One of the problems with leaving Time Matters/Billing Matters Plus entirely has been finding a suitable timekeeping replacement.
I have given BK Task Timer a good look. It works well, and offers a lot of great options for assembling reports. The only problem is that it doesn’t easily allow you to add the kind of detail necessary for a lawyer’s bill, especially if it comes to submitting your time to the court for an attorney fee petition.
I just downloaded TTime, as well. TTime is a very small timer that allows you to easily copy the date, start time, and total time to your clipboard to be pasted into a spreadsheet. This works well, but I have been trying to avoid using spreadsheets because of the extra steps required. I like to bill in real time, and it seems like excess work to keep Excel open all day. Although I suppose it wouldn’t use any more system resources than TM/BM+.
What I need is fairly simple: a (1) timer that (2) will record start times (3) as well as total time ( (4) and allow me to enter either by hand), (5) and a description of what I was doing during that time. (6) It should be able to organize billed time by project and (7) export a decent report of the time billed (8) during a set period of time (9) to Excel, where I can make it look pretty or apply a template as needed.
Any software developers out there want to take a shot? I bet it would sell.
Sam Glover is a business and consumer rights lawyer and the creator of Lawyerist.
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