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

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:

• Time Entry Data Storage and Access 
• Reporting Menu Structure 
• Time Entry Settings 
• Work Hours Per Day Setting 
• Entering Time 
• Timesheet Menu Structure
• Timesheet Page Structure
• Matter's Fees Page Structure 
• Billing Menu Structure
• Time Entry Permissions

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. 

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. 

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. 

Timesheet Menu Structure

The Timesheet displays only one option: Timesheet. The following other options have been removed from the menu: 

• Timesheet Summary 
• Expenses List 
• Vendor Expense Tracking List 

Timesheet Page Structure

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

• The Create Expense option is not available on this page, since expenses must be created in Legal Accounting. 
• The list of existing time 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 Fees 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:  

Specifically:

• The page includes an Overview tab and a Fees tab. All other functionality typically entered in Practice Management's native accounting (i.e., expenses, bills, payments, write-offs, etc.) are managed in Legal Accounting.  
• Additionally, billed entries can only be viewed and the Legal Accounting invoice # will be displayed when viewing the entry details. 
• The matter’s Matter Billing Options workflow has been removed since its settings are no longer required. 
• Fees displayed on the matter’s Fees page include the columns required by the Legal Accounting workflow.  
• While viewing the Fees page, the Filteroptions include: 
  • Date 
  • Fee earner 
  • Task Code 
  • Bill status 

Billing Menu Structure

With this integration, you are no longer required to manually send time for billing (as you were in earlier versions of this integration) by using the Bill Preparation option on the Billing menu. 

Time Entry Permissions 

When setting permissions around time entry, note the following: 

• Time can be recorded for users who are set to Records Time in Legal Accounting. 
• Time can be edited if it's not restricted by Billing or the Time Entry restriction date.