Improving Your Time Tracking and Billing

Video transcript as follows:

Hey everybody, thanks for joining us for another Bambiz expert interview session. Today, I’ve got Scott Clasen, who’s the director of marketing for Timesolv.

And I’ll let him discuss a little bit more about how they help elder law and estate planning attorneys but I think you’re really going to like this interview. So Scott, if you mind introducing yourself to everybody.

Scott: Yeah, thanks Jim, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk and join the program. TimeSolv corporation, we’ve been around for 20 years now as web-based time and billing software. We were actually developed by Thomson Reuters and, not surprisingly, we’re headquartered in Minneapolis, which is where Thomson Reuters has headquarters as well. And we spun off as a private company in 2006.

Our CEO actually worked at Thomson and knew that we were all going to eventually be moving to web-based software use in the future and kind of saw the vision. And so, we’ve been privately owned for the last 14 years.

But what that means is that we’ve had the opportunity in the last 20 years to really work closely with lawyers in all practice areas, including elder law in estate planning, to help them become more efficient in the process that is the least fun part of being a lawyer, right, which is having to track your time, having to place it on the invoice, having to send the invoices out, and so on.

And whether you’re an attorney who does a flat fee or does traditional hourly billing, or even a hybrid of that, we have the features built in to make sure you’re doing that as efficiently and as profitably as possible.

We really are the type of company that want to become a partner with the firms that we work with. We’re not just a tool in the tool box. We don’t feel like we’re just like a hammer, but we can actually be the blueprint that can help guide your firm towards becoming more efficient and more profitable.

Jim: Now, that’s definitely something that a lot of the elder law attorneys and the estate planning attorneys that we work with, they’re looking for. And just from me browsing the site, I saw in there that you can integrate with the websites and have payment portals on there and I know that that’s kind of like a direction if the attorney’s not there currently that that’s where they want to go to make those processes simpler for them.

I guess, elder law and estate planning is a little bit different, like you said, right? There’s a lot of flat fee billing instead of the traditional hourly type a family law attorney might have, for example.

So, give us some examples specifically on how an elder law estate planning firm would use your software. And things like the integration with the website, I know that stuff’s probably going to be more something that these attorneys are going to look for more than some of the other features like a family law attorney or criminal attorney or something like that might have.

Scott: Yeah, one of the things that we know is that there’s this tension between, especially in this area of law, elder law and estate planning where you’re dealing with a lot of clients who don’t necessarily interact with lawyers all the time. So, they’re not used to the idea of paying an hourly fee for somebody’s work. They’re used to like, how much is it going to cost, getting a flat fee, and walking away.

And I think a lot of firms in this area of law understand that and have developed flat fees they know are going to be profitable over time but it takes work to do that and there’s a lot of fear that I think attorneys have of, if I charge a flat fee, what happens if I end up spending way more time than I originally budgeted for, am I going to lose money?

So, we have a lot of tools in our software, matter budgeting tools, that allow you to do, essentially it’s simple project planning. Break down the work that you’re going to be doing with your client ahead of time into phases and tasks, it’s all, with estate planning maybe it’s asset gathering and then you’re doing probate avoidance work, you know, whatever the case may be.

Within each of those phases there’s specific tasks that have to be accomplished, right? So, lay those out ahead of time. How many hours is it going to take me to do these particular tasks? A lot is going to be based on your previous knowledge, you’re an expert in this field, you’ve been doing it for maybe 10, 15 years, whatever the case may be. Then you can assign it out to who’s the best resource within my firm to accomplish that task.

Not necessarily the most expensive resource but the best resource to accomplish it efficiently. So you know that Jim Blake is our expert when it comes to probate avoidance. He’s going to get those tasks. We’ll assign you the hours that you should take to accomplish those tasks, multiply that by your hourly rate, roll that all up, all those tasks that you need to accomplish. Then you have a matter budget that you know is going to actually be profitable for you and it gives that peace of mind to a client.

We encourage people, when they build out matter plans within our system, you can print those out, show your client, here’s the work that I’m going to be doing for you broken down into hours. You don’t have to put the rates by it specifically, but then it gives them the confidence of knowing, hey I know every single thing that’s going to be happening in this matter and it gives you the, showing the value for that work.

