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Understanding How Time Entry Data is Managed Between Legal Accounting and Practice Management

This article covers information about the Legal Accounting / Practice Management integration. To learn more, contact your customer success manager or account executive.

 

When you enable the integration between Legal Accounting and Practice Management, you should understand how that connection affects your experience using the two different products, particularly if you've previously been using the native accounting available in Practice Management. These differences are organized into the following categories:

This article covers information you should understand about time entries in the Legal Accounting integration. For help creating a time entry in both systems, see Creating a Time Entry Using the Legal Accounting and Practice Management Integration.

 

Time Entry Data Storage and Access

When you create a time entry, regardless of whether you’re in Practice Management or Legal Accounting, the time entry data is saved to Legal Accounting and made immediately available to both Practice Management and Legal Accounting.

NOTE:  Core Practice Management reports will no longer have Time Entry data to display, therefore time-related reports must be generated from Legal Accounting. (Please note that in future releases, the reporting options in Practice Management will be updated.)

Fee earners, activity codes, and task codes are sourced from Legal Accounting for Time Entry. Additionally, when submitting a time entry, rates will be configured based on how the matter is configured in Legal Accounting.

 

Reporting Menu Structure

When using the integration, a Legal Accounting Reports option is added to the Practice Management Reports menu.   When you choose this option, you will be taken to the top-level Report page in Legal Accounting.

NOTE:  To ensure you have access to this option, in Practice Management, go to Admin > General settings > Feature preview and toggle Global Header Redesign to on.

 

Time Entry Settings

The following timekeeping settings are managed in Legal Accounting and were defined during your firm's Legal Accounting onboarding. You can review these options by going (in Legal Accounting) to Administrator Settings > Firm > Settings > Features:

  • Time/Fee entries allowed on or after lets you define the time restrictions.
  • Display time as lets you choose your time display format (hours or decimals).
  • Round time entries lets you choose your time rounding behavior.
  • Enable working hours lets you track the hours worked.

 

Work Hours Per Day Setting

In Practice Management, you can view your user profile and designate your Work hours per day (in the Timekeeping section). This information will appear on the timesheet and will be sourced from Practice Management to track against Time Entered in Legal Accounting.

 

Entering Time

When you enter time in either Practice Management or Legal Accounting and save it, the time is saved to Legal Accounting. It is then immediately available in both Legal Accounting and Practice Management.

The Create Time Entry workflow displays time entry fields that are required by Legal Accounting. These fields are slightly different from fields that are available to Practice Management users using native billing and accounting.

To learn more about these fields as well as the different areas in Practice Management where you can create time entries, see Creating a Time Entry Using the Legal Accounting and Practice Management Integration.

NOTE:  When recording a new time entry, the rate will be calculated using the matter configuration in Legal Accounting.

 

Timesheet Page Structure

The Timesheet page (Timesheet > Today) shows the following distinctions:

  • The list of entries on this page includes columns that match the Legal Accounting experience. (For example, column names include Matter, Task/Activity/Explanation, Worked, Billable, Rate, Amount, Internal Notes, and Bill status.)
  • The Matter Reference (i.e., Matter#) appears on each time entry.
  • The Bill status (Billed or Unbilled) represents the Legal Accounting bill status.
  • View, Edit, and Delete options will appear based on the status of the entry.
     

 

Matter's Billing Page Structure

When you’ve integrated Practice Management with Legal Accounting, the matter’s Billing page looks quite different than what you'd see a Practice Management-only Billing page for a matter:

While viewing this page, you can access the following tabs:

  • Overview: This page gives you access to Legal Accounting matter balances.
  • Time / Fees: This page shows you your time and fee entries. This includes:
    • Unbilled and non-billable entries, which can be edited.
    • Billed entries, which can be viewed.
    • A Filter option, which you can use to limit which entries you're viewing by Date, Fee Earner, Task Code, Rate, Amount, Activity Code, Internal Notes, and Explanation.
    • You can select up to 20 time/fee entries at once and adjust the Date, Fee Earner or Rate for the selected entries (provided you have the appropriate security permissions in Legal Accounting).
  • Billing Settings: This page lets you view or change the matter’s file group, billing group, tax group or hold status.
  • Electronic Billing Settings: This page lets you view or change the matter configuration for LEDES billing.
  • Staff: This page lets you view or change the responsible, assigned, lead, and matter-introducing lawyers.

Note: Users may be restricted from changing entries if they have Time Entry security restrictions enabled in Legal Accounting.


 

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