Recording Time in Actionstep for Billing Using Legal Accounting

In this article:

• Recording Your Time
• Understanding Time Entry Behavior Between Actionstep and Legal Accounting

By tracking time spent on various tasks, you can ensure you are compensated fairly for your work while also providing your clients with transparent billing practices. Since (when using the Legal Accounting integration) time-tracking typically happens in Actionstep, you need a way to ensure your time entries are recorded in your billing workflow in Legal Accounting (Soluno).  

Before you begin: 

• In Legal Accounting, all parties/clients/participants, etc. are referred to as contacts. Additionally, all matters/actions/cases, etc. are referred to as files.  
• When creating a time entry in Actionstep and then sending it to Legal Accounting, Legal Accounting must have an identical contact and file record for the Actionstep information to be copied correctly.  
• To properly link matters between Actionstep and Legal Accounting, the file’s Matter # used in Legal Accounting must be listed in the File Reference field of the matter in Actionstep.
• Users recording and sending time from Actionstep to Legal Accounting must exist in both systems with the same email address.

Recording Your Time

To record your Actionstep time in  Actionstep: 

1. Track your time in Actionstep. (See Creating a Time Entry and Choosing the Bill Behavior for Billable Time Entries for detailed instructions. For help understanding how time entries are mapped between Actionstep and Legal Accounting, see Time Entry Behavior Mapping, below.)
2. To send your time for billing, in Actionstep, go to Billing > Bill Preparation. The Bill Preparation page appears. 
3. Complete any of the following tasks: 
   • Click the Timekeeper drop-down list and select the person whose time you want to submit. 
   • Click the Matter drop-down list and choose the matter associated with the bill. 
   • Enter dates you want to bill for in the Date Range fields.  
4. Click Send time for Billing. 
5. When prompted to confirm the export, click OK. The records are exported to Legal Accounting. 
6. In Legal Accounting, review the notification alert to confirm there are no errors with the import. If there were errors during the export, you will see a notification:
   You can click this icon to view the errors so you can make any needed adjustments. See Correcting Time Entry Issues Between Actionstep and Legal Accounting for help resolving them.

Once your time entries have been sent to Legal Accounting, all accounting and billing activities (e.g., disbursements and other general and trust banking-related activities) are managed through Legal Accounting. Meanwhile, all of your practice management tasks (matter and client management, calendars, tasks, etc.) will continue to be managed in Actionstep.

Additionally, time entries in Actionstep are marked with a bill status of Draft, which means you can no longer edit them in Actionstep. Any additional changes will need to be made in Legal Accounting. Time entries in Legal Accounting are added to the client ledger where you can continue to make adjustments until the entries are billed.  

Understanding Time Entry Behavior Between Actionstep and Legal Accounting

The following shows how time entry behavior in Actionstep maps to Legal Accounting:

Related Articles:

• About Actionstep Legal Accounting
• Working with Contacts in Actionstep and Legal Accounting
• Working with Matters in Actionstep and Legal Accounting
• Correcting Time Entry Issues Between Actionstep and Legal Accounting
• Contact and Matter Field Mapping Between Actionstep and Legal Accounting
• Actionstep Legal Accounting FAQ
• Understanding Contact and Matter Syncing in Legal Accounting