I use the equivalent, the analogy, it’s sort of like when we all take our car into a dealership to get worked on, right? We say, how much is it going to cost for this work? They don’t say, well I don’t know, it really depends on how long it’s going to take us. It’s like, no, you get an itemized line item break down of parts and labor, it’s like, well how do they know how long it’s going to take to change the break pads? Well, they know because of the expertise in the field. They know it should take about a half hour to change break pads, whatever the case may be.

But the big thing then is that you got to be able to track this stuff in real time and that’s where our tool comes in. You should still be making time entries and tracking the time it’s taking you to accomplish those tasks and if you start going over budget for what has been allocated, our system will tell you, blinkers on, red blinking lights, you’ve gone over budget, what are you going to do?

It can be kind of the equivalent of getting that phone call from the dealership three hours later saying, well we’re doing all of this work here but we found there’s an issue with a hose that we’re going to have to replace, it’s going to cost an extra $300. You could probably get by for an extra 2,000 miles but do you want to do it now? They give you the options, in other words.

And I think that’s what you have to be able to come at that when you’re charging a flat fee, is making sure you and the client understand, hey there’s some flexibility here, it’s not going to always fit in this box, ’cause who knows what might come up in the course of the work that we’re doing, things that are out of our control.

In TimeSolv you can manage all of those squishy issues by having your matter plan laid out, tracking your time in real time, and when things do come up you can have that conversation with your client. They’ve seen the overall plan so they know where you’re at in the process and you really achieve a level of trust between the clients and the lawyers that, hey these guys know what they’re doing, they’re charging me a fair rate, I could see the value for their work.

Jim: Yeah, that’s one of the things, what you were just explaining at the beginning, I was like, man this will be really valuable, printing it out and showing it to the clients, right? And then you kind of went in and talked about that. And I kind of wanted to shift a little over, going off of that, and our clients, a lot of them are hosting workshops, right?

So, they’re hosting these educational workshops where they get the seniors and their adult children and they get them in a room and then they talk about different situations that families go through and how they could help them. And one of the things, coming from my background which is in sales and marketing, I’m not a lawyer, right, but I work with lawyers every day, is that you almost want to show the value.

You’re whole thing is building value, building value, building value in the workshop. And some people, they throw that information out at, maybe the consultation after they go over their unique situations with the families. But I’m almost thinking like, I mean, I know when I’ve done some sales presentations in the past, right in the sales presentation, right, it’s almost like a qualifier, right? You can almost use that information that you’ve generated with your system and have it broken down on like, this is what it takes, in marketing terms we might call that a value stack. So it’s like, this is what you get, this is what you get, this is what you get, here’s the value of it, here’s the value of it, here’s the value of it, and we package this all together for you for the x amount of dollars, right? And so, at those workshops that these attorneys are hosting, they get that information up front.

So now, when they do the consultation and then they go over this information with them again a second time at the consultation itself, when you’re handing them this sheet of paper that’s generated through your system, it’s done. And then, like you said, I really like the fact that if they’re tracking their time in the system based off of these hypothetical situations that they probably create at the beginning of working with the system, if something in there is, ahhh I didn’t know that was going to take this long or this takes less time than this, they’ll be able to, over time, manipulate those forms and those documents to come up with the real cost.

And so, it should be more valuable for the people that are at the workshops ’cause they can see what they’re going to be getting before they actually get it. And then this should be better for the attorneys long term because now they’re actually tracking it and they’re getting their real costs and then they’re being able to use that back into their workshops, and their presentations, and their consultations to keep that going all the time. So, it’s never just like a static sheet of paper that they’re still using from like 2005 and it’s 2020, right?

Scott: Right, right, right, it’s a living breathing document and that’s the key, I think. I used to be a high school history teacher and we used to, in the summers, have to put together all of these unit plans to meet all the state standards and we would spend all this time and put them into three-ring binders and then they’d go up on a shelf where they got, collected dust the rest of the school year as we got back to what we had always done.

And it’s the idea, it’s one thing to plan the work and show everything you’re going to do at the workshops and so on, but you got to work the plan and that’s where the execution against the plan often times can fall off and that’s why I think our system and our software that allows you to track your work against the plan in that real-time is the real key to feeling confident in charging that rate, or the flat fee that you’re going to be charging. Because at the end of the day, I like what you’re saying with these workshops, and kind of walking through, here’s how the process works.

