Billing Best Practices- How to Make Billing a Breeze and Collect More Money
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It’s no secret that law firm billing can take up way too much time and decrease your firm’s overall productivity. Also, while lawyers need to maintain a regular cash flow, many find it difficult to chase down payments from clients. In this webinar, you will learn how to optimize your firm billing and collections so that you save time, make your clients happy, and increase your bottom line.
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Billing Best Practices- How to Make Billing a Breeze and Collect More Money
- 1. Billing Best Practices— How to Make Billing a Breeze and Collect More Money
- 3. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Establishing better billing practices is key to growth and profitability! www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 4. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Billing Best Practices www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 5. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.comwww.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com Step 1: Set up your invoice templates
- 6. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Step 2: Enable invoice sharing for your clients www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 7. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Step 3: Set up and apply taxes, surcharges, and convenience fees if necessary www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 8. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Step 4: Capture time automatically with Bill-As-You-Work technology www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 9. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Step 5: Schedule a cutoff period for billing www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 10. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Step 6: Set up your automated payment emails www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 11. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Step 7: Run your pre-bills
- 12. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.comwww.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com Step 8: Run batch-billing
- 13. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Step 9: Set up recurring billing or payment plans for AFA’s or clients that are behind. www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 14. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Collections Best Practices www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 15. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Rules for collections start with your initial agreement! www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 16. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Set a date that invoices are “Past Due” and consider using interest and discounts to incentivize payment www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 17. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Designate milestones to call customers regarding outstanding invoices • Two days before “due date” • One week past due • Two weeks past due www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 18. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Consider hiring a Billing and Collections Specialist • Full Time Client Service Specialist • Virtual Assistant • Part-time Billing Assistant www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 19. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com If you only take paper checks, what does that say about your firm? www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 20. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Since 1974, The American Bar Association has approved attorneys accepting credit card payments for their fees. www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 21. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Increase Payment Options For Your Clients to Increase Your Collections! •Credit Cards •e-Checks www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 22. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Payment Processing FAQs What is the process for getting set up? www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 23. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Payment Processing FAQs What is a base rate? What about effective Rate? www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 24. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Payment Processing FAQs How are processing fees collected? www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 25. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Payment Processing FAQs How fast are payments posted? www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 26. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com To surcharge, or not to surcharge? www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 27. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Tips for choosing the right legal payment processor • Must understand the rules and regulations with Trust and IOLTA accounts • Must understand law firm’s workflow and how payments will be taken • Free Assessment & Personalized Service • Understanding your base rate www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 28. www.rocketmatter.com Technology Tools that Increase Billable Time and Collections www.lexcharge.com
- 29. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Q & A www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com
- 30. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com866-710-1845 Sign up for a free trial, no credit card required!
- 31. 888-432-1529 www.rocketmatter.com Want a free rate analysis?Contact adam@lexcharge.com www.rocketmatter.com www.lexcharge.com Law Firm Payment Processing
- 32. Thank You!Adam Holden | adam@lexcharge.com Nefra MacDonald | nefra@rocketmatter.com
Notes de l'éditeur
- Illustration of small firm problems
- Your practice management software can greatly help with this. For instance, Rocket Matter has six pre-set invoice templates to choose from. If you don’t like those, you can manipulate them yourself or hire Rocket Matter’s professional services to do it for you. You can personalize the invoice by adding your firm's logo and changing some of the colors. If your clients want to see specific line items, you can add those merge fields to your standard invoice or upload special invoices to apply only to the matters that need them. This is a helpful feature for firms with multiple practice areas.
- When you add a matter, ask your client for approval to email your invoice rather than sending it snail mail. This is a key element in driving down overhead and administrative costs. If your client insists on snail mail, of course you can accommodate his or her wishes. The goal, however, is to eliminate this extra step of printing and mailing invoices each month.
- In some states, attorney services are subject to state sales tax, use tax, and possibly local taxes. The charges can vary based on where the service is received or where the work is performed. Rocket Matter allows you to set up unlimited rules for the states and local areas where you service your clients. The rules are flexible enough that you can apply taxes to selected fees and expenses or to all of them, and you can set up the the rules on a matter-by-matter basis. This feature eliminates manual calculations that used to be necessary at the end of every month. It also helps with end-of-year reporting and taxes.
