In addition to tracking client hours for billing, you can use LeanLaw to track internal PTO by creating a matter with the “Internal” billing and rates setting. When you set a matter to Internal, none of its time entries will show up in the Ready to Bill tab or have billable values, which means you don’t have to worry about them mixing with your invoice workflow or adding hourly rates to your insights. You can then use the productivity report to review PTO with the help of LeanLaw’s report filters.

Create a client. For a reminder on how to create clients and matters, click here.

Note that your “client” here isn’t a person; it’s a category. We recommend naming this fictional client something distinct like “Internal Timekeeping” or “PTO.”

Under your new client, create a matter that will act as a sub-category for your internal timekeeping. Make sure you select "Internal" for the billing option during matter creation--if you forget to do this, you can change your billing type in the next step.

Within the matter, click on the Billing and Rates tab. Click the Add User dropdown bar to assign anyone to the matter for whom you wish to track PTO. This will allow you to create time entries for them assigned to your PTO matter.

While you’re in the Billing and Rates tab, make sure your matter is set to Internal billing, indicated below. Click the green Save button when you're finished.

Now that your user is assigned to the internally billing matter, create a time entry for the PTO by using the client, matter, and user from the steps above. You can create a time entry for every day the user will be out of the office, or enter their total hours in the Hours field, depending on your preferences.

For a reminder on how to create a time entry, click here.

You now have a user’s PTO entered in LeanLaw.

Now that you have PTO in LeanLaw as a time entry, you can use LeanLaw's reports and report filters for paying out PTO, gaining insights, and more.

In the main navigation bar, click the Reports button to view LeanLaw’s reports.

Locate the Productivity report underneath the By Client and Matter heading and click the YTD option to open the year to date report.

Within the productivity report, click on the Show Matters filter on the left side. This will allow you to view your PTO from a matter level. Now, locate the name of the matter you created for internal timekeeping and click it in the report to view productivity for only that matter.

You now have your company’s PTO metrics right in front of you and can use LeanLaw

Skills used in this article: