I tried to post a question to the CIC Solutions Forum, but apparently my request for tips to speed up Time Matters was objectionable:
Your post was deleted by Matt Stone.
Subject: Speeding up Time Matters?
Reason: Thank you for contributing to the CIC Solutions Forums. Your message was rejected by the list moderator because its content is seen as editorializing, broad qualitative comment, a customer complaint, or lobbying for particular features or improvements.
I didn’t think I was editorializing to say that Time Matters was slow. It is. I have talked about Time Matters with many people, and every single time TM’s slowness was mentioned quickly. I just wanted some tips on how to minimize the slowness.
Let me be clear: I think Time Matters is far from perfect. In addition to being slow, it crashes frequently. Although I am a efficiency nut, I still use it. Why? Because with all its flaws, TM is still a time saver. But if there is a way I can streamline or speed up the program, I want to know about it.
So how about it? Do any of you have tips for speeding up Time Matters?
2008.07.16: Since this post is so popular, I want to point out that I ditched Time Matters about a year ago, and am much happier—and more productive—as a result.
Sam Glover is a business and consumer rights lawyer and the creator of Lawyerist.
Lawyerist is the #1 law practice blog. We write about marketing, practice management, career development, and more.
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If Time Matters can be characterized accurately as slow and unstable, I cannot imagine why it would continue to attract more customers and win more annual awards than each of the competitors in its category year after year.
Only a few of our 1400+ subscribers have complained about the CIC Solutions Forum policy of focusing on solutions – questions and answers on getting more out of Time Matters and other LexisNexis products – and of filtering out complaints, harangues, flame wars and the like that have destroyed other discussion groups. A few of your posts were returned to you, Sam, for editorializing or complaining. You were certainly polite about it, but we need to be consistent about the scope of the forums, something that is explained up front to all subscribers. I am glad to see that you have continued to post questions and receive answers on the CIC Forums. Over 1400 other users of LexisNexis Practice Management products have posted thousands of times since the new forums opened in June of last year. Along with many other experienced consultants, I am happy to continue provide free answers to your questions in the forums where so many others can benefit from the information.
It is essential for Time Matters Tech Support to hear about problems with performance or stability. If you actually are experiencing problems with software quality, they need to know about. If, on the other hand, you have problems with how you set up the program, with third party applications affecting Time Matters, or with your specific hardware, tech support or a Certified Independent Consultant can assist you with those issues.
Wells H. Anderson, CIC Forum Moderator
Time Matters & Billing Matters CIC
Active Practice LLC
Edina, Minnesota
Tel: 952.922.1727
Web: http://www.activepractice.com
Thanks for your comments, Wells. “Slow” is, of course, a relative term. Compared to Outlook, TM is slow for e-mail, contacts, and scheduling. Admittedly, it also does more than Outlook and handles data differently. TM is a true database, while Outlook “tags” message and scheduling items.
As for stability, TIme Matters doesn’t seem to be the culprit so much as Billing Matters Plus. BM+ has a reputation for this in the attorneys I know, however. Tech Support has certainly heard from me about the problems I have experience, as well as my suggestions for improving the program.
As I have said, I have found Time Matters to be, on balance, worthwhile. However, TM still feels like it was built for Windows 3.11 compared to most other programs I use.
At the moment, I am using only BM+, and have switched to Outlook for e-mail, contacts, and scheduling. I’ve lost some functionality, of course, but I’ve gained speed and useability, as well. Since BM+ is hardly at its best as a standalone billing and accounting suite, I am looking for replacements there, as well.
But then, I also have the ultimate goal of switching to a Mac or running Ubuntu Linux on my PC, so Time Matters isn’t the ideal software for me.
Since I am not a Time Matters consultant, I can speak freely. Time Matters is slow and the email client is unstable. I think it would be far better for the company to actually fix the problems instead of censoring comments about them.
If it would frankly admit the problems exist, fix them, and announce that they have been fixed, I would be willing to upgrade. But until that happens, I have no intention of paying more money for the same poor performance.
Robert, I don’t think it is fair to complain about the performance and stability of Time Matters software that is three versions out-of-date. HTML Email formats are constantly changing and can cause problems with Email software. The LexisNexis development team put a great deal of effort this year into improving the stability of Time Matters in handling Email and other data. The results have been impressive. If you are not using the current version of the software, you won’t enjoy the improvements.