- Avoid reconstituting your time at the end of the month by capturing work as you perform it. RocketMatter allows you to bill from tasks, notes, documents, calendar events, phone messages, and emails. They also provide multiple timers. The idea is to bill from anywhere without interrupting your workflow because capturing your time as you work is the easiest way to ensure that you aren't missing time at the end of the month.
- The most well-run law firms bill at the same time every 30 days, usually in the first week of the month. When you’re ready to bill, you need to identify a cutoff date. That doesn't mean you and your staff stop adding time for continuing work. Instead, you should enter anything that you need to bill prior to the cutoff date. It's also helpful to set a recurring calendar event in your practice management system for the cutoff.
- Rocket Matter allows you to fully customize the text of automated emails you send with the generated invoice and link to secure online payment. Take a look at the default email and modify it to your firm's liking. Remember, this communication is a reflection of your firm and needs to inspire your client to take action, so it is an important detail to remember.
- Pre-bills allow you to see a preview of your invoices so that you can check for formatting, errors, or omissions. The nice thing about Rocket Matter pre-bills over other software packages is that the pre-bills are high fidelity. They accurately depict the balances of your matters as if the pre-bill were an actual invoice. No debits are created on your matter ledgers when a pre-bill is run. You can run a pre-bill for a single matter, a single client, or for all your open matters through batch billing capability.
- Batch billing allows you to generate all of your invoices at once, and if you’ve enabled invoice-sharing for your clients, they will receive your customized email with their invoice attached. In other words, with a couple of clicks, all of your invoices are generated and emailed out. What’s better than that? If you compare this to the old- school practice of generating invoices one at a time, then folding them, addressing the envelope, stuffing the envelope, stamping, and sending, batch billing saves a lot of time and money. You can also see when your clients have viewed their invoice. With Rocket Matter, your ledgers will be automatically updated when your clients pay. If any clients are uncomfortable paying online, you can apply payment to their invoices with a credit card over the phone by using a payment processor such as LexCharge.
- What if you have alternative fee arrangements with a client? If you've done a monthly retainer arrangement, you can set that up with Rocket Matter’s recurring billing. Simply set up the number of payments and keep it open-ended until you manually stop the plan, or set automatic payments to continue until the matter comes to a close. For example, if your client pays you a flat $2,500 monthly for services, set up a recurring billing plan to run an invoice and automatically collect payment from your client's credit card. The ledger will reflect which invoices were generated and which clients have paid. If the payment fails, you'll receive a “payment failure” email so you can obtain new payment information from your client. If you have clients that are behind on payments, you can help them catch up by setting up an automated payment plan. You can tell Rocket Matter to bill a client a set amount per month until the balance is paid off. Alternately, you can specify the number of payments for which Rocket Matter will bill. You can even specify a larger initial deposit. A receipt will be sent to the client's email automatically after each successful payment, and their Rocket Matter ledger will be adjusted accordingly.
- Make sure you set expectations regarding payment terms, when invoices are due, and what happens when invoices are unpaid.
- Also consider that if you are using interest and discounts, calls may change to “hey, this is your last day to save 5% on your bill. How would you like to pay your bill today?” or “Today is the last day to take care of your balance in the amount of $2000 without accruing the interest charge of $200. How would you like to take care of that today?”
- Paper checks
- Give your clients another option to pay- Will increase the odds of them paying. CCs will allow them to finance the service, especially if they don’t have cash on hand. Will decrease time to payment. Your clients can earn rewards points, cash back, mileage. Incentivize them to pay
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- 10. Can I charge a surcharge fee to my customers? In general, the answer is yes, but it depends on where you live. Thanks to a recent lawsuit settlement against Visa and MasterCard, merchants are allowed to start charging a surcharge for accepting credit cards. This rule is also governed by state laws, so although Visa and MasterCard are allowing it, each merchant must ensure their state permits this. 11. Can I charge the convenience fee to my customers? You can charge a convenience fee to your customer only if the customer is paying outside of your standard method of the way in which you accept credit cards for payment. It must be disclosed to them on their invoice. There are different rules for each card association surrounding this method, so research it prior to charging this fee.
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- Lisa, can you insert LexCharge logo plz? Transition to Demo