Boyd Johnson has an ingenious way of tracking his time throughout the day. Just open Windows Notepad and, when starting a task, hit F5, which stamps the time into your text file. Make a note to help you flesh out the task on your billing sheet later, and off you go. Whenever you switch tasks, hit F5 in Notepad again.

I use three text editors in Linux: Gedit, Scribes, and Bluefish, but none of them have this handy feature, unfortunately. gtimelog does the same thing in a nice package, however.

Capturing More Time…And Keeping Your Clients Happy While Doing It [ABA Law Practice Today]

As most readers of this blog know, I am in a constant search to find the “best” way to manage my practice. As everyone knows, there is no “best” way to manage a law practice, but there is always improvement. So here are the bits of technology and old-school hardware I am using to manage my practice.

As you may also know, I use Linux for my operating system more than half the time. But since I still use Windows at the office, all the software I use is available for both Linux and Windows. There are two exceptions: Outlook, which I don’t really use any longer, and Acrobat.

(more…)

According to Slate’s Lisa Lerer, the billable hour may be already be under attack by some large clients of the largest firms. But what about solo and very small firms?

Here is how I do things now, and then I will talk about the “fair fee retainer agreement” I have been working on.

(more…)

I just came across an impressive–and free!–timekeeping and billing utility, FreshBooks. I gave FreshBooks a test run, and it is pretty smooth. It includes a timer for timing tasks, which is a wonderful feature. And it generates nice invoices that your clients can access online, another nice touch.

The only downside, as with all web apps, is that you must be connected to the internet to use FreshBooks. This is not a big deal for most, though, and a big advantage for many.

Check it out.

[via Codswallop]

My wife commented yesterday that it has been a long time since she heard me complaining about my timekeeping and accounting software. It’s true. I hadn’t realized how much less frustration I have since I ditched Time Matters and Billing Matters Plus for good. Instead, I am using a combination of spreadsheets and simple but powerful accounting software.

(more…)

If you have read much of this blog, you know I have a major obsession with time tracking options. I have tried a variety of options, including Time Matters, Time59 (online), GnoTime, BK Task Timer, TTime, and many more.

All are lacking something. Most are too complicated. Tracking time is an inherently simple thing. All you need is the date, a description, and the time billed. If you have more people in the office, it can be nice to automate the assignment of different rates, but it is just as easy to generate individual time sheets for each employee.

In the end, I have decided to go with a comparatively low-tech solution: spread sheets. Spread sheets are platform-independent, have little or no learning curve (great for new or contract employees), and are far easier to view and edit. Mine automatically computes the total charges billed to date, so it actually takes less time to generate a bill than with a comprehensive package like Time/Billing Matters.

The only thing it doesn’t do is have a timer. In Windows, TTime is an elegant solution. Online timer Toggl is another good solution. Stopwatch works fine in Linux, and I’m sure there are a lot of other options (in addition to just writing down start and end times).

This is a reminder that although technology allows us to do a lot of complicated things, complicated is not always better, particularly for a simple task like tracking time.

Well, the invoices went out, came in, and Time59 dealt with the billing and A/R aspects of my test account beautifully. I was very happy with the ease and simplicity of the whole process. I didn’t have to deal with any expense tracking, which is currently not available. Expense tracking is a planned feature in a near-future release, however.

As an added bonus, Time59 works quite well from a Blackberry screen, making it a fantastic option for attorneys on the go. Time Matters also offers this option, though not online, but it is just as cumbersome as Time Matters is. This is slow, but just as simple as using Time59 from your computer. I love having this option, since I always have my Blackberry with me, but don’t always have my laptop.

The downside to all this, of course, is that you have to be connected to the Internet in order to use Time59. This is no problem if you bill “after the fact” by going through your timekeeping notebook at the end of the day, week, or month. It is less convenient if you like to bill in real time.

As soon as Time59 allows expense tracking, it will be a great solution for a small law office. It would be nice if Time59 also had a timer for billing in “real time,” and on my “wish list” would be a simple desktop client to allow me to track time from my computer and sync with the server whenever I am online.

Chris Monaghan, the creator of Time59, asked me to review his product. He writes:

It provides time tracking, invoicing and accounts receivable functions. It even handles retainer billing. There is a free 30 day trial. One year of service is only $19.95.

The price is certainly right, especially compared to RTG Bills. From what I can tell, Time59 offers similar functionality for significantly less.

Since I just started a contract brief writing project with a very quick due date, I decided to sign into Time59 and give the 30-day trial a go. My project is a summary judgment memorandum, due to my client by Saturday and to the court on Monday, so I should be able to give the full features of Time59 a try.

(more…)

A colleague recently pointed me to RTG Timer and RTG Bills. RTG Timer is an online timekeeping solution that integrates with RTG Bills, a Windows-only billing software. RTG Timer is online, so it is platform-independent. At $95/license, RTB Bills is a pretty hefty price for what looks like a fairly simple piece of software–at least compared to the options. But then again, it is also quite a bit cheaper than time and billing solutions from bigger companies.

Might be worth a look.

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.