Knowledge is power, we all know that. And if you can empower your future clients with this detailed information, that’s going to set you apart from others that they might be doing research on and it instills confidence like, these guys know what they’re doing 100%, I really feel confident that they’ll be able to handle my matter because they know every nook and cranny of what lies ahead in this work that has to get done.

Jim: Definitely and I also liked your example with the auto dealership because in my previous world I worked for Bridgestone Tire Company and so giving people those estimates, you know, you coach people on how to do that too, right? Just like how you did it. You’re coaching them on giving the estimates so they have an understanding and, obviously, as things change, make those changes, so that was a really good example.

One of the things I kind of wanted to talk about, when somebody starts working with you guys they typically have a problem and then you’re the solution, right? And so, with the elder law and estate planning attorneys, what’s like the number one problem you see them having and how does that make their lives so much easier once they make that switch?

Scott: Whether it’s elder law or estate planning or whether you’re a real estate lawyer, whatever their across the board practice area is, the firms that come to TimeSolv and are looking for a new time and billing solution are running up against the problem of, they understand that their time and billing process is bogging down and taking too much of their time.

They just know there are inefficiencies in whatever their current process is.

And for a lot of law firms, oftentimes means that they’re using an old legacy type of softwares that’s installed on a server in their office and it’s a pain in the butt to make time entries. You can only do it at one computer, maybe let’s say you can’t do it mobily, you can’t do it on the run, you can’t do it from the courtroom, or whatever the case may be, and so they know there are inefficiencies there.

And then on the backend, when it comes time to generating invoices, that process inevitably is taking them too much time, editing invoices, getting them sent out, collecting payments, and so on. And that’ll lead them to the search like, there’s got to be something better out there, and frankly the better out there is really web based solutions for time and billing.

We did a survey of our customers and we asked them about how much time do you think you’re saving per month using TimeSolv for your billing process and time keeping versus your old process? And the return that we got back was on average firms are saving about eight hours a month in their billing process. That’s one full day of somebody’s work that they feel like they’re saving by using our software versus their old solution.

Imagine that, put that into billable time. If you charge $300 an hour, you got eight extra hours of billable time now. That’s $2,400 a month that you’re all of a sudden gaining in potential profit. So, again, I know we’re talking to elder law and estate planning attorneys but it’s really an issue across the board. And this is for firms that, whether you’re charging a flat fee or an hourly rate, contingency, whatever the case may be, we handle all of those type of billing arrangements and there absolutely will be time savings in moving from our system from whatever system you’re currently using.

Jim: Yeah, that’s really important. I know that the attorneys that I’m talking to on a day to day basis, they’d either use that time savings to spend more time with their family, or maybe you add an extra client or two a month.

Scott: Or you could look at, if you bring it back to the marketing point of view, you have a billing manager maybe, that’s the person, they’re dedicated to doing just billing and they’re doing time entries, they’re doing manual work. They’re entering time entries for the attorneys, it’s just data entry. There’s not a lot of mind thinking going on. If you can free up some of that time guess where it can go. Right back to where you guys are, part of the experts, the marketing part.

Where you spend less time on that backend ’cause I think of, you do a lot of work with helping elder law and estate planning attorneys on the front-end. Getting their business, right, through marketing efforts and so on, and we handle the backend, when they’re done doing all that work and they got to get paid for it. But it’s not a linear type of equation, it really can be a circle where the billing work can translate into better marketing through the way you do your billing, that’s another topic we could potentially talk about but I think you could take the people who are not necessarily doing billing for their time.

Whether they’re doing marketing for your firm, or they’re doing the business manager part of it, they need to spend less time on that processing of payments and getting invoices out and they can maybe turn those efforts towards getting more clients through your efforts and so working with people like you, that’s going to help grow the business.

Jim: Definitely, I mean the thing that I’ve always seen too, we might think that everything is going well, and I’m just going to talk from my perspective with Bambiz. You know, everything is going well, we have our own systems and processes in place but every single time we’ve improved something on the backend it’s helped on the front-end. It’s helped with the relationships we have with the clients, it’s helped us get new and additional clients, so every minute we’ve spent updating something on the backend, it’s probably helped us an hour on the front-end, just with the relationships that we were able to build and the time that we’re able to save to focus on that.