That is not to say that Time Matters, or any other software for that matter, is perfect. For example, Adobe Acrobat just gave an error message this morning.
Although I believe that *your* Time Matters is slow and Sam’s was slow, it does not need to be. You have many options for speeding up performance. In the few situations where my clients have run into slow performance, the solutions have been straight-forward. I repeat my original point that Time Matters would not be the most popular and most award-winning practice management software if it had truly slow performance. It is too bad that you have stuck with an outdated version because you are not confident that the product has been improved.
If any Time Matters user has a complaint about slow performance, it is important to provide details. What function appears to operate slowly? How long is the wait time for what specific operation? How many records are contained in the list you are working with? If you are using the inexpensive Professional version instead of the lightning-fast Enterprise version, what fields do you have indexed? Simply calling software “slow” is like calling it “bad.” It is hard engage in an informed discussion with so little to go on.
In this case, I don’t think it is fair to say that popularity is in any way related to performance. A lot of attorneys are also still using Windows 98, but that doesn’t mean it is better than Windows XP or Vista.
Time Matters 7 is slow compared to other information managers, even with every “speed tweak” I tried from the CIC forums or elsewhere (including one certified TM consultant who destroyed my install so that I had to spend hours getting back up and running). Even Outlook, which is fairly bloated and uses an inefficient, one-file database, can handle more information more efficiently, and I much prefer it. I have not tried TM versions 8 or 9 because 7 was so bad I stopped using it at the earliest opportunity. Maybe 9 is better, for all I know, but LexisNexis is highly unlikely to see any more of my money for its software.
As I said, I would have upgraded by now if Time Matters had acknowledged the problem and represented that it had been fixed. I have tried through their sales representative, our consultant, and just looking online for some reason to believe that the later versions had corrected the problem. I tried version 7 and noticed zero improvement plus several bugs. I uninstalled it and went back to version 6.
If, instead of suppressing critical comments, the company would treat them as a useful resource, everyone would be better off. But it appears to me that someone has made the decision that it is better to pretend the problem doesn’t exist, blame it on every conceivable other cause, and try to keep people from discussing it honestly.
I have to agree with the critiques of Time Matters. It crashes all the time. We have a stand alone mssql server with a dual core and 4 GBs of Ram, a level 2 switch, a stand alone exchange server and it still crashes constantly. We have 17 users on enterprise.
I have used TM since version 4, the firm had a SG20! at one time, read all of the forum posts and spent hours on the phone with support. My favorite response to the question of why our activation was failing causing messager to crash was “Call Microsoft.”
I am testing out TM 9 now to update our TM8 install and they do not seem to have solved any of the old problems. Just added some new features.
The email handling is an amazing mess. Why can my cell phones email client handle 1000′s of emails, but TM comes to a crawl when you have more than 100. The idea the HTML is constantly changing and therefore the mail should suck so bad is a pretty sorry excuse. Why does mapi require you to disable the cache and put tremendous strain on your exchange server.
We tried using POP for a while and that introduced other issues and was even slower.
My least favorite bug, is that I have to go through every merge document (we have about 500) and update them every time we update versions. I know they want use to use HotDocs, but that does not mean the word merges should be a pain.
I appreciate the help the consultants give on the forum, but the attitude that TM is beyond reproach is laughable. I would move to another piece of software if we did not have a trained used base and no guarantee that the replacement would be worth it.
I wonder if the $3500 we are paying to upgrade is going to be worth it. They want $1200 more for a year of support, which if there was a way they could help stop if from crashing would be worth it.
I have been volunteering my bug reports and tried to have some input to eliminating the problems for some time, but between the closed forum and the lack of response at ideas@timematters.com I do not see much hope.
Looks like the review feature in 9 are actually usable, so that is plus. I thought it was funny they once admitted to me the feature did not really work in previous versions. Custom records are going to be nice, so I do not have to butchar the mail record to keep track of additional data. I guess their previous implementation of “Custom forms” was not that great :)
If I had time I would make a list of all the problems, but what would be the point of that.
Just my two cents, it was nice to get this out on the web somewhere, so maybe they will listen.
I wonder if they have a QA department there or just assume everything is going to work.
I can certainly speak for 9.0 users and say that all is not rosy. After attempting to purchase 8.0 and being convinced by a sales rep to wait for 9.0, after being promised that it is fully compatible with Vista, I have to say I want my money back. In the month that we have been running it, we have yet to have a day where it hasn’t crashed. The latest problem is that our email attachments have disappeared. After 3 hours on the phone with tech support yesterday and 3 hours today, I still have not recovered my attachments.
