Regular, clear and transparent invoices, making payments easier, faster and more secure, to reduce the number of unpaid invoices.
Whichever billing method your practice uses, measuring and recording time spent is an invaluable tool. They are also time-consuming and can be perceived as surveillance, and therefore as a lack of trust on the part of management. However, when the tool used to measure time does not require any additional handling on a day-to-day basis when the information is automatically transferred to the files, and when the final control of recorded or unrecorded time spent is left to the lawyers, then time spent comes into its own: billing as close to reality as possible, analysis of team workloads, file profitability, etc.
Invoicing by time spent is not suitable for all types of files or clients, especially corporate and institutional clients who need visibility of their expenses to better manage their budgets. For them, subscription or fixed-price invoicing is much more predictable and easier to budget. These invoicing methods must be set up in the invoicing software before any work is carried out. The amounts or working times envisaged in the package or subscription must be specified and the schedule determined, and each diligence or time spent can then be deducted from the package or subscription.
Invoice management cannot be reduced to examining billable amounts, invoiced amounts, writes, etc. Lawyers must be able to maintain control over their invoicing and while mass, periodic invoicing is the rule for some firms, a prior examination of invoices about to be sent is useful for their possible weighting: additional deadlines, correction of past times etc. This pre-invoicing stage can be a good way to work on your client relations on a more personal level and to monitor your firm's invoicing.
Invoicing for a file is not simply a matter of adding up the time spent and the work carried out on its behalf. Depending on the nature of the case, its processing may involve a number of disbursements and costs that need to be added to the invoice. Invoicing software designed for lawyers makes it possible to add these items, while distinguishing them from the rest of the invoiced sums for greater transparency for clients. Similarly, payments made by customers should be entered as soon as they are received.
Healthy cash flow depends on the timely payment of invoices issued. As with any business, some of them may remain unpaid for various periods and reasons. Ensuring the payment of these invoices is critical to a law firm's good financial health. An adequate invoicing system will offer the option of sending reminders by programming mailings, with the user determining the content and timing of these mailings.
Insensitive clients in arrears are generally receptive to reminders, as long as they are courteous and preventive rather than abrupt and threatening, and unpaid invoices drop sharply after the first reminders. If you don't have the time to process these unpaid invoices, it is always possible to entrust their collection to specialized secretarial outsourcing services, sometimes even capable of intervening directly from the firm's invoicing software.
One of the reasons why many invoices issued by law firms remain unpaid comes down to the payment method. Cash payments are becoming increasingly rare, as are checks, especially since they must be deposited at the firm or sent by post... These anachronisms are destined to disappear in favor of online payment by bank card, spearheaded by e-commerce. Lawyers should be no exception. It is easier to set up if you already have a website: all your service provider has to do is add a page on which to host the payment interface.
However, the absence of a website (also a bit anachronistic) is no obstacle to implementing online payments. Your service provider will be able to offer you additional solutions, either via a web page dedicated to your firm's charter, or directly in your client area.
