Law Office Technology

Separating Hard Costs and Soft Costs

In PCLAW you have the option of Separating Hard Costs from Soft Costs.  First let me explain what Hard and Soft Costs are.

Hard Costs are actually Client Expenses that your firm writes a check for.  One of the main examples would be filing fees.  In PCLAW you would use Client Cost --> Check General to create these. 

Soft Costs are expenses that you charge a client but you do not write a check to someone for.  Main examples would be charging a  client for faxes or photocopies.  In PCLAW you would use the expense recovery feature to record these.

Here is what my GL Statement would look like if I had NOT separated Hard and Soft Costs

 

In this Modified Cash System I have written a check (Hard Cost) to the 19th JDC for $25.00.  I have also charged a client $25.00 for Faxes (Soft Cost).  I have a $50.00 Debit in my 1210 account which is the total hard and soft costs.

Now, I am going to change my system settings so that I am separating soft and hard costs.

Here is the main difference.  The Fax Cost I charged the client went to the 5010 Client Soft Costs GL instead of the 1210 Client Disb Recoverable GL.  So I have a $25.00 Debit in the 1210 account and a $25.00 Debit in the 5010 account.

So, why would you want to do this?  By looking at this report, I can tell what my clients owed me that came out of my pocket versus what I expensed to them.  Again, the real answer is to talk to your CPA or Financial Adviser and ask them if you need to do this.

Below I have added the more technical aspects of what happens when you separate Hard and Soft Costs.  You cannot separate them in Accrual based accounting.

Modified Cash when Hard and Soft Costs are separated

PCLAW credits 1210 Client Disbursements Recoverable for hard costs and 5010 Client Disbursements Expense for Soft Costs.

Cash when Hard and Soft Costs are separated

PCLAW Credits 5010 Client Disbursements Expense for hard costs and 5011 Client Soft costs for Soft Cost.

Recovery Accounts

I get a lot of questions from PCLAW users about the difference between expense and recovery accounts.  Questions like why is there two GL accounts for Faxes and should I use the Fax Expense

or the Fax Recovery?  Well, here is an explantation on which one to use and how they will effect your income statement.

Use the Expense Account if you just want to see how much your COMPANY spends.  For example if you spend $75 on Faxes in the month of June and $25 was Client Related your Income statement would show $50 of fax expenses.

If you use the Expense and Recovery accounts you would get a difference Income Statement.  For Firm expenses you would use the Expense GL but for client expense, you would use the Recovery GL.  Your Income statement will now show $75 of Fax Expenses and $25 of Fax Recovery

The net is still $50.

So it is all about how you want your Income Statement to look. Talk with your CPA and Financial advisor.

Remembering Who is supposed to call you back

Sometimes, people are supposed to call me back and never do.  Here is how I setup a Tickler System to remind me.  I use Amicus Attorney for practice management, but this will work in all systems like PCLAW, TimeMatters, and Outlook.

I use Amicus's Phone Call Manager to make Phone Calls.  When either I leave a message or have that person tell me they will call me back, I immediately Create a TO DO or Task.  I give it the Priority of Soon (Number 4) and Call it Awaiting Call from ....  I have reserved that priority in our office for Awaiting Calls.  You would be amazed at how quickly it fills up.  This way I can track who should call me and when it gets to 7 days I usually call or email them back.

Indian Support

I work in the tech industry and I often hear complaints about out sourcing to India anad how you can't understand what they are saying.  I recently had to call Microsoft because I was having an issue with Exchange.  They were freaking awesome and they were Indian.  This woman I dealt with repeatedly called me back to make sure everything was okay.  Did I have trouble understanding her?  Not really, no more then I would someone from North Dakota.  I had to ask her to repeat herself a handful of times but mainly because we were getting pretty technical.  After we resolved the issue, she emailed me a bunch of documents to better understand exchange.  The call cost $250, which I think is extremely cheap considered they bill on a per incident basis and you have 60 days to reopen the incident at no additional charge.  So i am all for outsourcing technical support if they do a better job then American Technical Support.

Backup Manual

Reposted the edited backup manual on the site.

How to use the backup manual

The Backup Manual

PCLAW Calendar

You might not use the practice managment features of PCLAW but you should check out the calendar features.  The time tab of the calendar will show you how much you have billed per day.  It is very easy to see missed days and how much you have billed for the month. You can double click on a day and it will open up the Time Sheet for that day.

Disabling Worldox GX email profile on Send To in Outlook

Just added a new white paper on the website. 

Disabling the Worldox Profiling when sending email in Outlook

Sneakers

Just got an new pair of Mizunos Wave Creation 7s.   They are made for  fat people like me that love to run.  Notice how they are branded in the Lexis Nexis colors.  Maybe Lexis is thinking about aquiring them as well.

Losing Network Connection

                                                        In Amicus 7 you might sometimes get errors saying you are losing Network Connection even though you are apparently not.  This kept  bothering me until I figured out that even though I had a wired connection, Amicus was somehow being effected by my wireless card.  Disabling my Wireless card makes this problem go away.

Forcing users to use Document Managment in an Open Ended System

Worldox is a wonderful "Close Ended" Document Management System or "DMS".  That means that when you click on open or close in word processing, email, and various other programs, Worldox takes over and saves the document into its system.  Other programs like PCLAW and Time Matters are Opened Ended systems that allow the user to choose if they want to save their document into the program or just do a normal save.  I am of the opinion that a good DMS is Close Ended and does not give the user the option of bypassing the program.  You should give your users no other option but saving into the DMS.  Firmswith PCLAW and Time Matters do not have to purchase another program to get their DMS to behave like a closed ended system.  There are two steps to this process.

1. Hide the document folder on the network and make it hidden from all users.  This way they cannot browse for documents or save them to this folder.  They will only be able to see and save them through PCLAW or Time Matters.  You must have all your documents in the DMS to remove the File Open.
2. Remove the Save and Save As from the wordprocessor.  That way the user can only use the TM Save or PCLAW save.  In Word, go to Word --> View --> Toolbars -->Customize --> Commands and then remove Save and Save As.  Then go to the Toolbar and right click on the Save Button and then delete it.
   
3. Replace the Control S (Save) with the Time Matters or PCLAW Save.  View --> Toolbars-->Customize-->  Scroll down to Macros and reassign Control S to SaveasTM Document or the PCLAW equivalent.
4. Repeat these steps in Excel and all other programs that you want all your users only using the DMS. 

In a couple of minutes, you have turned your Open Ended DMS into a Closed Ended DMS without spending thousands of dollars.