Summer is here and to celebrate we’ve got a new version of TurboLaw Time and Billing with a whole host of new features and improvements. As usual, many of these new features and improvements are based directly on feedback we receive from our users. If you have an idea or suggestion or even just a comment on TurboLaw Time and Billing, we’d love to hear from you – we really do listen to what our users say so we can make the best time and billing program for you!
- Added an explicit way to issue a refund for a payment or retainer
When editing a payment or retainer, there is now an explicit “refund payment” button that will record that you’ve refunded the specified funds and mark them as no longer available. We’ve also added reports so that you can track refunds that you’ve issued as well.
- Added a prompt offering to automatically pay a bill (apply payment) when entering payments
- When entering a payment, when you click “Save” you will receive a prompt allowing you to automatically pay any open bills using the funds you just received. This is just like the prompt that appears when you save a bill (and can be turned off with the same option, if desired).
- Added the ability to create copies of (or “clone”) bills
- If you regularly bill clients for the same set of activities, you can now “copy” (or “clone”) a bill so that you don’t have to enter all the time & expense items over and over again. You can copy a bill in its entirety, as well as copy all of the items from a bill into a new bill. Once you’ve copied a bill this way you can also edit or delete items if needed.
- If you regularly bill clients for the same set of activities, you can now “copy” (or “clone”) a bill so that you don’t have to enter all the time & expense items over and over again. You can copy a bill in its entirety, as well as copy all of the items from a bill into a new bill. Once you’ve copied a bill this way you can also edit or delete items if needed.
- Added the option to show reports of client balances as of a specific date
- The “Client Balances” report now has the option to show balances “as of” a specific date, so that you can see what your client’s balance was in addition to what it is right now.
- Added an “as of” date option to reports
The option to show reports “as of” a specific date is also available to other reports as well – any report that can be filtered by date can also be set to show its results as of a specific date.
- Added a field that can be added to bills to show “previous payments” (i.e., payments since the last bill)
- Useful for those who do monthly billing but prefer not to print statements, you can now customize your bill template and use this new field to add a “previous payments” line to your bills, showing the dollar amount of any payments received since the previous bill.
- Improved performance of long-running operations (e.g., saving or merging) when using certain database file formats
- Some users with very large databases (lots of clients, bills, time entries, etc.) will appreciate how much faster it is to perform certain operations thanks to a number of behind-the-scene improvements and optimizations we’ve made. Specifically, saving your database file in a different format and merging two databases together will now be significantly faster.
- Improved the display of matter names in the “Create Statements” window
- Previously, matter names were simply listed as-is in the “Create Statements” window (if you were creating statements for matters). Now, client names are shown as well to help distinguish matters.
- Previously, matter names were simply listed as-is in the “Create Statements” window (if you were creating statements for matters). Now, client names are shown as well to help distinguish matters.
In addition, we’ve also fixed the following minor issues:
- Prevented bills with negative amounts from being accidentally created
- Fixed the formatting on the “remittance” section of some bill templates
- Fixed an issue where creating a new bill would show “orphaned” or “left-over” items from previously deleted bills (until you selected a client)
- Fixed an issue where the drop-down list for staff members in the “Enter Time” window wasn’t refreshing if you added or deleted staff members
- Fixed an issue where the Next/Back buttons in the “Edit Bill” window weren’t properly showing the next/previous bill
- Fixed an issue where reports that were “grouped by date” had an extra comma in the subtitle
- Fixed an issue where the “Edit Staff” window could not be resized and sometimes some toolbar buttons would not be immediately visible as a result
[note class=”mycomment”]As always, we welcome and value your feedback – if you have any thoughts, questions, or comments, please don’t hesitate to let us know![/note]