What’s new in LeanLaw this month?
Performance improvement: Expenses
Just as we did to the Clients and Matters pages last month, we've overhauled the Expenses page this month. The Expenses page will now load information on a page-by-page basis, rather than loading all expenses when you first visit the page. This change should result in a significant performance improvement on the Expenses page in firms with hundreds of expenses.
Save and apply these settings to all Matters for this Client
We've received feedback over a button on the Billing & Rates tab which, before this month, was labeled, "Save Changes to All Matters for this Client." This button, when used, saves any changes you've made to your Billing & Rates tab and then applies all settings from the current matter's Billing & Rates (including billing type, involved users, and user rates) to all other matters that share its client.
This button's previous name suggested it could be used to add singular changes, such as the addition of a new attorney or a rate changed at the matter level, to all matters without affecting any other settings in those matters. To answer the frustrations this caused, we've taken two actions so far:
Already, we've changed the name of this button to, "Save and apply these settings to all Matters for this Client," which we hope offers more clarity to what this button currently does.
Additionally, we've begun scoping out some updates to matter settings that will allow users to do exactly what they wished of the button.
What's next?
Syncing distributions to QuickBooks
Our Distribution page has always been a useful tool for cutting checks, but we want to take it a step further with a "Sync to QuickBooks" button on the distribution page. When pressed, this button will automatically create either a check or a bill (determined by a setting in your Firm Settings) in QuickBooks for each user in your firm to the amount of their distribution. This payroll tool will be ready for beta soon.
Public API
We’re always 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. This feature is available upon request; please contact LeanLaw if you're interested in exploring our public API.
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 our development.
May 26, 2022
Revised the Expenses page to use pagination, which should improve performance in firms with many expenses.
May 23, 2022
Changed the default Time Period filter on the Ready to Bill page to Up to Today (was All Time). This was done in part to prevent the likelihood someone would accidentally add a fixed fee dated in the future to a current invoice.
Fixed an issue where a payment applied to an invoice made entirely in QuickBooks and an invoice made in LeanLaw could cause the Compensation report to error.
Fixed an issue where some searches on the Clients and Matters could be very resource demanding, reducing performance.
May 19, 2022
Slightly improved the Compensation report's performance by removing a request for "Billed" data, which used to be a part of this report.
Fixed an issue that prevented matter merging in certain circumstances.
Fixed an issue where firms couldn't use Copy Billing Information if they'd enabled the setting to require originator on matter creation, even if their most recent matter had an originator.
Fixed an issue where recurring fixed fees could cause draft invoices to fail to load, and could cause the recurring fixed fee to disappear if the draft was sent back to Ready to Bill.
Fixed an issue where the LeanLaw Accounting Pro discount wouldn't automatically apply when it had been switched on.
May 12, 2022
Fixed an issue where trust vendors without company names or first and last names wouldn't be valid selections in the Trust Vendor Payee feature.
Modified the language of the Trust Accounting page in firm settings to better reflect where the vendor will appear in trust payments and to provide a help article for troubleshooting.
Modified the language of "Save Changes to all Matters for this Client" to say "Save and apply these settings all Matters for this Client" to clarify what the feature currently does.
Modified the behavior of the tutorial (the graduation cap in the top right) to only appear in firms that are in a Trial. This should improve page load performance.
Fixed an issue where double clicking the Record Deposit button could create duplicate trust deposits.
May 9, 2022
Fixed an issue where firms would encounter an error regarding trust vendors when making payments that didn't involve trust accounting.
May 6, 2022
Fixed an issue where trust payments could partially process if the firm name was already in use in QuickBooks, preventing LeanLaw from assigning a payee. Now, a descriptive error will appear, directing the user to their Trust Accounting settings, and the payment will be fully blocked.
Fixed an issue where vendors in QuickBooks that lacked a "company" or "first name" wouldn't appear in the Trust Accounting settings' vendor dropdown list. Now only a "display name" is required.
May 2, 2022
Fixed an issue where firms with special characters, such as apostrophes and ampersands, would trigger an error when creating trust payments or creating themselves as a vendor for trust payments.
Looking for more changes? You can find last month's release notes here.