Scott: You got it.

Jim: It’s been unbelievable.

Scott: And it doesn’t matter if you’re a marketing company or a law firm, that’s a truism across any industry, I think.

Jim: So, I mean, after somebody is, they make the switch, they’re on there, they’ve been working with you for six months to a year, you know, they’re starting to see the time savings, what are the changes, what’s the testimonials, if you want to say that, as somebody would typically provide you like, we’ve been working for a year now, this is what it’s like.

Scott: I think what we hear the most from firms that have been with us for a year plus, whatever the case may be, is it’s so much easier now to make my time entries, to create and get out our invoices, there’s an intuitiveness to using our software that people like, especially if they’re coming from an old antiquated system.

And then, as I alluded to before, it’s just that purely, that time savings that they have. And the other component that, like I mention at the top, where we are, we want to become like a partner with your business, is our customer service, and I’ll tell you why.

We hired people who came from law firms doing the billing at firms and they are now the ones who are success managers that would be assigned to you when you come to TimeSolv. So you’re not just working with an account manager who used to be an account manager in some other completely different industry.

They actually did the billing at law firms so they have walked your walk, they have talked your talk, they know about, hey I got to do a, we do an integration with QuickBooks, which is an important component ’cause most small law firms use QuickBooks for their accounting. These are our customer success managers. They did the QuickBooks work too so they know exactly what you’re looking for.

So, we get the testimony like, god, you guys have been so helpful in getting us up to speed in using TimeSolv, so helpful in helping us in our billing methods and so on, because we have that expertise in house that we want to pass that knowledge on.

So, it’s the combination of an easy and intuitive way to now create your time and generate your invoices along with that support that’s going to be really holding your hand during the process of moving to a new billing system, ’cause it’s scary, nobody likes change, right? And changing your billing system, you might hate your current system but you know it.

Right, so when you do decide finally, I got to make the change, we can really be empathetic and say, hey we’re going to help you through the process, we’ll help you convert your data, and it’s going to be okay, we promise.

Jim: No, that’s definitely good to hear. I know that, excuse me. Anytime I’m making a change with anything I doubt myself, right?

Scott: Right.

Jim: Because it’s like, like you said, things are working well, do I want to make that switch ’cause I know that there’s going to be 10% headaches maybe at the beginning, right, but then after I can get over that hump, right, then it’s just like smooth sailing and so much more productive and things are a lot easier on the backend. It may be a little uphill at the beginning and then all down, you know, all the best is good to go.

One of the things I was thinking about when you started talking about QuickBooks, what are some of the common integrations that you see the elder law and estate planning firms typically use? Is there certain systems that they might already have in place that this links up to and helps them out?

Scott: QuickBooks is the number one system where I would be willing to venture a guess that 90% of our, 95% maybe, of all of our clients use QuickBooks for their accounting. Whether it’s QuickBooks desktop or QuickBooks online, we have an integration with both that allows you to sync information back and forth between the two systems ’cause that’s really the most important thing when it comes to your time and billing, is how can it talk to your accounting system.

We do have other integrations with Office365 to allow you to make time entries from your email screen, from our calendar screen, so, for example, you can put if you have an event on your OutLook calendar that you know is going to be a billable event, you could turn that into a time entry right there for in TimeSolv.

We also do integrations with some document management systems, whether it’s DropBox, which is pretty popular, NetDocuments, which is more for bigger firms, and we have our own hosted document management. But the number one integration that people really gravitate to is the QuickBooks one.

The other one that makes it, again when you’re talking about time and billing, if you’re not taking credit card payments for your invoices, you should be. And LawPay is sort of the industry standard for credit card processor. They are set up uniquely for lawyers because they can handle the trust accounts and trust payments which can be a little trickier and it’s not something like PayPal or Square or the others handle.

We have that integration with LawPay that allows you to, when you send an invoice via email, there’ll be a link, we can go to our client portal where they can then pay their invoice online using LawPay as the processor and then your invoice is automatically marked as paid and the payment’s allocated.

