From Arita's Desk	September 2013
Webinar will Feature Top Trends in Legal Billing Software Join me for Top Trends in Legal Billing Software on October 29, 2013 at 1:00 pm Eastern. I will discuss the most popular legal billing features and how and why your firm can take advantage of them. Products featured in the webinar will include Timeslips, Tabs3, Time/Billing Matters and ActionStep. This one hour webinar is sponsored by Savvy Training. This webinar will consist of an overview of newer capabilities of some of the most popular legal time and billing systems. These will include online time entry, flexible reporting, electronic bill delivery, integrated payment processing, and automatic time capture, to name a few. The registration fee is $99. To register email [email protected]. Tabs3 v17 Coming Soon Software Technology Inc. has announced version 17 of Tabs3 and PracticeMaster. Tabs3 will include an updated Split Billing feature that includes several options for displaying split information on bills and the ability to undo split billing. On the PracticeMaster side, look for automatic document naming and other document management improvements. General Ledger users will see improved handling of journal entries and an easier to edit Chart of Accounts. Time Matters 13 Adds Document Sharing Portal Time Matters and Billing Matters 13 is expected to launch October 2013. This version will include a secure file sharing option to grant your clients or others access to documents you have saved records for in Time Matters. Through integration with WatchDox, you can easily upload documents to the cloud with the access rights you set. Click here for a sneak preview of this function. Reminder for Billing Matters Accounting Matters Users! If you are using the accounting option in Billing Matters, you should not upgrade to Time Matters 13 until you have transitioned the accounting portion of Billing Matters to another product. The accounting functions (listed in the graphic here) will be gone in version 2013. I recommend transitioning to QuickBooks using the Billing Matters/QuickBooks link. Click here to read the LexisNexis white paper on the Billing Matters Accounting sunset, and contact me for help with this transition.	Getting Your Bills Out Are you having trouble getting your bills out on time? Are you struggling with electronic bill formats (LEDES98B, etc.)? Do you need an experienced biller? Consider outsourcing with us. For more information visit www.billsout.com. Your Time Matters Questions Answered: Can it do that? Several firms purchase Time Matters with just a few functions in mind. For example, some may love Time Matters for calendar functions but have no idea that they can manage all of the firm’s documents with Time Matters. In this issue I’ll share a few “can Time Matters do that?” questions and answers I’ve received from some of my clients. Q. Can Time Matters automatically synchronize with my Outlook calendar? A. Yes. Time Matters offers bi-directional synchronization with Outlook through Microsoft Exchange Server. In addition to Calendar, you may also synchronize your Outlook Tasks with Time Matters ToDo’s and Outlook Contacts with Time Matters Contacts. The synchronization happens in the background updating each program about every six minutes. Q. Does Time Matters have client conflict checking program? A. Conflict checking is built into Time Matters. You may enter any name (or other text) and it will search the entire database for that name, and display the context. Time Matters also has a document search utility that will search all of the documents on your server. Q. We have never established a system for mailing lists. Can we use Time Matters for that? A. Time Matters has excellent mailing list tools. I use a customized Contact form to indicate which mailing lists a contact belongs to. First list on paper the various types of lists you plan to handle with Time Matters. Then customize a section of your Default Contact form to provide Yes/No fields for your mailing list choices. Use Time Matters to print labels or envelopes and template to You can also use the Saved Tags feature to save a list of everyone who received the mailing. That way as contacts are added or removed from the list you can always see who received a certain mailing. For example, you might have saved tag lists of 2010, 2011 and 2012 holiday mailing recipients.
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