Time Entry
The old way: Timekeepers fill out paper timesheets and hand them to an assistant to enter into the computer. 

The paperless solution:  Timesheet Slip Entry.

Timekeepers can now enter their time in a traditional timesheet format, instead of having to enter individual slips.  Clients and tasks can be pre-filled so that the timekeepers need only to enter the number of hours worked in the appropriate box.  They can make life even easier by using the timer to keep track of the time as they work. 

 Pre-Bill Worksheets
The old way:  The billing clerk prints out a stack of pre-bill worksheets and then gives them to the boss to review and mark up before the final bills are generated.  

The paperless solution:  Interactive bill preview with drill-down capability

The boss can print the pre-bills to his/her display and click on-screen to drill down and make the changes right in the program. 

 Billing
The old way: Print out the bills.  Stuff them in envelopes.  Stamp the envelopes.  Put them in the mail.  Wait a week for the client to receive the bill and another week (hah!) for them to pay. 

The paperless solution:  Send bills via email

Timeslips allows you to email bills right from within the program, via a connection to Outlook.  The client receives the bill as a PDF file.  You can create an unlimited number of email templates with different message bodies and subject lines.  You can even embed tokens like the invoice number and amount into the message and subject line.     If you prefer, you can also print the bills to PDF files and then email them manually. 

 Reporting/Data Analysis
The old way: Print reports to paper

The paperless solution:  Print reports to display, PDF file, Excel or Word

The added bonus to viewing your reports on screen is that you can click on the data elements to drill down for more detail.  Sending reports to Excel gives you extra functionality and flexibility.  With Timeslips 2010, all reports now have a print to Excel option and you can choose to send the data over in columns, or as it appears in the standard Timeslips report format. 

Cash Receipts
The old way: Open the mail. Enter checks into Timeslips.  Take checks to the bank. 

 The paperless solution:  Unfortunately Timeslips has not yet developed a way to receive payments other than to enter them manually.  However, there are many ways that you can receive payments from clients over the internet or phone without using checks.  We would be willing to bet that, before too much longer (Timeslips 2011?) Timeslips will incorporate a way to import payment transactions from the website, that you can then use to process client payments. 

 So there you have it.  Not only do these solutions save paper, they save time, resources and money.

For more help with configuring Timeslips for a paperless office, contact one of the experts at TriStar Data Systems.

From the Reports menu, choose Create a Report, then Create a completely new report.  You can choose to create a detailed or summary report for Slips, Clients, Accounts Receivable or Funds.  The report wizard makes it easy to add fields, sort keys, and filters.   you can also simply click Finish at that point, to go right into design mode and drag any fields you need onto the report. 

The advantage of using the designer is that you have almost total control over report formatting.  Simply drag fields from the list on the right side of the screen into the desired column.  You can easily add columns and rows, and modify the width of each column if you so desire.  Once you have a field on the report, you can get really creative by using Field Display Criteria to filter the information that appears in each column or row. 

An accounting firm client recently asked us to create a report that compares how much they billed their tax clients this year compared to last year.  To build this report, we pulled the Billed Slip Value onto the report twice and used Field Display Criteria to filter the first field for the current month and the second field for the same month a year ago.  We then sorted the report by client, to get a clear comparison between this year’s and last year’s tax billings.  We then took it a step further by sending it to Excel, where the user could easily subtract one field from the other to see the difference (you can’t do this directly in Timeslips….yet).     

Calculated fields, which was a new feature in Timeslips 2009, and has been enhanced in Timeslips 2010, gives you another powerful tool for building custom reports. 

Say you want to know your firm’s “profitability” for a specific timekeeper; that is, how much the firm actually nets after paying the employee.  You could create one calculated field that multiplies the time spent by the Timekeeper’s overhead rate.  We’ll call that field “Overhead Slip Value”.   You could then create a second calculation that subtracts the Overhead Slip Value from the Slip Value, giving you employee “profitability”. 

In Timeslips 2010 you’ll be able to use the new number-type custom fields in calculations as well, giving you even more power and flexibility. 

In larger law firms, associates frequently have billable hour targets from 1,900 to 2,200 hours per year.  You could store this “target amount” in a timekeeper custom field.  You could then create a calculation that compares the target number to the actual billable hours, giving you the timekeeper’s utilization percentage. 

These are just a few examples of how you can take your reporting to the next level.  If you’d like to learn more, please contact TriStar Data Systems to have us help you with your specific reporting needs. 

Timeslips 2010  begins shipping in July 2009.  Pre-order now to take advantage of significant discounts.  As a “Platinum Level” Certified Consultant for Sage Software, we are able to offer special pricing  on license upgrades through June 30, 2009.

Also, on the “techie” side of things, Sage created a new billing and reporting engine that will significantly speed up the time it takes to print bills and reports. 

The more tangible improvements to Timeslips 2010 focus mostly on reporting.  The ability to print reports to Microsoft Excel was first introduced in Timeslips 2006, but that functionality has been significantly expanded with this release.  You were previously limited in which reports could be sent to Excel and the data was presented in columnar fashion.  You can now choose to send any report to excel in columns or “as displayed” so the end result looks just like the printed version.  This functionality greatly enhances the ability to analyze your Timeslips data from a variety of angles. 

Several new reports have been added.  The Clients Not Billed report displays which clients have not been billed by your firm since a specific date.  This will help to determine which clients can be made inactive or closed, which should improve speed and performance.  Sticking with the theme of closing clients, you can now choose which clients you want to purge, instead of having to purge all closed clients. 

The Client Default Rates report displays the default rate source and level for each client, as well as any Timekeeper- or Task-specific rate rules assigned to each client.  The Rate Listing reports, which were available in older versions, previously showed all twenty rates for each client, timekeeper or task.  You can now choose how many rates you want to display on the report.  The Rate Analysis report could previously only be sorted by either Client or Timekeeper, but can now be sorted by both. 

The History Bill, which has been available for quite some time, has finally been improved so that it includes a grand total at the end, not just subtotals for time and expense charges. 

Four new types of custom fields have been introduced: percentage, money, number and hours.  Each of these fields can be used in custom report calculations , a feature that was first introduced in 2009. 

The functionality of emailing bills has also been expanded, reflecting the move to a more paperless world.  You can now include data tokens, such as the client’s name, invoice number and amount, in both the subject and body of the email message that is sent with the bill. 

Timeslips 2010 takes one more step in simplifying the billing process by giving you the ability to disable Revision Stage, which has confused many people and caused many bills to be left in limbo. 

Timeslips 2010 will begin shipping at the end of June.  It is currently available for pre-order at a significant discount, either directly from TriStar or from Sage Software (our discounts are better!).