Legal billing software that lets you spend less time sending bills

Legal billing software helps law firms and attorneys manage time and expenses more productively through time tracking and billing features. With legal billing software, attorneys, paralegals, and staff can track their hours and expenses (both billable and non-billable), and then invoice clients for legal services. Legal billing software includes capabilities such as:

• Time and expense tracking
• Bill creation and invoicing
• Collections and payment
• Trust Accounting
• Reporting and analytics

The best legal billing software, like TimeSolv, streamlines the legal billing process, making these essential but tedious tasks easier to manage.

Legal billing software stands out from generic billing and time management software because it provides functionalities that support law firm operations—such as time tracking billable hours and expenses and assigning LEDES and UTBMS billing codes.

Moreover, legal billing software safeguards against compliance risks, particularly when it comes to trust accounting, which requires diligence in how funds are transferred into and out of client trust accounts.

Most legal billing software does more than get clients their bills on time. (Although that is a significant benefit!)

When implemented correctly, a legal billing application helps law firms reduce the amount of time they need to handle all of the administrative tasks surrounding billing:

• Automated Billing
• Invoicing with Customizable Invoice Templates
• Collections
• Flexible Payment Options and Online Payments
• Advanced Reporting

Your law firm should consider legal billing software that offers all the above, especially options that allow for customization, so your law firm’s branding is consistently implemented.

Most importantly, a robust legal billing platform delivers functionalities that streamline your law firm’s workflow. Better systems lead to more billable hours, leading to more revenue, a healthier budget, and a more profitable legal practice.

TimeSolv is a standout legal billing software that ranks #1 among all its competitors on G2 for usability. TimeSolv receives an average of 4.7 across Capterra, G2, Trustpilot, and Google reviews.

TimeSolv is also trusted by over legal professionals, and approved by bar associations and law societies.

Solo and small law firms need the power of enterprise accounting software without the hassle of setting up and managing it. At TimeSolv, we recommend looking for billing solutions that easily integrate with other tools, which ultimately increases the efficiency of your legal practice’s workflows.

TimeSolv offers Quickbooks integrations, as well as integrations for Xero and AccountEdge. These solutions offer robust accounting features to support your law firm's financial processes.

We encourage you to be mindful of the gaps in how these tools handle trust accounting. They aren’t designed to manage and maintain client trust accounts.

That being said, when used as an integrated solution with legal billing software like TimeSolv, they can be highly effective.

Lawyers typically bill their clients one of two ways:

• Hourly billing
• Flat rates

When lawyers bill by the hour, they bill time in set increments. The standard billing increments used are:

• 1/10th of an hour or 6 minutes
• 1/6th of an hour or 10 minutes, or
• 1/4th of an hour or 15 minutes

Because of the incremental nature of hourly billing, it’s critical that attorneys scrupulously track their time for both billable and non-billable activities so they can accurately bill clients and maintain profitability.
For some cases, clients may choose to use alternative billing arrangements such as flat fees. This approach to billing works best for routine matters where attorneys can predict how much time it will take them to complete legal tasks.

Generating bills is a straightforward task, thanks to TimeSolv’s intuitive layout.

To generate an invoice, select the client and the date range you’re billing for. TimeSolv automatically creates easy-to-read invoices with all the time and expense entries for those criteria.

Your invoice remains in draft format until it’s sent to your client.

If you need to edit an invoice, you can do so from the Invoices tab. TimeSolv retains the original time and expenses tracked when editing values within the invoice for auditing purposes, but you can add new time and expense entries, as well as make permanent changes to client contact information.

When you’re ready to send a bill, you have several options:

• Automail
• Email delivery
• Print/regular mail

Once you’ve sent the email, you can no longer edit it.

If you run into questions during the billing and invoicing process, just reach out to our support team—we’re here to help you!

TimeSolv offers law firms a range of options for compliance-minded trust fund accounting.

Once you've set up a trust account in TimeSolv, you can assign matters to it so the correct transactions can be made against the trust. "Replenish Below" and "Replenish To" amounts can be approved to keep the account fully funded, and you can automate payments from the trust.

TimeSolv also provides allocation functions, so you can choose which invoices to allocate to trust funds.

Yes. With TimeSolv, law firms can apply trust funds to bills. You can set up trust funds to automatically pay bills, or you can manually apply funds from a trust account to a bill.

You have several options for sending client invoices through TimeSolv:

• Automail
• Email delivery
• Print/regular mail

Many law firms find that email is the easiest way to send bills, especially when combined with an integrated online payment processor.

