Time mobile ‘At-a-Glance’ features offer on-demand search and review functionality, providing the information business owners need, when they need it to efficiently run their business from anywhere, anytime.”

For more on Bill4Time Mobile ‘At-a-Glance’ features, visit https://www.bill4time.com/mobile-time-tracking. For more information on Bill4Time for Legal go to: https://www.bill4time.com/legal-billing-software. For Consultants, go to https://www.bill4time.com/time-and-billing-software-for-consultants.

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Contact:
Cherie Wentz Blehm
425.559.9790
cwblehm(at)bill4time.com

TechnoLawyer’s SmallLaw Review of Bill4Time

October 12, 2015 By Bill4Time Staff Leave a Comment

“You must breathe to stay alive. Your law firm must bill to stay alive. Ideally, both should occur without much effort. In this issue of SmallLaw, estate planning lawyer Chandra Lewnau explores the deep billing feature set of cloud app Bill4Time. Chandra covers setup, the dashboards and user experience, key features such as timekeeping, invoicing, and reporting, the mobile apps, integrations, and of course the price. Should you consider Bill4Time?” Read the review to find out.

“Bill4Time is a mature application.

It’s clear that considerable developer time and effort have gone

into both the user interface and the feature set.”

About the Reviewer

Chandra Lewnau reviewed Bill4Time Firm Manager. She is an estate planning and elder law attorney in the Seattle area. Chandra first became interested in the estate planning field as a student attorney at University of Texas’ Elder Law Clinic. After being admitted to the Texas bar in 1999, Chandra worked for a small law firm where she gained experience in a wide range of transactional and litigation practice areas, including will contests, fiduciary litigation, and other matters.

New Bill4Time Multi-Select Reporting Feature

October 9, 2015 By Kristin O'Neill 2 Comments

Take your reporting to the next level with the new Bill4Time Multi-Select feature! On Monday, October 19, you can say goodbye to running reports for separate clients and hello to simplification. With this new feature, you will be able to select multiple Clients, Projects, Users and Account Managers when running any of your reports. In addition, you will also be able to exclude selections as well.

Let’s say you want to run a report for a few select clients. Once you get to the client drop down, start typing in your client’s name and select it from your list. Your selection will stay saved so you can continue to choose more clients (if needed). You can select up to 100 clients at a time. Once you’re finished, you can then pull down your Project drop down and it will list each project grouped by your Clients. Once you’ve selected the desired filters, click to run the report. The report will list all the details for just those selected clients, projects, users, or account managers.

You can also start with your Account Managers first. If you want to run a report for specific Account Managers and then select what clients from their list to run the report for. You can choose your Account Managers first, then go back to your Clients which will then only show the clients that they manage.

Last but certainly not least, you will be able to exclude these selections as well. Let’s say you added your company as a Client and employees track company work for expenses or non-internal related items to it. You probably don’t need these totals calculating in your actual revenue so now instead of manually doing the math, you can use the Exclude selected option to resolve this.

Go through the same process as above to select your client that you want to exclude. Then, to the right you’ll see a magnifying glass icon. If you hover over this icon, it will notify you that this is specific to excluding these filters from your report. Now when you run the report, it will run the details of all clients except for the client(s) you excluded. The same process will be for your Projects, Users and Account Managers.

We hope you enjoy this new feature being released on Monday, October 19! Learn more by watching this video at https://youtu.be/wq5b8de2Gy8.

Tip of the Week: Mnemonics & Customization

October 9, 2015 By Kristin O'Neill Leave a Comment

Within your Bill4Time plan you can customize the types of wording and phrases to suit the needs of your company. If you go to Settings – System tab you can edit the settings to view and edit your Mnemonics. Your Project Mnemonic can be changed from Project to Matters, Cases, Tickets, or whatever terminology you use. Your Labor Mnemonic can be changed to Services, Services Rendered, etc. You have your Activity Mnemonic which can be changed to Task, Categories, etc. Lastly, you have your Taxes. You can use these mnemonics to change your “Tax” text or use them as an “Admin Fee” which you can setup on the firm level or per client.

For further customization in your Settings you can update your Custom Lists to change the different Types you will see throughout the system.

At Bill4Time, we offer the features you need…and most of all, the features you use. Easy to use, dependable and designed with you in mind—that’s Bill4Time. If you haven’t tried us, register for a free 30-day trial and see for yourself.

Stripe – Your PayPal Alternative

October 7, 2015 By Bill4Time Staff 1 Comment

Online payments take the work out of getting paid. Period.

This is why we have integrated with Stripe as an alternative to PayPal for collecting online payments. It’s easier for your customers to pay you in the way they feel most comfortable.

Stripe is simple and is extremely safe. See what others have been saying about Stripe:

“Stripe encourages good developer security practices, while PayPal gives developers room to make bad decisions. They’ve recently taken steps to provide better options, but these options still aren’t as secure as Stripe.” – memberful.com

“Stripe processes transactions on its own network. This means no sensitive data actually touches your servers, so hackers won’t have access to your business’s or customers’ credit card information if you’re ever the victim of a cyberattack.” – businessnewsdaily.com

Bill4Time offers a complimentary Client Portal integrated with Stripe and is ready for you to get paid online. If you don’t have a Stripe account don’t worry, it’s simple to setup right from your Client Portal and doesn’t come with monthly fees or outrageous transaction charges.

Your Bill4Time Client Portal in a nutshell:

One Time Setup – Setup a client in your portal once and you’re done. Everything afterward is automated!
Automatic email notifications – Once you finalize an invoice, your client will automatically be notified via email.
Client Side Dashboard – Your client has access to payment history as well as paying invoices or applying a payment to the total outstanding amount.

Bill4Time makes running your business easier. To learn more, register for a free trial.

Tip of the Week: How to Setup Flat Fees

October 2, 2015 By Kristin O'Neill Leave a Comment

Within the program there are multiple ways to setup Flat Fees depending on the scenario you have.

Say for example you want to bill a flat fee once for services along with hourly work. You can open a new time entry and change the Entry Type from Hourly Work to Flat Fee work. This allows you to create a one-time flat fee entry to bill along with any hourly entries.

The other two options are setup on the Project page. You can set the Billing Method to either Flat Fee—One Time or Reoccurring.

With “One Time” all time entries will default to non-billable so you can track only hours worked but not bill any amounts. You can then bill the flat fee each time when needed by choosing the Add Closing Fee on your Project Details page.

When a Project is set to Flat Fee. Reoccurring defaults all time entries to bill at the flat rate you set. This scenario comes in handy when only a flat fee monthly is needed to bill the client.