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The Time Tracking and Billing System Intuit Recommends
More than one million lawyers, paralegals, and other legal professionals need to track their expenses and time. And that's just in the United States. Sensing an opportunity, Intuit launched a cloud-based billing solution a few years ago called Time Tracker & Billing Manager. But it didn't pan out so the company recently shut down the service. Rather than leave its thousands of customers hanging, Intuit carefully evaluated its competitors, and then encouraged its customers to switch to a next-generation solution by a company whose management team has years of experience developing legal billing systems.
eBillity … in One Sentence
An Intuit Preferred Partner, eBillity is a secure cloud-based time tracking and billing solution with accompanying mobile apps.
The Killer Feature
Of all the professionals who bill for their time, lawyers likely have the most diverse needs. eBillity's designers focused on customizability and flexibility to meet these needs.
For example, you can create multiple billing rates — hourly, client, matter, employee, activity, overtime, etc. eBillity displays these options on a single screen. Once you create a billing rule, you can save it for future use — and these rules can include other aspects of billing such as expenses and trust accounts. In other words, eBillity enables you to automate your billing workflow.
Other Notable Features
eBillity contains a number of technologies designed to facilitate expense and time entry. For example, eBillity provides timers, custom categories, and batch entry (e.g., record all your time at the trial with one click, and all your associated expenses with another click). Also, eBillity is available via a desktop or mobile web browser, Mac and Windows applications, and native iOS (iPhone or iPad) and BlackBerry apps. The desktop and mobile apps work offline, and automatically sync with your account once you're online again, enabling you to capture time anywhere.
eBillity contains a number of legal-specific features such as conflict checking and trust accounting that go beyond typical offerings. For conflict checking, not only can you conduct full-text searches, but you can also create ethical walls to prevent designated employees from accessing one or more matters. eBillity's trust accounting includes the "eBillity Client Portal" through which your clients can view invoices, and make payments on those invoices. Clients can view the balance and activity of their trust accounts from this portal as well. Finally, clients can view and pay invoices using a credit card or PayPal via a button on every emailed invoice.
Other features include email alerts to stay in the loop when members of your team work on specific matters, QuickBooks Online synchronization, and customizable reports. Report types include timekeepers, clients, expense, trust accounts, productivity, receivables, rates, tax, and more.
"Our clients have found, on average, that they capture 15% more billable time using eBillity," Vice President of Product Douglas Dweck told us. "Having a tool that makes it this easy to capture time from anywhere on nearly any device ensures minutes don't get missed."
What Else Should You Know?
Three versions of eBillity exist — Free (3 clients and 5 matters), Standard (20 clients and 30 matters), and Premium (unlimited clients and matters plus eBillity Client Portal and payment processing). The Standard plan costs $19.95 per month for the first user, and $9.95 per additional user. All plans include free support via telephone, live chat, and email. Learn more about eBillity.
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