I get calls from Amicus Attorney clients around this time every year with problems posting time entries to Amicus Accounting. When they attempt to post a time entry, they get the following message.
The solution is to go into Amicus Accounting and change the Financial Start and End Date to this year. Once you hit save you can post the time entry.
Lets say you have a 5 user firm with Amicus Attorney. The firm has a policy where all users get added to all new files and contacts. They decided to hire a new employee and add a new amicus license. To make sure this user gets added to all new files and contacts you would have to go to each existing amicus user and add that new firm member to the new file and contacts section. This can be time consuming and a pain in the neck. To get around this issue, Lawot does the following:
In Amicus Firm Preferences (Office –> Administrator) we add a Firm Group called All Amicus Users.
For each user of Amicus we go to the New File and New People Entries (Office –> Preferences)
And add the All Amicus Users. Notice we Toggled to Group Names
Back in Users Settings (Administrator –> User Settings) we go into group membership for each user and
add All Amicus Users
Therefore when a new user is created, we only have to deal with their preferences and not have to worry about changing any of the entire firms.
For larger firms with multiple practice groups we follow the same methodology by creating groups like All Bankruptcy Users and All Estate Planning Users. This also works very well for people that have setup Calendar and Task Profiles. These do not need to be changed when a new user is created.
This feature alone makes the price of the upgrade worth it. I have had many clients tell me that they have been capturing an additional 5-10 hours of billable time a month.
Tools –> Time Entry Assistant
This will bring up a list of all actions that no Time Entry associated with it. You can filter by date and item type. You have two options for converting these events into billable time:
1. Do A Time Entry
This will open up the Time Entry window. You will need to fill in the amount of time.
2. Time Saver
Highlight a Time Entry and Click Time Saver
This will automatically create a time entry.
Amicus will create the Time Entry using the Minimum Time Entry Settings in Amicus.
Amicus will now allow you to create a Time Entry for another user without having to go through the process of opening up another users office.
Amicus has added a Save and New button which will reopen the Time Entry Windows automatically.
This makes it extremely easy to compare the time entries for the day compared to what is on your calendar and find missed entries.
Amicus has no automatic numbering capabilities so everything is controlled in PCLaw. The systems settings in PCLaw make it look like you can disable Automatic Client Numbering, but that is not the case.
In PCLaw if you have Disabled Automatic Numbering and you are using Numerical Characters (12345) instead of alpha characters (BayCra) PCLaw will still Automatically Number the Client ID. This is not a big deal in PCLaw, because you can easily change the Client ID but in Amicus, it will assign a client ID for you.
You have 3 Options:
1. Don’t use a numeric numbers in your Client ID. That way PCLaw will not be able to automatically number a client.
2. Create ALL new Matters in PCLaw and then run the exchange in Amicus. Office –> Actions –> Accounting Exchange
3. Create the File in Amicus and then immediately disable the link, close the file, reopen the file, enter in the correct Client and Matter ID and then uncheck disable link.
Missing a Prescription Date is one of the easiest ways to have a malpractice lawsuit on your hands. Using Amicus Attorney Premium Edition, we recommend that clients setup a monthly RX Deadline Calendar like the one below.
This is a monthly calendar that shows every RX Date in the firm. It is very easy to setup, and we highly recommend you do.
You will need to be an Amicus Administrator to do this. Go to Office –> Administration –> Firm Settings --> Event Categories
Click New and create an event called RX Deadline. I usually make the color black so it stands out.
For Best Practices we recommend that RX Deadlines be Appointments and not To Dos. We usually set them for 8am to 9am. You are less likely to miss appointments then To Dos.
For People choose ever single user in the Firm. At Law Office Technology, we always setup a Firm Group called Entire Firm and make sure that all the users are assigned to it. That way you don't have to update the calendar every time you add a new user.
For Save this Profile as, call it RX Deadline.
Choose MONTH
Choose Only Appointments of Category RX Deadline.
To Dos: Do not include.
You will now have a calendar that you can go through and easily see all prescription dates.
As a little bonus, your users will now be able to run reports to see their RX Date Schedule.
Have them go to Reports –-> My Events – Selected Category (List)
They can easily see all of their RX Dates.
Best Practices:
You cannot open an email attachment that is in on an email in Amicus without first associating that email with an Amicus File and Saving the attachment to a location on your network. Therefore if you want to view email attachments without saving them we recommend we click on the View Button to read attachments.
This is the easiest way to view attachments. Note, in some instances you need to have outlook running for this to work.
In this instance we have an email the outlook view and we want to save it on an Amicus File.
We click on the file we want that email attached to and then Click Save and Make Associations.
Once the email is saved as an amicus email we can see there are 4 attachments on that email.
When we click on the Drop Down list we can chose an attachment to open.
When we click on the attachment it gives us the option to save the email. If we click No, we get the following message.
Therefore Amicus is forcing you to Save the email before you look at it. You can never click no and have it work.
Click Yes, if you click no, you will get the error message we talked about above.
You then need to chose a file if one is not selected.
Amicus will then want you to save the attachment in the location you specified in your Amicus preferences. So if you have setup your Amicus Preferences, you just have to click Save every time.
Now you can tell that the attachment has been saved because there is an icon called Saved Documents.
Got opposing council or a client that keeps rescheduling appointments? Amicus has a way of tracking that so you can see how many times the appointments have been rescheduled.
From Amicus themselves:
You can track your adjourned Appointments at a glance. When you flag your Appointments to track adjournments you will automatically be prompted to provide the reason for the adjournment at the time of rescheduling. An instance remains visible on your Calendar on the original Appointment date in a disabled state (grey font) with the adjournment date appended to its title. Subsequent adjournments of the same Appointment behave in the same manner. And each adjournment reason is tracked for later reference.
When you create an appointments, you have the option to check Show Adjournments
When you go to move that appointments, this box will appear and you have to give it a reason
The appointment is moved to the new date / time but it is also left in its place and renamed Adjourned
When you go the look at All File Events, you see the adjournment and the appointment.
Tools --> Search
Change to Advanced
Change to All Firm Items and then Click Add Search Condition
Field Type Should be Date, Condition is Greater Than and the Value is the beginning of the week. Click on Add/Remove Fields and add the Note Date. Click OK and then Click Find Now. This will show you all Stickys/Notes from this week.