So, you can get paid literally in minutes after sending out your invoices versus hours, days, weeks in theory, assuming they click the link and go and pay it right away, right?

Jim: Right, right, right. And that’s going to be one of the things that you might hear a little bit of push back from who we work with because the elder law and estate planning attorneys typically have, they’re dealing with an older client base. So, typically their clients are 50 and up in most cases. They sometimes have some younger families doing estate planning ’cause they had a new child or something like that but most of the elder law stuff, it’s like the adult children and the seniors.

But, we do a lot of our marketing online and they’re online, right, so it’s just putting that information out there. A lot of the push back we get is, our clients aren’t online, and then when we tell them they are online, then we do the marketing, then they come to their events, and they request more information, sign up for consultations. Same type of thing like this, maybe they don’t think they’ll pay online, right? When you add it then they start paying, right? And you’re like, why didn’t I do that five years ago or whatever right? And then it just starts to happen.

Scott: The other big part, I think, and this is probably an important component of elder law and estate planning especially, is the, what happens when you’re working with a family and they ask you, can we split the bill three ways amongst these three children that are doing it, we all are going to put in an equal amount towards this work and figuring out everything with our parents and so on and so forth.

And that’s one thing that TimeSolv really shines, is the ease and the ability to split an invoice however many ways you need to split it, in whatever percentages that you’re going to split it.

Maybe the family decided, hey older brother’s doing all the heavy lifting, he’s doing all the work, but he’s going to pay 50% of the invoice but younger brother and sister, they’re going to both pay the remaining 50%, so we need to split it in kind of a, it’s not just 33% across the board. You can do that in TimeSolv.

That’s one thing I think a lot of, if you’re the type of lawyer in your line of work with elder law and estate planning where you find you have to, you’re being asked constantly to split an invoice multiple ways and you don’t have a good way of doing it right now, or a way that’s kind of burdensome, we got the solution for you, for sure.

Jim: No, I definitely know that a lot of attorneys are dealing with that, so that’s definitely good to know. I appreciate it. One of the last things that we really need to talk about is like, advice. So, you’re working with estate planning and elder law attorneys all the time, helping them with their billing solutions.

What’s the piece of advice that you might have for an elder law or estate planning attorney that’s maybe looking to make the switch, maybe they just recently made the switch, but love to hear it.

Scott: I think, and I do a whole webinar called Seven Ways to Increase Your Billable Time, and so the idea of just, do you have, and the number one first tip is, and I would say this to any type of practice law, do you have a timekeeping policy at your firm? Period, and it could be written on the back of a napkin, it could be a policy that’s as simple as, we’re going to enter all of our time by the end of the day.

And you should be entering, creating time entries, even if you’re doing flat fees, like we talked about at the top. Even if you’re charging a flat rate, it still behooves you to track the time that you’re spending working for your clients. Track your non-billable times. Figure out, where am I spending the time outside of my billable hours? All of that. And it comes down to just, have a policy in place. And it can be a simple one pager, but it changes the mentality of a law firm if it’s clearly understood what the expectations are when it comes to time entries and tracking time.

That’s the number one way, whether you’re using TimeSolv or some other system that you can improve your billable time work and make it an easier process. Just lay it out. What’s it going to be? And it can be, like I said, pretty simple. Back of a napkin type stuff to start, at least.

Jim: Yeah, I love it. So, when you do that webinar that you’re doing, I mean, is there a way somebody can access that? Do you want to share a little bit more? It sounded like an interesting webinar.

Scott: Yeah, I do them about once a month and I’ll share the link so that you could put it in the transcript so people can access it. But it’s called The Seven Ways to Increase Your Billable Time. We also have a PDF you could download to read about that.

I think if you’re following, it’s the type of thing where you don’t necessarily need to do all seven of them. Some of them kind of bleed, like if you’re doing one of the tips really well you may not necessarily need to do some of the others and so on but the overarching premise really is just have a timekeeping policy, stick to it, and make it important at your firm.

Jim: Very cool, I’ll definitely want to get those links from you so we could share those with everybody. When you said that I was like, they’re going to want that. And so, we’ll make sure we can get that over to them. Where can somebody learn more about you and TimeSolv if they want to go ahead and learn more?

