Lawyers in Firms that Have Already Have Automated Billing Software

[fmilder]

I think that some significant portion of us got Time Master just to help us keep track of our time, and our firm has master billing software and an accounting department that will convert our hours into dollar-billings.  We don't need the ability to track our hourly rate, just the ability to keep track of our hours every day, allocate them to particular clients, and then print them out to give to a secretary (or e-mail them to her), who can enter them into the firm's time system. 

With that in mind, I'd love to have the ability to have a pretty simple time record kept on a daily basis, with the day and date at the top of the screen, and the total hours billed so far at the bottom of the screen.  I'd also like to be able to supress the dollar computation; I don't need it. 

Yes, I know that I can get something similar to this using the report function, but my intention is to have the iPad on my desk and enter my time charges as they happen, and have the iPad tell me my total hours billed so far today, just by looking at the main screen.

Any chance of getting something like this?

Thanks for your consideration!

[Adam]

I think that some significant portion of us got Time Master just to help us keep track of our time, and our firm has master billing software and an accounting department that will convert our hours into dollar-billings.  We don't need the ability to track our hourly rate, just the ability to keep track of our hours every day, allocate them to particular clients, and then print them out to give to a secretary (or e-mail them to her), who can enter them into the firm's time system.

From some people I've talked to, they export a CSV file with just the necessary columns and that can get imported directly into your firms system.

With that in mind, I'd love to have the ability to have a pretty simple time record kept on a daily basis, with the day and date at the top of the screen, and the total hours billed so far at the bottom of the screen.  I'd also like to be able to suppress the dollar computation; I don't need it.

You can use the "Date Filter" button (lower left) to show you just entries for "Today" if you wish.  Unfortunately we cannot show totals because of the limited room on the iPhone screen.  When the Date and Entry filters are set with long text, they can take up the entire width of that area and that would be the only place we could put that.  The other issue is that if you were not doing any filtering, you could see years worth of totals there and it would take a bit of time for it to calculate that total and slow the program down a bit.  So that is basically why we don't do it and instead have you use the Reports screen to do analysis.

Yes, I know that I can get something similar to this using the report function, but my intention is to have the iPad on my desk and enter my time charges as they happen, and have the iPad tell me my total hours billed so far today, just by looking at the main screen.

Any chance of getting something like this?

Thanks for your consideration!

Unfortunately it is unlikely that we will do that on the main screen, unless we do an iPad only display.  We will add your request to our "wishlist".

Thanks for writing!  We appreciate the feedback.

[fmilder]

Thanks for the quick feedback, Adam, and I appreciate your efforts to try to be all things to all people.  I'll only observe that the market for those of us who work for big law firms and have trouble writing all our time down is HUGE.  I heard about your software from another person in my "group" (about 40 lawyers), and my firm is pretty big (about 800 lawyers), so I could easily imagine a large number of sales if you created a product that looked like the time sheets that we (and many other) firms use. 

I was only noting that Time Master ALREADY looks about 90% like those time sheets, so I was hoping to get the last 10%.   For many of us, it's really useful to know that, here it is lunch time, and you've billed 3 or 4 hours; here it is, 5:00, and you've already billed 8 hours and so on, without having to produce a report just to get that one answer.  Of course, I've already told people in my office that Time Master is very useful, but it would be even better if I could tell them "You've got to be crazy not to use it!"

Thanks again for the speedy feedback, and date filtering will help!

--  Forrest

[Adam]

I think the only way we could do this is to add a "footer" row, like the grey total row on the bottom of the Reports screen.  We could only do this if a "Date" filter was in effect.  Unfortunately that value would have to be calculated and will take a hit on performance.  Each record from the filtered list would have to be read in, rounded and then totaled.  On devices like mine, where I have over 1000 entries on the screen, it would take too long to total all of that, so one of the date filters would have to be selected.  We would also have to blank out that row when a timer was running as we wouldn't want stale totals sitting there.

Let me know what you think?

[fmilder]

I don't know enough about the difficulties of writing software, but I think that you are describing just what I'd want.  The idea would be to capture a day's time charges, so ideally, I'd want the screen to say "Friday, August 13" at the top, then have all my clients, matters and hours (no need for $) all in a list (pretty much just like it looks now), and the total number of hours so far today at the bottom.  When the day ended, I could go to the report window and e-mail the list to myself (or my secretary).

Thanks for listening!