Bill4Time

Legal Time Billing Software

Bill4Time Staff

A/R Balances Summary for Invoices

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Does your client need an aging report?

The new A/R Balances Summary reports the status of un-paid balances directly on your client’s invoice. To get started with this new add-on, log into your account and below the welcome message, select settings.

Within your Firm Settings, navigate to:

Invoice Setup
This add-on can be applied to one or all new and existing templates.If you need an A/R Balances Summary for some and not all clients, create a separate template and apply at the client level.
Once a template has been chosen to adjust, click:

Edit Settings Icon
Located at the bottom in the Invoice Add-Ons group, select Attach A/R Balances Summary:

Checkbox & Save
Your Invoice Template will now show balances that are current and 30/60/90 days past due.

This add-on is a product of our Ideas & Feature Requests page. Do you need a feature or have an idea for Bill4Time? Submit a request here.

4 Reasons I had to Track Small Expenses

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As a prior owner/operator of a small design firm, my main focus has always been providing excellent customer service. With a “can do” and “will do” attitude, I built a diverse client base that had continuously increasing needs, which in turn, kept me extremely busy. At this time, an accountant was a luxury I couldn’t afford so I managed clients, projects and expenses from a spreadsheet. It worked initially until I could no longer count my clients on one hand!

Meeting in person over coffee or a meal has always been beneficial, especially when finalizing “the deal”. When it came down to proper expense tracking, I didn’t pay attention to the small expenses for the following reasons:

“I can write it off!”

I used my business card for all client meals and when the bills averaged $60, I rarely kept the receipt. Why would I? I had my credit card statement to refer back to.

“It’s part of doing business”

I would always cover the bill as a “thank you for doing business with us”. Once again I could write it off!

“I can average my profit margins”

To get an overall snapshot of client profitability, spreadsheets worked great.

Client onboarding was vital if I ever wanted to be my own boss; I found as the business grew so did my social spending. This provoked the realization that my accounting habits had to change. I could no longer afford the end of month rush to gather expense receipts, apply them to each client, and only hope to remember which project it was for.

Going way back through my records, I found my first thoroughly tracked project. This is an example of why I had to track the small expenses.

1-The little purchases add up faster than you think

For this particular project, the client was brand new and we had our shot at a long, lucrative relationship. To take it a step further I wrote start and end times on the back of each receipt to be accurate.

With all said, I spent $403 and an extra 11.75 hours on a project with time allotments of 3.5 hours for planning and 18 hours for production. To stay profitable I would need to complete 18 hours’ worth of work in 4 hours.  Well, I did the math and if I kept up with those habits, I would be working for free by the year end.

2- Know your habits by knowing your expenses

Meeting in person is the way I work best. However to offer competitive pricing and maintain my target profit margin, I had to cut back on my spending and incorporate an equal mix of email, phone and in-person communication.

3- Know your client’s habits by knowing your expenses

We love our clients and all their endearing quirks! By knowing my client’s behavior I became a project management pro and could precisely estimate the time needed, depending on the size of the project.

4- Proper pricing – the numbers don’t lie

No one likes going back to their client with a price increase; I actually fear it and would eat the difference.  By knowing what the time and monetary expense could be at the project level, I was able to price it right the first time.

Final thoughts: If you don’t already, track your time and expenses even if you won’t bill for them. This will provide good insight into the true profitability of each client and project.

For more information on this subject:

Expense Tracking – Staying organized without the clutter of receipts

Time Tracking – The simple and effective system

Project Management – Beyond Time Tracking

Client Management – Everything in one place

To tie it all together:

Real-Time Reports – Assess your business to increase your productivity

Bill4Time Review: Timekeeping & Billing Software for Law Firms

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Published by Jurispage | May 2014 by Andrew Cabasso

First up in our attorney-tested law firm timekeeping and billing software comparison series is Bill4Time. Bill4Time helps attorneys keep time on their matters and bill clients. Bill4Time is cloud-based, allowing you to easily take a free trial, try out their software, create your matters, log time, and bill your clients – from any computer, tablet, or phone.
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About Cloud Based Timekeeping Software

As I’ve mentioned before, I generally prefer cloud-based software for timekeeping and billing (software you access via the Internet rather than software installed on a server in your office). It’s secure, easy to use, easy to scale if I ever have more users, and the support is fantastic. Some attorneys have irrational fears of cloud-based software, worried about the security or potential ethical issues. While I am not your attorney and am not offering you legal advice, law firms are generally in compliance with the ABA model rules when they take “reasonable” precautions to protect their information (a good password helps). Realistically, it’s more likely that the server you installed in your office with out-of-date software and security updates is more vulnerable to attack than cloud-based software.

