One of the major changes for version 1.11 of TurboLaw Time and Billing was the new “drag & drop” field list in the template designer.
These drag & drop fields make it easy to customize your templates so that information (such as the bill number, the date, your address, and the details of the bill) appear exactly where you want them to. This makes designing a template less like a complex technical process and more like putting together a simple mail merge – as you might do for printing envelopes or mailing labels.
If you’ve ever done a mail merge in another program (such as Microsoft Word/Publisher/Works, or WordPerfect, or OpenOffice) the process for designing your template will seem very familiar. If, on the other hand, you’ve never done mail merge before, there are many excellent resources to help you become familiar with the process:
- Our How-To Videos section has a video on Advanced Template Customization that shows you how to drag & drop fields to re-create a bill or statement template from the ground up
- Microsoft Office Online has a Mail Merge 101 section that contains numerous videos and tutorials to show you how to use mail merge which can help you understand mail merge – in both TurboLaw Time and Billing and in Microsoft Office
- WordPerfect Office has a similar article on how to do mail merge using WordPerfect
Once you understand the basics of mail merge, you can begin dragging & dropping fields onto your bill or statement templates with ease and create professional-looking bills and statements that reflect well on your practice, help your clients understand their bills, and reduce confusion about what’s been billed.