Our problems begain merely syncing TM with Outlook and have continued all the way to creating invoices. Their answer is consistent in that it is always “there must be a problem with your network,” which is not backed up by our network support.
The best is that they sold us 9.0 without having completed the online help manual. So we were literally flying blind in trying figure out its functionality. If “time matters” then why do I spend all of my time on hold for tech support?
If you are considering an upgrade, buyer beware.
gdj
We’re having alot of problems with TM crashing and emails sent out of TM are not being sent with the attachments. Can I ask those of you who are experiencing crashes – do you have TM installed on a dedicated server? We have a small office of 3 users and are wondering if not having a dedicated server may be a problem.
-H
TM crashes were totally killing us –like 5-10 per day. Our IT person spent forever and finally got some functionality. The interface for calendaring is years out of date and time-wasteful. It absolutely failed to deliver what was promised –that it could handle email was total bs. No way would we entrust documents to it. It still crashes whenever you try to scroll through notes. It does certain things we didnt have elsewhere: networked calendaring and time recording, but the reports are horrible and whether it is a net benefit is uncertain. Just don’t know if anything is better.
I am surprised to see that there is some corporate comment control being envoked – holy smokes. I found this page running the google search “speeding up Time Matters”, the reason this program is slow as crap and crashes more then any other program – in fact I can’t remember the last time my Outlook crashed. Seriously, I was hoping there was some tweak or RAM setting or something that could make the thing more stable. We have no problem paying Lexis Nexis for their services but the quasi information control is troubling. Are they saying only talk to us about speeding it up so we can bill you for that also? Thanks for hosting this forum.
I just did a google search on Time Matters bugs, and found this string of comments. We purchased the latest version of time matters less than 6 months ago, and have been having problems ever since. We’re crashing constantly and on a daily basis. We have lost a ton of attorney billable time, spent thousands of dollars on our IT tech company, upgrading equipment, etc. Tech support give us the same ridiculous responses – “it must be your network..” And, here we go again, day after day, on the same merry go round without any resolution. We are beyond frustrated! We have new equipment, new server, new stations etc.
We are at our wits end, and don’t know what to do! I regret the day I was talked into buying this disasterous software, and wish I stumbled on this blog months ago!
There must be a solution – have any of you come up with one? If anyone is interested making a claim for monetary damages against Lexis, please contact our firm. Let’s talk -
Iris or Reuven Herssein (305) 531-1431
It’s a fact it is slow, unstable, and a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with business software.
The firm I work at was sold this software, and I wish I had some input. This product is a disgrace to programming, interface design, and productivity. For anyone to defend this product just goes to show how out of touch they are with interface design, developing software, business operations, perhaps this weekend I’ll write a massive post on why a business shouldn never implement this software.
The reason time matters wins awards is because it’s just a competition between archaic products. Lots of people buy poor products every day, all it takes is a good marketing campain, or a personal recomendation. Most business owners don’t have extensive knowledge or the time to know what’s going on in the computer industry.
As for giving time matters advice, well why would anyone give input to a company that sells closed source software.
So what I’d like to hear is how people were sold on this software.
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Time matters bugs, problems, complaints, issues, recomendations, support, alternatives, time matters problems, issues with time matters.
I am a solo practicioner and have used Time Matters since Version 4. I currently use Practice Management 9.0. I am not a computer novice, having owned computers since 1982. Mostly self taught I built and manage an intranet with multiple computers, peer2peer, with dedicated “server”. I built and manage my web site. I discovered that my knowledge base may be broader than I understood when my $$$ Microsoft trained expert could not figure out a Windows2000 security issue and I did. I currently have work stations using WindowsXP and WindowsVista with only the “server” using Windows2000.
The above posts are correct. TM/PM has a tendency to crash. The email handling is horrable, all said I dropped the bucks for Version9.