There’s also a very small learning curve with this and other cloud-based timekeeping / billing software. It was fairly easy for me to get started. I didn’t need a “consultant” to train me how to use Bill4Time. Though, when I had a question about a particular feature, their support team was incredibly responsive.

Features

Bill4Time was created with attorneys in mind, offering features that many attorneys would find helpful, and possibly essential. Bill4Time is definitely the most feature-rich software for timekeeping and billing clients.
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Bill4Time operates a lot like more full-featured case management software. Each individual matter has a dashboard screen where you can see not only related time entries, but schedules, documents, accounting and trust accounting, attorneys assigned to the matter, and their associated billing rates for the matter. While you may not need all of these features, they are at your disposal.

Regarding timekeeping, you can batch your time entries (this is something not many of the others seem to have). From one screen you can create multiple time entries. This is particularly useful if you are the type of user who creates entries all at once at the end of the day rather than keeping time as you go. In the competitors’ applications, you have to create each time entry one by one.

Bill4Time can integrate with the QuickBooks desktop and online versions. How this works is that you can export Bill4Time entries as a file type that QuickBooks can read, and then import it into your QuickBooks software. One issue though is that Bill4Time cannot transpose trust account information. Your trust account tab in Bill4Time stays where it is. If you want to keep tabs of your trust accounts, you need to do it manually in QuickBooks. Also, Bil4Time works one-way with QuickBooks – you can export Bill4Time info to QuickBooks, but not send QuickBooks information to Bill4Time. The two-way sync is something Ebillity has that Bill4Time doesn’t.

One interesting feature of Bill4Time is the scheduling ability. Attorney users can schedule calls with clients and have the related information become a time entry.

Bill4Time can be used offline. Bill4Time has an offline-enabled desktop widget. From your computer desktop, you can track your time (even when offline), start and stop your timer, and even add expenses.

Bill4Time is very attorney-friendly. Some other attorney-related Bill4Time features include:

·ABA Activity, Expense, and Task Codes
·LEDES and Litigation Advisor Exports
·Trust Accounting with Summaries and Reports
·Easily Check for Conflicts of Interest

Bill4Time touts its document storage ability that effectively turns Bill4Time into a Dropbox-like service, allowing users to store documents in the cloud and sync documents to particular matters. This may not be necessary for your needs.

Batch billing and invoicing with Bill4Time lets you create multiple time entries for different clients all on one screen, saving you time from clicking “New time entry” several times over.

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For invoicing, you can customize the layout, add your own logo, batch invoice multiple clients at once, create PDF bills to send via snail mail, or send bills via email to your client so they can pay online if you choose.

Down the road, Bill4Time is working on creating a “pay with credit card” without having the user go through PayPal.

User Permissions

Bill4Time has more features than competitors when it comes to user permissions and reports. Admin users can see all users’ login history with extensive, custom reporting features so you can see how productive particular users are (e.g. is a user billing as he/she goes or just logging in once a week to come up with hours?). These reporting features are by far the most comprehensive of any of the timekeeping applications out there. It goes beyond the standard reporting features of the other software providers.

Bill4time-reportsBill4Time also lets you set whether users can see their billing rate or any invoices. You can set billing rates per attorney or override to create new billing rates on specific matters.

Drawbacks

One potential drawback with Bill4Time is that if you are looking to receive invoice payments using this platform, you’re limited to using PayPal only (as of May 5, 2014 – it should be noted that Bill4Time’s staff is working on accepting credit cards without PayPal, but that’s not a released feature yet). I dislike this for two reasons – the first is that I’ve had PayPal freeze funds received, preventing them from getting into my account. I’ve also heard of similar stories others have had. PayPal claims it’s trying to crack down on fraud, but I’ve heard of no issues like this with any other payment gateway. The second issue with PayPal: when the user is billed and pays their bill, the payment screen has PayPal’s branding on it. Personally, I don’t like having PayPal branding on user payments because I think it’s unprofessional – I think there is an amateurish mental association with PayPal from the client perspective, as PayPal is primarily used for collecting donations, paying for eBay items, or paying for crafts from small online stores; PayPal doesn’t really have a “professional” association. However, to be fair, this may just be me and many clients may not see an issue with paying for legal services via PayPal. In fact, they may be impressed that they can pay for legal services online to begin with and not make much of the fact that it’s via PayPal.

