Carpe Diem 2.0 - Dec/Jan '98

Carpe Diem 2.0

There are a number of billing programs that are designed to accept information from time slips, generate bills and track payments. But for recording the time and information that will be entered, most billing software offers no assistance beyond a stopwatch feature. You may even be recording your time on paper for later transfer to the billing program. Inevitably, you get too busy to track your time contemporaneously and try to reconstruct it from memory. This leads to lost billable hours.

Carpe Diem shifts the emphasis. It leaves the billing and accounting functions to other programs, and exclusively captures and tracks billable time. It acts as a specialized, time-capturing front-end to whatever billing program you use. Carpe Diem also allows time information to be reported in numerous ways in order to track the productivity of timekeepers and determine a firm's best profit areas.

There are three options available with Carpe Diem. CDTracker is a real-time entry system that you use to track and input your time. This feature includes the "Smart-Timer toolbar," which lets you time your activities as you use other programs.

CDEntry is the module for the billing department, used to capture the data from CDTracker or (shudder) paper entries. Finally, CDMobile lets timekeepers enter time into their notebook computers or remote workstations and later upload it to the database.

What really sets Carpe Diem apart its reporting. You can pop up a calendar that shows the total number of billable hours generated on any given day, see how that total compares to predefined goals, the total number of hours billed that month and year. Having all this information on the screens of associates--and available to the administrator for reporting to the partners--can be very motivating.

One good use of Carpe Diem is in a situation where a firm is still using a DOS billing program because the thought of implementing a new Windows system is too daunting. With Carpe Diem, the firm could add a new Windows interface to the DOS program to better capture time and provide greater reporting options, without ever having to change the data or billing procedures.

ProSoft Corp.
(800) 477-4763
Windows 3.1, 95, NT

$3,000 for 10-user license

Reviewed by Aaron Morris, attorney, The Morris Law Firm, Irvine, Calif.

Dec/Jan '98 Issue