Time Capture & Billing

The program opens to a “Navigator” screen, which will be familiar to Timeslips users. After entering your company data, employees and billing rates, you can add your clients and their projects. Since all billing is from a project, I thought I would start there. However, I quickly learned I couldn’t do much without adding other essential information, such as clients, so I returned to the “Navigator” screen for further guidance.

The “Navigator” offered several selections, most of which brought me directly to a data entry screen. Some options took me to a separate “Navigator” subscreen. “Navigator’s” initial choices are “Employees;” “Clients;” “Codes, Schedules and Budgets;” “Projects;” “Time and Expense;” and “Invoices and Payments.” At “Employees,” I added a few employees and could insert information about each. In addition to general information such as name, address and employee identification, I added details on contacts, reminders, pay rates, as well as pay periods, taxes, allowances and three custom fields.

I then moved onto the “Clients” screen, which is like an enhanced address book. The only data you must add here is a client identification code. I did like the ability to keep historical information at the front of the “Clients” screen. After creating a few clients, I returned to the “Navigator” screen and moved on to the heart of the program — creating projects.

BillQuick has six required fields in the “Projects” screen: “Project Identification,” “Name,” “Client Identification,” “Contract Type” (e.g., hourly or fixed fee), “Project Manager” and “Status.” I have trouble with the term “project manager” because not many law firms have project managers and the user can’t rename that field with a more appropriate term such as “attorney” or “partner.” Later in the year, the company plans to change the program so the user can name individual fields.

From the “Project” screen, you can set billing options (e.g., your selected form of invoice) and can manipulate billing data and rates.

Every screen has a filter tab, which helps manage the heaps of data the program can collect. For example, when preparing a bill for a client with multiple projects, you might want to look only at one project at a time for billing purposes. Filters are valuable in BillQuick because the program doesn’t just collect time and billing data, but all sorts of information. You can’t look at it all at the same time, or it will overwhelm you.

The other three selections on the “Navigator” screen will bring you to a subscreen. Selecting “Codes, Schedules and Budgets” took me to a screen with more buttons: “Activity Codes,” “Expense Codes,” “Budgets,” “Service Fee Schedule,” “Expense Fee Schedule” and “Billing Schedule.” Selecting “Activity Codes” for the first time asks you for a profession. Selecting “Attorney” gave me more than 90 attorney activities. These were a good start, and it was easy to add and delete codes to tailor the activities to my practice.

The “Time and Expense” selection brought up a few interesting features, such as the timer, the time card, the expense log, as well as the ability to get into areas already shown on the “Navigator” front screen, such as “Codes, Schedules and Budgets” and “Invoices and Payments.” The time card feature allows routine data entry by employee, day, date and time, thus recording activities and assigning them to the appropriate client code.

Of course, the true test of any time and billing program is the bills and reports produced. The “Invoices and Payments” button brings up a subscreen with options: “Review Data and Prepare Invoices,” “Manually Invoice,” “Review Printed and Processed Invoice,” and “Record Payments.”

The “Review Data” screen is one of the best features because you can see all the data on one screen. Some information can be changed from the “Billing Review” screen and will be changed elsewhere in the program. Rather inconveniently, for some information (such as changing time or expense amounts), you must return to those screens and then return to the bill review screen.

On the other hand, should you erroneously process a bill from the “Bill Review” screen, you can merely reverse the processing.

The program comes with about 100 templates for producing invoices, but you can buy a separate report writer program if you need more templates.

BQE touts BillQuick’s ability to use “A” and “B” billing hours. “A” hours lets users enter actual hours spent on a case, while “B” hours are billing hours. Again, this seems to be a feature project managers care about more than lawyers.

BillQuick 2000 is a robust and complete billing program with a myriad of detailed features. The program also has numerous add-ins that permit remote data entry, Palm time entries and Web-based project management.

The time and billing features, however, target project management (rather than client management), making it less suitable to the average attorney.

But for in-house counsel at a larger corporation or counsel to project managers, BillQuick may be the solution for you.

Windows 95/98/NT/2000

Price: $595 for five users;
additional users pay more.

Reviewed by Denise P. Ward Esq., Grean & Ward, Port Chester, N.Y.

Apr/May '01 Issue

PROS
Thorough billing program, easy interface.

CONS
Too complex for average lawyer.

VERDICT
I recommend it to corporate law departments, but not to the average lawyer.

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Updated 09/18/01
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