Stop leaving money on the table
With manual workflows, lawyers collect 75-80% of the time they bill. With electronic workflows, this percentage is anywhere from 90% to the whole bill. The solution is not complex:
- When you automate the billing workflow, you shorten the billing cycle.
- When you get your invoices to your clients in a timely manner, they pay faster and a greater percentage of the bill.
- And if you don’t have to explain the invoice to them, three months after you did the work, you have saved yourself another half hour.
Let’s break this down — and we’re going to use LeanLaw legal billing software, the premier legal app in the QuickBooks Online app store, as the example:
Automate Timekeeping and Invoicing
When you keep time electronically in LeanLaw — on your phone, on your PC, wherever feels good to you — you can automatically push the details of the time entered to your invoice. You’re halfway there. And you don’t have to ask anyone to type it up for you — you can make any changes right in the draft invoice.
Electronic Invoicing
Instead of sending a paper invoice, an electronic invoice arrives immediately. And if you provide a way for the client to pay online, you’re giving them no reason to postpone payment. They can click the payment button then and there. LeanLaw gives you the opportunity to use the Intuit Payment Network which expedites the payment process — all natively built into the workflow.
Trust Accounting
If you take IOLTA trust retainers, you can get paid immediately. LeanLaw turns what was once a daunting 12-step process in QuickBooks into just a few clicks. Confido Legal has partnered with LeanLaw to make the process even smoother by eliminating the busy work through automated trust requests and associated payments. Payments can be made through bank transfers instead of credit cards which will reduce your fees by 60-80%.
Reporting
Automated collection reports in LeanLaw give you easy visibility to what has not yet been billed or collected. You can automate reminders to your clients that they need to pay their bills. You can review what invoices need to be produced and when payments were made — all tied into the real-time data from QuickBooks Online.
The law is complex, but your financial workflows don’t have to be. Once you’ve set up your automated workflows with LeanLaw and QuickBooks Online, collection is just a few clicks away.
