Law Firm Time Tracking vs. Employee Payroll Time Tracking
Lawyers have specific needs for their time tracking software
This article is going to sort out the difference between professional time tracking and hourly/employee time tracking. Both have different uses and are distinct.
Professional Time Tracking
Law firms need professional time tracking. Lawyers have specific needs for their time tracking software:
- Lawyers bill in 10ths of an hour, or six minute increments.
- Lawyers have rates assigned to their work: they may have multiple rates (potentially even for a single client, e.g., travel rate)
- Lawyers change their rates: old rate for past invoices, new rate for new ones
- Lawyers need very detailed information in invoices – ethical component
- Many lawyers need to track LEDES codes as a function of time tracking
- Lawyers have different services:
- Fixed fee — attorneys may still want to track time to understand their own process or to show the client — might want to charge hourly in addition to fixed fee (work that might have been out of scope)
- Some work is designated as non-billable — whether they want to show it to the client or keep it for reporting purposes
- Even contingency attorneys track time so they understand the value of the labor that went into the contingency matter or use if for compensation purposes.
For all of the above mentioned distinctions, LeanLaw has you covered. If there is a situation for time tracking that you find yourself in and you’re not sure if LeanLaw can manage it, please contact us.
Hourly / Employee Time Tracking
Employee time tracking is designed for payroll purposes and one can input time directly into QuickBooks Online. You can also enhance this time tracking with TSheets which is nimble for punching in and out, breaks for lunch, and employees on the go.
LeanLaw aspires to have hourly billable hours – and to integrate Tsheets into LeanLaw and to accommodate 1099 forms, so that you can more easily pay vendors who helped fulfill the legal work. You can always export a user’s tracked time to Excel if you need to pay them.
Professional timekeeping is difficult to manage with QuickBooks by itself. LeanLaw also provides timekeepers numerous ways to track time:
- calendar view
- list view
- desktop tracker
- time entry tool
- timers
- mobile app for on the go
Time entry with LeanLaw enhances and automates QuickBooks invoice presentation. There is an expected detail to attorneys’ time entries. By tracking time in LeanLaw, which is custom fit for law firms, you are able to automatically push that detailed information to your invoice in QuickBooks Online. Enter your time and description once without manual workarounds. You can also edit the invoice in either QuickBooks or LeanLaw. Thanks to our continual, 2-way sync, the other software will be updated to the changes in real time.
Ensure your team has the right time tracking tool. If LeanLaw helps your team capture a single, lost time entry, you might have recouped the LeanLaw cost for up to six months.