Scott: They could head to TimeSolv, and that’s T-I-M-E-S-O-L-V, .com. There’s no E at the end of solve for TimeSolv. We’re too busy solving time, we had to drop the E. They can go to timesolv.com. We do offer a 30-day free trial.

When you land on our website you’ll see all sorts of places where you can start that free trial. You’ll get assigned a success manager who will walk you through the whole process of how TimeSolv works, get you set up, and so on. And if you have any questions they’ll be able to help you. And if you decide after 30 days it’s just not for you, you can just walk away.

There’s no credit card needed to start the free trial. It’s a pretty simple process. I’ll encourage everyone, if you feel like, we just know our current system isn’t working for us, let’s just kick the tires on some other options and see if it’ll work for us.

Jim: Awesome, well I appreciate everything that you went over, Scott. I know that the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway that I have really, is just documenting everything, right? And using that, obviously, as a tool at the firm but then using that as a sales tool.

‘Cause I know from my experience that having those documents in place, even sharing them on a PowerPoint presentation for a workshop that you might be hosting, and then being able to manipulate those as time goes by and your systems change. Maybe you have a new document drafting software that’s saving you time on the backend and maybe some other process has changed or you hired an associate attorney that’s changing some things up, but you’re able to track all of that and then use that information to better educate your potential clients. You know, have all the documentation for the clients that you are able to retain and then use that to help your firm in the future.

So, that’s my biggest thing. My takeaway, anyways, ’cause I think that would be a, that would help streamline a lot of the process. We work with attorneys that are brand new, they just graduated law school and they’re starting their practice. They’re on their own, or maybe they worked for a big firm, now they’re hanging their own shingle out there. I mean, also, we’re with attorneys that have been doing this for years, and years and years, right? They’re seasoned veterans.

I think that the seasoned veterans might be using an antiquated system and then if you are starting fresh, this might be a really good opportunity to just start with something new that’s going to be like a market leader and then you don’t have to worry about building that, going back and making that switch later. I went from Excel, I’m using Google Sheets, to now I’m trying to import this, trying to figure out what the heck I was doing and then put that into a new system.

Scott: And that’s where on both ends, whether you’re the brand new attorney that’s just hanging that shingle or somebody that’s been doing it for years, leverage that expertise I mentioned, that we can bring to the table, especially if you’re that new lawyer, like, what is the best kind of billing process? ”Cause you don’t really learn that in law school. They’re not teaching you, if they talk about time and billing it’s sort of like an after thought. So, lean on our expertise and do as, I’ve put in some of my market materials.

Nobody went to law school to do time and billing. You went there to practice law. Your passion is law. Our passion is the time and billing part of it. So, use that expertise. Your passion is the marketing end of, helping law firms. So, why not, let’s all leverage and help each other in growing all of our businesses, right?

Jim: Exactly, we tell that to people all the time. It’s like, I’m not good at practicing law but I can get you a lot of new potential clients. And then, you’re not really good at marketing so if you think you’re good at marketing and then you try to market but then you’re really only as good as a third grader, you’re not really benefiting your practice, right? So the same thing would go for what you guys are doing.

Like, you think you might have the answer to billing or you could just work with somebody that does it, that’s what they do all day every day. And so, when you do implement those types of systems you can spend your time focusing on what you’re good at, which is estate planning and elder law and then leave the other stuff to free you up to do more law, which is the task that you actually get paid for, and the relationships that you actually want to be building with the community. So, I appreciate everything.

Any last words that you have? I think that’s pretty much everything that I had to ask you.

Scott: No, I just really love talking about how, you know, how you can make elder law and estate planning attorneys more efficient and grow their business ’cause that’s kind of what we’re all here for. And it’s fun to talk about, let’s break out of the old way that we may have done things for years and it’s got to be a better way. And I love doing that and helping businesses like that. So, thank you, I appreciate the time.

Jim: Awesome, well Scott, thanks again for joining us here on this expert interview. And if you have any other questions you can go to timesolv.com, no E on solve. And then the links and everything that we talked about in this interview, we’ll go ahead and put those in the transcripts so you can access those. But, thanks again Scott.

Scott: Yeah, thanks Jim, appreciate it.

Jim: Thanks.