What’s new in LeanLaw this month?
QuickBooks Validation
Occasionally, the connection between a client (or matter) in LeanLaw and its customer (or sub-customer) in QuickBooks can break. This may be because the customer was made inactive in QuickBooks or its customer type was changed. A broken connection in LeanLaw will prevent invoices from being sent to QuickBooks, among other issues. This feature helps to locate and fix broken connections.
The QuickBooks Validation button will scan all of your clients' and matters' connections to QuickBooks, showing an icon to signify whether the connection is good or bad. You can then use the connection filter to instantly find all connections which require your attention. The QuickBooks Validation feature is a troubleshooting tool that greatly shortens the time to find broken QuickBooks connections!
Some of you may recognize this restored and improved feature from before, but you can read our full article on finding and fixing broken QuickBooks connections using the QuickBooks Validation feature here.
Bulk invoice editing
We've added the invoice editing options that let you quickly execute some commonly used actions in draft invoices.
Make non-billable: switches a time entry from being marked as billable to being non-billable, zeroing its rate and amount in the process.
Write-down to zero (available on Pro subscriptions): enters a write-down value equal to the time entry's Worked Hours, causing the full amount to be written down for reporting purposes.
Save for later: sends the line item back to Ready to Bill so it can be added to a different invoice.
These actions can be performed on individual line items by using the triple dots to the right of the line item, or can be done in bulk by using the checkboxes to the left of the line items. This feature lays the groundwork for more advanced invoice editing, such as sending a line item to an entirely different invoice and matter, coming soon!
Quality of life changes
We've made some changes to the product which we hope will make your life easier.
Added Type to the WIP Detail Report. This column should help when skimming and sorting the WIP Detail report by clarifying fixed fees, time entries, and expenses.
Payment type can now be entered on trust deposits to support better record keeping practices.
What’s next?
We have some exciting features being beta tested right now. Some firms are already trying out these features, but they’ll be available for all once we know they’re bug free. Contact our support team if you’re interested in trying any of these beta features.
Deposit Report
Our new deposit report can be sorted by your operating account or by your trust account(s). When viewing the operating account, you’ll see all payments made for all matters in the firm. When viewing a trust account, you’ll see all trust deposits recorded in LeanLaw. We hope this report makes your lives a little easier when you’re verifying your accounts.
Public API
We’re continuing to develop our public API that allows the retrieval of bulk information from firms, such as client contact information, client and matter lists, and more. Developers can use this to securely integrate LeanLaw with other programs, like Sharepoint. The API is in closed beta; please contact us if you're interested in exploring it.
Distribution Locking
Currently, any change you make to allocation settings (such as origination, firm share, and responsible percentages) will apply retroactively to all payments received. This is great for allowing you to correct or adjust report data, but it also limits the accuracy of past compensation reports in firms that change allocation settings.
We're making allocation settings lock for distributions, as long as the distribution is set to either To Distribute or Distributed. When this function is released, your distribution reports will remain accurate no matter how your users' percentages change over time. Expect to see this change before the end of next month.
Update history
As always, we’ve also been hard at work to squash bugs and improve the user interface. Here are the patch notes for last month’s development.
December 29, 2021
Fixed an issue where starting a timer and refreshing the page would cause the timer to reset to a certain time.
Fixed a misaligned button in the Pay From Trust window.
Fixed an issue where matter ID numbers on the Matters page weren't sorting properly.
December 28, 2021
Added bulk draft editing to invoices--you can now use checkboxes to quickly write-down to zero, send back to Ready to Bill, or make non-billable any number of line items on an invoice.
Updated our subscription management system to make it clearer when a subscription needs to be updated and what prompted the need, such as a trial expiring, card information becoming invalid, or the subscription being cancelled by the firm.
December 23, 2021
Fixed an issue that could prevent a new matter from being created.
December 22, 2021
Added the ability to add Payment Method to trust deposits.
Made the product more compatible with users in time zones greater than UTC +0.
Added shortcut buttons to line items in Draft invoices, allowing users to quickly write-down an item to zero, send the item back to Ready to Bill, or mark the item nonbillable.
Fixed an issue in the Deposit Report (beta) which caused the report to fail if the firm had hundreds of deposits.
December 14, 2021
Separated the ability to view Overview and Billing Activity from a Reports permission to a Clients and Matters permission. The new permission allows these insights to be viewable by users in the Paralegal and Time Keeper roles, who normally can't view reports.
The QuickBooks Validation feature is no longer in beta. It's been released to all Core users with the user permission to manage a firm's QuickBooks connection.
Fixed an issue where the client level of the Billable by Client and Matter report wouldn't sort by Date correctly.
Fixed an issue where the Expense Templates page sometimes showed changes had been made when none had.
Fixed an issue where block billing would round [.2] and [.1] to [.4].
Implemented changes to the Deposit Report based on feedback.
Revised the Equitrac page to clarify how to import data.
Revised the Revenue by Originating page to clarify what the report does.
December 4, 2021
Fixed an issue where the Responsible field would appear blank in some areas of the product if no user was selected in the Show Matters for User filter.
December 2, 2021
Added a "Type" column to the WIP Detail report and connected expenses to their assigned users instead of leaving them at the bottom of the page.
Fixed an issue that caused some Chrome users to see an erroneous Time Entry window.
Fixed an issue where a payment assigned to a distribution would be removed from its distribution if the payment was edited in QuickBooks.
Looking for more? You can find last month's release notes here.