Track and Bill Time with New LawPay Pro

It’s easy to assume that a company we’ve known for years does only that thing we first knew them for. Attorneys know LawPay as the preeminent payment processor for law firms. LawPay is expanding its offerings to include invoicing, trust accounting, time tracking, and expense tracking.

These new LawPay Pro features will “round out your billing management,” according to Leiasa Horanic, senior product manager at AffiniPay. LawPay continues to offer the features you know and love. The added tools of LawPay Pro put more relevant information and actions in one place.

Invoicing

LawPay Pro expands on the existing “Quick Bill” feature with the ability to create invoices with individual line items in five easy steps:

1. Select a contact to receive the bill or create a new contact directly from the invoicing screen.
2. Optionally, select a case to attach to the invoice. You can invoice without adding cases.
3. Select the bank account you want the funds deposited into.
4. Set the payment terms and due date.
5. Add line items to the invoice. Each line item has seven fields:
   • a) type of entry, which can be a time entry, expense, or flat fee amount;
   • b) the date for that item;
   • c) activity type, chosen from a customizable list;
   • d) note or description;
   • e) the hourly or flat rate;
   • f) the quantity, such as the number of hours; and
   • g) whether the item is non-billable.

Saving the invoice creates a draft for the user to preview and then send to the contact. The invoice includes payment options the firm makes available in LawPay. The firm can set the default text for the message accompanying the invoice, which users can edit on a per-message basis.

The contact receives the invoice via email, with a PDF version attached, and can click a “pay now” button or pay by scanning a QR code. Clicking the email link or scanning the QR code takes the contact to the payment page for that specific invoice rather than the firm’s “generic” LawPay page, saving the firm additional tracking and reconciliation work.

Finally, LawPay Pro allows firms to record payments on behalf of contacts, like when a client calls with a credit card to pay an invoice. LawPay notes how each invoice is paid, so the firm can look back and see which clients pay by which method. And, of course, invoices can be paid from a trust account.

Trust Requests

With LawPay Pro, the firm can issue new trust requests and trust replenishment requests. When making a trust request, the user answers six questions:

1. Select a contact to receive the trust request.
2. Enter the amount requested.
3. Enter a due date.
4. Select a trust account to receive the deposited funds.
5. Optionally, allocate the received funds to a particular case.
6. Enter the email text to accompany the request. The firm can set default text.

From the client’s perspective, the experience upon receiving the trust request is similar to receiving an invoice.

The Billing tab is the central place to track the statuses of invoices and trust requests. Users can see whether the recipient has viewed the invoice or trust request email. Each invoice and trust request has a complete history of when it was created, sent to the client, paid, and by what method.

Time and Expense Tracking Entering the Time and Expenses

LawPay Pro includes time and expense tracking, so users can enter events and record expenses as they occur. At month’s end, the firm can generate an itemized invoice for the contact.

Expense entry is handled similarly to time entry, except users can attach receipts to expenses. At any point, one can go to the Billing tab and select Time Entries or Expenses to see all open and invoiced time entries or expenses.

Invoicing from Recorded Time and Expense Entries

At billing time, go to the Billing tab, then Invoices, and click Create Invoice. LawPay Pro prompts the user to select a contact and then a case. Once the user selects a case, all non-invoiced entries, both for time and expenses, associated with that case appear as “pre-filled” line items. The user can change any line item or add items not previously entered. Finally, the user can include a discount, either by dollars or percent, off the invoice.

More “It’d Be Great If” Features

For current LawPay firms, Pro is a superset of the existing product. In addition to the new billing tools, LawPay Pro enhanced the payments, contacts, and reporting features.

Payments

LawPay Pro’s Payments tab contains a running list of all transactions. Users can filter by bank account, both operating and trust accounts, see open invoices and trust requests on a per-client basis, and collect payments from clients who phone in credit cards or who use offline payments.

Contacts

The Contacts tab benefits from the added invoicing features of LawPay Pro. Contacts can link to cases for basic tracking cases associated with a given contact. Time tracking also benefits from this linkage since most lawyers think of entering time for a case rather than a contact, especially for any having two or more cases. The contact’s billing tab is the gem. It displays a contact’s entire trust history, trust requests, invoices, trust allocations, and scheduled automatic payments in one place.

Reports

LawPay Pro builds on LawPay’s current reporting infrastructure. New or improved reports for Pro include:

• an aging invoice report showing overdue invoices;
• an accounts receivable report;
• a monthly transactions summary;
• a trust account summary;
• a trust account activity report; and
• a user time entry report.

See It All on the Dashboard

LawPay Pro’s dashboard, available on the Home tab, pulls everything together and gives users an overview of the firm. This one-stop-show shows key firm metrics regarding invoices, transactions, and time entries. LawPay Pro is currently in beta. Sign up for the early-access waitlist at LawPay.com

LawPay Pro Demo

The post Track and Bill Time with New LawPay Pro appeared first on Lawyerist.