Every matter open, with who is on it
A firm's work is not projects or tickets, it is matters, and the question that gets asked in a partners' meeting is which ones are open and who is carrying them. That is a lookup here, not an afternoon of asking.
A partner, practice manager or operations lead in a professional-services firm of roughly two to forty people, most often a law firm, whose unit of work is the matterNot a business closing its own books, not an accountancy practice working on clients' records, and not a firm shopping for marketing, a website or SEO
Law firm software for the partner who has to know what is unbilled
Law firm software is usually sold on everything it can do. This one is built around the four numbers a partner in a two-to-forty-person firm actually has to answer for: which matters are open and who is on them, what has been worked and not yet billed, whether the bills went out and were paid, and whether client money is held correctly and separately. The free worksheets on this site do that arithmetic on your own figures before you buy anything, and the paid plan keeps every matter, timesheet and bill as a record with a history you can show.
$79 a month for the whole firm, not per user. Cancel yourself any time.
Law firm billing systems
- The gap, a month
- $28,224
- Value at target
- $183,456
- Value actually recorded
- $155,232
Price the gap between target and recorded hours: fee earners, blended rate, target and actual hours a day and the working days in the month, into what the gap costs a month, a year, and per fee earner per week.
Open the Law firm billing systems- 2free tools on this site
- 250US searches a month
- matters, time and billing
The tools, free and open
Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
- Law firm billing systems Price the gap between target and recorded hours: fee earners, blended rate, target and actual hours a day and the working days in the month, into what the gap costs a month, a year, and per fee earner per week. Free
- Law firm invoicing software Build a matter's bill from what was actually recorded: hours, blended rate, the write-off taken on the line rather than the total, and disbursements passed through unmarked, into the fee, the bill total and your effective rate per recorded hour. Free
Matter, time, bill
Everything a firm has to answer for, kept in one record
What has been worked and not yet billed
Unbilled work in progress is the number most small firms cannot state on the day they are asked. On the worked example this site publishes, 38 days of it at $8,736 a day is $331,968 sitting in the firm rather than the bank.
Whether it went out, and whether it was paid
Recording time is only the first half. Realisation is what survives the write-off and the slow payer: at 86.5% on the same worked example, $183,456 of recorded value becomes $158,689 collected, a gap of $24,767 a month.
The answer is yours. Keeping it is Partnro Pro.
Keep this month's answer, and every month after it, without rebuilding the spreadsheet each time.
- Download the finished sheet as a file
- Send it without the Partnro line on it
- Save a matter's bill and reopen it next month
- Put your firm's name and logo on it
- Bills emailed to the client from the matter they came off
- Connect your own Stripe account and get paid online
- Connect your QuickBooks Online or Xero
$79 per month, whole team
$79 a month for the whole firm, not per user. Cancel yourself any time. Billed monthly. Cancel any time from your account page. Price and renewal terms are shown before checkout.