The number one reason that TM/PM will slow is that a sequential data base means exactly that. All the information is stored as obtained and the program must search through entire data bases to obtain your answer. TM/PM reduces the problem by creating multiple data streams, ie contact.tps, doc.tps, email.tps, etc. This fundamental structure issue will cause increasing issues of instability as the hardware attempts to deal with increasing amounts of data. I obtained this admission from TM/PM only after I verbally “spanked” a TM/PM tech for actually suggesting that the cure for one of my problems was to delete the email.tps. The deletion of the email.tps would have distroyed all emails ever received and significantly reduced my proof of direction from clients. THIS DIRECTION TO A NOVICE WOULD HAVE CRIPPLED HIM or HER, and most likely they would have never called TM/PM again. Yes, I know that renaming and recovery may have been available, point is the novice would not know.
One issue concerns email attachment handling, one core reason for email created crashes. I have found a site which automates email attachment handling – http://ddspublic.docsol.com/tmtools/index.html . I have not purchased the product, but it appears to have TM/PM approval, and it addresses the issue which should have been fixed prior to version 4.0. I am considering the addin, but am very annoyed that TM/PM appearently licensed the use of their logo’s and trademarks years ago and chose to not develop a like internal product (ie the Microsoft approach) for inclusion in an upgrade. Further, it took valuable time to search the internet for what TM/PM will not provide when it should be an immediate suggestion of the support staff.
The other issue concerns work station calls to the “server” in otherwords your intranet speed. TM/PM will not assist slow performance unless you can “prove” that your computer network has no latent issues. I was instructed to develop a 1gig file and time the transfer from the “server” to the work station. If the transfer opperates at near the expected rate (10-100 meg per sec depends on various issues) then they will help. My issue is a 20-30 sec delay between selection of a document, during the add document process, and actual population on the file location line.
I pay hundreds monthly for the support, I thought that support ment support whatever the issue if the issue creates a TM/PM specific problem. As it is, I am forced to determine the source of the issue.
All of which brings us back to the core question, “Why is TM/PM slow?” Answer- “depends”.
I’ve been trying to make TM 8 pro work with this firm I support but the usual issues of attachment bloat, messenger errors and email woes all rear their ugly heads. I’ve looked into the actual innards of the program itself and it is developed from soft velocity. They created the *.tps file structure and the db structure. Their flag ship product is a more automated IDE that cuts programming time by creating semi made modules or other short cuts. one similarity i can name is probably ruby on rails, though that is for the web. It’s more like Visual Basic i guess. So I’m trying to wrap my head around that and see if I can control the program at a more lower level. At the worst case I may come out of this journey with a better sense of how the program behaves and perhaps a eureka moment will hit me. But I’ll keep my clothes on and share my discovery in a more modest tone as opposed to Archimedes.
I found out this site when i googling for TM problem. TM sometimes goes slow, even tune up the server, upgrade a hardware…That is one of daily task for fix it.
Bottom line… DON’T BUY TIME MATTERS software.
We run TM & BM+, version 7E, on a network of 7 computers plus the Server. We started with Version 5 professional, then 6 professional, then 7 professional, now 7 Enterprise. We have had all of the same problems described by everyone else, slow performance, multiple daily crashes. We have always paid for unlimited Tech Support, and we use it heavily. We have delayed upgrading again, because we didn’t want to spend another $3 or $4 Thousand unless we were assured that the newest version would solve the problems. The TM people say it is a major upgrade with fundamental program improvements, but so far the users in this forum say the problems still exist. I agree with everyone else, in that the TM people have told me over and over again that the problems are network problems. I have been led to believe that the problems that I have (slowness and crashing) are almost unheard of by their Tech Support people, but I now see from the Forum, that many other people seem to have the same problems. I also agree that their policy of never disclosing to their customers the existence of widespread problems is very unfair.
I am wondering if anyone else is having this problem. We are using TM and BM+, Version 7, Enterprise Edition. Our bookkeeper runs into situations where there is a discrepancy between the balances between different places in the program. For example, the balance sheet might show a particular debt, but the number is different on the A/P ledger. We then call for support, and they access our computer via the Internet, and Tech Support then runs some sort of program and usually it then reconciles. But we are never told why it didn’t reconcile in the first place, and we are not given the program to run ourselves. This has been occurring now for the past several years, and there doesn’t seem to be any permanent solution.
Also, we have a terrible time getting through to Tech Support for the Billing Matters side. We have often waited on hold many hours and often have had to hang up without ever getting through. I wrote to Lexis Nexus about this issue over a month ago, but no response. We pay them quite a bit every year for a support contract so it is very frustrating when we cannot get any help.
I cannot help you, but I had a lot of trouble getting any support for Billing Matters. I got the sense that nobody really knows how to use the program, even at Lexis.
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