Note: Following this publication, Bill4TIme launched a client payment portal with the option to pay online via credit card or PayPal. This integration offers clients to brand the portal and create a gateway for customers to pay for services easily online.

Another drawback, as mentioned above is that QuickBooks is one-way integration, requiring that you export your data to QuickBooks when needed, but if you’re doing accounting at the end of each month it may not be so burdensome.

Pricing & Support

Bill4Time has a straightforward per user cost:

$39.99 per month for your first user;

$9.99 per month for any additional user.

Regarding support, Bill4Time does a decent job. There are many user help videos and a large knowledge base. There’s also a live chat program so you can ask questions of a support staffer while in your client dashboard. Bill4Time does have a support line that had a bit of a wait when I did call, but they answered all of my questions fairly quickly. If you’re interested in trying it out, you can get a 30-day free trial with no credit card required.

About the Author: Andrew Cabasso
Andrew Cabasso is a practicing attorney and co-founder of JurisPage, an Internet Marketing firm specializing in online presence solutions for law firms including website design, SEO, and search marketing. He has given many lectures and CLEs on website design and Internet marketing to legal professionals. He is the author of Search Engine Optimization for Lawyers and The Complete Guide to Attorney PPC. Follow Andrew on Google+ or Twitter.

Android Update 2.0 Now Available!

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Just following the recent iPhone update, the new Bill4Time Mobile Android update is now available. Compatible with the latest devices and updated with a fresh “off the showroom floor” look, the new Bill4Time Mobile Android app now offers full 2-way syncing with the cloud. Time & expense entries done outside of the Android app will now be visible when synced.

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Never miss a minute and download today!

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512x512-IconBill4Time Mobile
Version 2.0

 

Sync from the Cloud
• Time Entries
• Expenses
• Schedule
• Clients
• Projects
• Account balances

Update 
• Time with activity timers
• Flat fee time
• Expenses

Want more out of your Bill4Time software? Let us know what you need as well as see what is coming up in the Ideas & Feature Requests section of our knowledge base!

Bill4Time Review: Time Tracker Reviews

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iPhone-and-Galexy-updateSummary
Bill4Time is a time tracking and invoicing software product that works well for a variety of professional services, such as lawyers, and accountants.  It has quality mobile friendly apps that make tracking time on the fly easy, and it has easy to use features for scheduling tasks and gives users the ability to upload documents.

Features
Time Tracking
Bill4Time is built around tracking time for various clients and projects for business professionals.  It can be configured for your particular business (for example CPAs or lawyers).  The time tracking fits this theme and makes it easy to allocate hours worked to a specific client or project.

One feature they could add to time tracking would be the ability to upload hours worked from an excel sheet.  This only is an issue when first migrating to the system, since anything after that will be added as worked, but for professional businesses trying to keep their records ordered this could be important.

Invoicing and Billing
This software is perfect for accountants and lawyers who need to bill clients based on hours worked, contingencies or on a flat rate.  The system is compliant with Legal Electronic Data Exchange (LEDES), which makes it the choice for many legal professionals.  Gives users the ability to customize invoices with text and upload logos.  Bill4Time has integrations for Quickbooks, PayPal and credit card processors.

Not intuitive for billing prepaid hours.

Projects
Bill4Time allows you to create multiple projects under a client, and then tasks under each project.  Each task can be assigned to a specific user to be completed by.  Again for lawyers Bill4Time distinguishes itself by incorporating American Bar Association (ABA) Task Codes directly into its task menu, making it simple and intuitive to bill clients for services rendered.

Pricing
Bill4Time has pricing plans for regular users and legal users.  For regular users they are:

Solo – one user $9.99/month
Pro – one user $19.99/month includes all features, can add additional users at $5.99/user
Enterprise – one user $59.99/month includes all features plus unlimited storage and premium support, can add additional users at $5.99/user

For legal users there are several added features that are available for every user level including, ABA activity expense, and task codes, LEDES and litigation advisor exports, trust accounting with summaries and reports and the ability to easily check for conflicts of interest.  The pricing plans are:

Solo – one user $19.99/month
Pro – one user $39.99/month includes all features, can add additional users at $9.99/user
Enterprise – one user $99.99/month includes all features plus unlimited storage and premium support, can add additional users at $9.99/user

Conclusion
If I were a lawyer or accountant this would be the time tracking and invoicing system I used, bar-none.  However since I’m not the features were a bit of overkill for what I need, and the pricing was prohibitive.