How Time Tracking and Invoicing Systems Support Law Firms
Posted On: 3-February-2023
Created By: Lawsyst Team
Efficient time management and error-free invoicing are of high priority for every lawyer and law firm as they affect all other aspects of their business. Time directly influences productivity and client satisfaction while billing efficiency affects profitability and client experience. Since legal work is constantly restrained by time, law firms need to take the right step and use advanced time tracking, billing, and accounting system to streamline their day-to-day practice and support their business.
Modern time recording and billing software enable lawyers to track their billable hours, correctly invoice for their services, and receive payments in a faster and more accurate manner. These advanced time and billing software for law firms improve invoicing efficiency and accuracy and help law firms to improve their productivity. Time tracking and invoicing systems can also help law firms to optimize client billing and get more time to concentrate on client cases. Considering the benefits legal tech can offer to modern lawyers, investing in legal time and billing software will be a game changer for any law firm.
In today’s blog post, we will explain how time-tracking and invoicing systems can enhance law firm operations.
The traditional way of time tracking can lead to time wastage and create inefficiencies in your law firm. Let’s look at this scenario. You work on 10 different client cases throughout your day. You attend 2 client meetings, make 5 phone calls, and attend a hearing. Now to record your time, you manually write down the time you spend on each task, along with a brief note about milestones being completed. Consider that you spent around 10 minutes noting down times and descriptions for each task. Assume you have 20 attorneys working in your company. Now, multiply these 10 minutes by the number of attorneys in your law firm, which shows your law firm waste more than 3 hours in a day and 16 hours in a five-day week.
Considering you are billing at $350 per hour, those minutes spent on manual time recording equate to about $5,600 a week and $290,000 for the year. You see, how much money you are potentially throwing away just because of an inefficient and traditional way of time tracking. With an efficient time tracking program like Lawsyst, a modern law case management software, it only takes a few seconds to accurately record your time. The integrated time, billing, and accounting software for law firms also enable customized billing codes, so you don’t need to spend time noting down task descriptions. That means you can spend that otherwise wasted time on other important tasks, improving your firm’s productivity.
Now look at the way you invoice your clients and receive payments for your services. If you are using a manual billing and accounting system then certainly you are wasting your time on the error-prone invoicing process. You might be spending time collecting time-tracking records from each of your employees and then organizing and entering them into the manual billing system. On the other hand, modern time-tracking and legal accounting software like Lawsyst save you time when generating client invoices and also help you receive payments on time. Legal time recording and accounting software can reduce inefficiencies in your law firm, by automating and simplifying recurring tasks in your practice.
Manual time tracking and billing processes are not only time-consuming, but they also influence your client’s experience by affecting service delivery. Manual invoicing is also prone to human errors and thus can lead to either revenue losses for your firm or resulting in extra expenses for your client. Billing inefficiencies affect the level of client satisfaction and might lead to conflicts that will severely affect your business. With legal time and billing software, you can improve invoicing efficiency and accuracy in your firm by combining the time entry data and billing rates. By doing so, you will improve your service quality and client experience, ensuring a sustainable business.
Time entry is essential for the financial health of your law firm, but it is the most unfavorable legal task. However, you can make timekeeping a lot easier and enjoyable for your employees with legal time tracking and billing software for law firms like Lawsyst. Modern law firms in the UAE use Lawsyst’s accounting software to emphasize the importance of efficient time management for their firms and make the process of time entry easier. The integrated time recording and billing solution helps law firms streamline their workflow and enable better collaboration between departments.
Depending on your firm’s requirements, billing and accounting software can provide a level of detail that improves the accuracy of billing. Proper time tracking and billing system include the time spent on various tasks in a busy law firm such as phone calls, case research, lead follow-up, trial preparation, and travel to and from meetings. Without using suitable time recording and billing software for law firms, you may struggle to identify your billable hours and create accurate timesheets. Using advanced timekeeping and accounting software not only improves billing efficiency but offers a detailed invoice for transparency and trust with the client.
Accuracy in time recording and invoicing not only improves transparency in your firm but also helps you build your corporate image. Individuals seeking legal advice will always bend towards credible law firms that not only offer quick service but are also accurate in their pricing. You might already be offering your services at a competitive price but billing mistakes can lead to overcharging clients. Overcharging clients can sink them into financial problems and harm your image as well. Therefore, having the right tools for time tracking and billing is essential to avoid billing mistakes and unnecessary conflicts in your firm.
As a credible law firm, you don’t want to overcharge your client and harm your corporate image, but you don’t want to under bill either. However, you may under bill your clients due to inefficient time tracking and errors or oversight during manual invoicing. Traditional and error-prone billing process not only waste your time that otherwise would be spent on billable tasks but also leads to inaccurate invoicing and revenue losses. Therefore, get the right billing and accounting tool for your business and reduce error, stress, and time out of the timekeeping and invoicing process.
Legal time recording and billing software can track both billable and non-billable hours, so you can see where and how your staff spend their time. These tools can empower you to track if there are employees who are losing valuable time on unrelated tasks that impede the workflow. That means time tracking and billing software for law firms can help you with time management, performance monitoring, and invoicing so you can improve your firm’s efficiency and avoid revenue loss.
Your data is your most crucial asset as it is the key to making the best business decisions for your law firm. Cloud-based billing and accounting software for law firms records and maintains billing data tracks important analytics and creates accurate reports so you can understand the key performance indicators related to billing. Leveraging your data, you can make business decisions based on what’s working, and what areas you can improve on. For instance, you can use your firm’s invoicing data to give cost-saving recommendations to your legal departments.
With advanced accounting software for law firms, you can capture important data that will support process improvement and accountability in your firm. The AI-powered features in advanced time tracking and invoicing system provide greater detail for analysis and help analyze trends and determine the root cause of lower performance. You can also use your time recording and billing software for law firms to track employee performance and compensate them for fair and accurate work. Getting the right time tracking and billing software can make the process of timekeeping and invoicing much smoother and more efficient and help you leverage your billing data for better revenue and success.
Leading providers of legal billing and accounting software in the UAE like Lawsyst have made mobile versions of their law case management solutions that provide the same depth and breadth of functionality as their desktop counterparts. These mobile apps allow lawyers and other professionals in law firms to be more productive even outside the office. They also improve employees’ performance by helping them to manage their tasks on the go. For example, the capability to access, review, and edit pre-bills on a mobile phone from anywhere at any time.
Lawyers working from home may struggle more with timekeeping, but Lawsyst offers cloud-based time tracking and billing software that enables efficient time tracking from anywhere. The mobile version of the billing and accounting solution helps users to track hours accurately and update in real-time in the office as well as outside. By providing a secure and centralized platform for data storage, Lawsyst’s billing software has made life easier for on-the-go lawyers. Modern timekeeping and billing software for law firms offer limitless options for efficiency and accuracy, helping law firms to generate more revenue and improve client experience.
Implementing legal time tracking, billing, and accounting software like Lawsyst, helps law firms reduce inefficiencies, avoid errors, track individual lawyers’ time, and bill clients accurately for better revenue and business success. Lawsyst provides legal case management solutions for lawyers and law firms to accurately track time, manage clients and leads, track employee performance, manage expenses, receive payments, and more. Digitize your firm’s timekeeping and invoicing process with Lawsyst’s billing and accounting software for law firms.