Yes, with TimeSolv, it’s simple to customize invoices and add your law firm’s branding to them.

In addition to including your firm's letterhead and logo, TimeSolv allows for a high degree of customization for invoice templates. What's more, you can assign different template types to different matters, even for the same client.

Knowing which clients have paid and which still have outstanding bills helps your law firm make important decisions that impact both client experience and profitability. With TimeSolv, legal practices can get an overview of outstanding balancing in several ways.

First, you can access all sent but unpaid invoices through the “Invoices > Sent” tab on TimeSolv’s dashboard. From here, you can resend invoices or choose another method of following up with clients.

TimeSolv also allows law firms to run detailed reports on law firm finances and client payments, so you can identify clients who are behind on their bills, as well as capture other insights on your law firm’s budget and financial performance.

Yes! TimeSolv offers well-established integrations with popular accounting software like QuickBooks Online, Xero, and AccountEdge.

When you’re considering legal billing software to help your law firm streamline workflows and increase profitability, there are several features you need to look for:

Time and Expense Tracking Features

• Time Tracking: Ensure all time you spend on matters is captured. Use time tracking as you’re working or input later.
• Expense Tracking: Efficiently track billable expenses to your clients such as:
  • Court filing fees
  • Court reporting fees
  • Deposition expenses
  • Mediation fees
  • Travel expenses
  • Hearing transcript fees
  • Expert witness fees
  • Medical record expenses

Integration Features

Your law firm likely doesn’t run on one tool alone. Even the most robust practice management tools need support. Ensure that your tools talk to one another, so your lawyers remain productive, and your legal practice runs efficiently. Your legal billing product should integrate with:

• Practice management software
• Client management software
• Accounting features and Invoicing software
• Payment processing software
• File sharing software
• Email software

Billing and Invoicing Features

Billing Features

Billing your clients accurately is important, but it takes more than correctly assigning time and expenses to client accounts. Your law firm’s billing software should offer flexibility within the billing process for:

• Hourly and flat-fee billing arrangements
• Custom rates and fees for different lawyers and activities
• Contingency fees
• Customizable task and activity codes
• LEDES billing and UTBMS billing codes

Any legal billing system you work with should also provide robust trust accounting management features, allowing you to keep accurate records of trust accounts and transactions. It should also facilitate tracking your IOLTA (Interest On Lawyer Trust Account).

Invoicing Features

Legal billing software can significantly streamline your law firm’s workflow by:

• Setting up flexible billing templates
• Automatically generating bills based on unbilled time and expenses assigned to a matter
• Automated Billing System and Batching invoices
• Sending payment reminders to facilitate collections for past-due accounts and late payments
• Integrating with legal payment processors to accept online payments with credit cards or other electronic payment methods
• Running robust financial reporting to see accounts receivable, outstanding balances, and more

Project Management Features

Keep on track with tasks and project budgets with legal billing software that supports project management. TimeSolv includes features like:

• Setting milestones
• Task management
• Tracking deadlines
• Establishing fixed fees
• Monitoring budget
• Discovering new insights
• Streamlining communications

Yes, LEDES billing is available so subscribers can generate invoices in LEDES 1998B format with the appropriate UTBMS task and expense codes.

TimeSolv offers law firms flexible options for types of billing. When assigning billing types in TimeSolv, you can choose from:

• Time and Expense
• Time Only
• Expense Only
• Fixed Fee: Time and Expense (expenses included in the amount)
• Fixed Fee: Time Only (client pays the expenses)

While on-premise software has long offered secure technology solutions for law firms, today’s legal industry demands flexibility and convenience as much as it does security.

Cloud-based technology has become the standard for legal software because it’s more efficient, more affordable, and offers features and details that deliver more value—and this goes for legal billing services.

Cloud-based legal billing software helps law firms increase their profitability right from their web browser. They do this through platforms that are easier to use and maintain while still offering the same degree of security against cyber threats.

What’s more, because they can be accessed anywhere at any time, cloud-based programs allow your attorneys, paralegals, and staff to maintain productivity even when working from home.

Law firms can discover substantial results when they implement marketing tools such as client relationship management (CRM) tools, intake platforms, marketing automation services, and more.

TimeSolv offers a deep integration with Law Ruler, a leading marketing software that is law firm specific. Law Ruler allows law firms to better organize and manage client intake, communications, and outreach through automated messaging that prevents leads from slipping through the cracks.