What’s new in LeanLaw this month?
New distribution features
Our Distribution page has always been a useful tool for cutting checks, but we've taken it a step further with full redesign, including 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.
To learn more, check out our help article here!
More email delivery functions
Progress continues on our Invoice Email Delivery feature, currently in open beta. This feature allows firms to customize the emails sent to clients with a logo image and color theme, account summary information, Pay Invoice and Pay Balance buttons that link directly to a Gravity Legal payment portal, and more.
October's development focused on fixing issues, developing more support for trust accounting, and preparing for an email delivery log that will allow you to view when your email has been opened.
Working percentage allocation
The Reports Settings page has been updated to allow you to switch your calculated value and set Working Percentage.
Before, the Working Percentage was an automatically calculated value--the amount allocated back to a user for their work was always whatever remained after responsible, origination, and firm share had been allocated.
Now, you can choose whether you want Working Percentage or Firm Share to be the calculated value, allowing you to set a constant percentage for the revenue returned to your users based on their services. You can even override Working Percentage on a user or a matter level.
What's next?
Custom Fields in invoice memos
Custom Fields is an expansion of the QuickBooks feature by the same name. With this feature, rather than just being limited to 3 fields, you can create as many as you like by inserting them into your invoice memo.
Here's how it works: a field name can be in your Firm Settings, such as "Patent Number," with that field set to be either matter-specific or client-specific. Then, you can go into a client or matter's Info tab and attach a value to that field, such as "D000123." Then, whenever you create an invoice for that client or matter, the memo field will automatically include "Patent Number D000123." Any fields you leave blank will be considered not relevant to the invoice and left off entirely.
This feature is especially strong if you find yourself constantly applying the same information onto every invoice you send a client. Contact our team today if you'd like to try this beta feature!
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.
October 28, 2022
Added user-facing ACH support to the Subscriptions settings page! Users can now use ACH to subscribe to LeanLaw.
Fixed an issue where Gravity Legal payment links wouldn't appear in an invoice memo if the firm had no other text in their memo.
Fixed an issue where assigning an expense to a user in a draft would not assign that expense to the user across the rest of the product.
Fixed an issue where saving changes to a client's Info tab while step-down origination was enabled would always prompt the user, asking whether they wish to apply step-down changes to the client's matters. This prompt now only occurs if a step-down value has actually changed.
October 26, 2022
Fixed an issue where firms that had never opened a trust account would encounter errors when creating Gravity Legal payment links.
October 24, 2022
Released Distributions 2.0 to all Pro firms. This feature allows users to split payments between multiple distributions and create bills in QuickBooks in each attorney's name with the amount they're owed from the distribution.
Added buttons to mark a distribution as distributed without creating bills in QuickBooks or send a distribution back to Draft after its been distributed.
Partial payments recorded in LeanLaw will now update the amount due for that invoice in Gravity Legal payments links.
Fixed an issue where payment links for matters with a trust balance would always map to the trust account.
Fixed an issue that caused the contingency statement report to fail to load.
Fixed an issue where firms that hadn't visited their Reports Settings page since before we added the Calculated Value and Working % functions would be told that they had unsaved changes.
Fixed an issue where emails would fail to send if the client had multiple email addresses in the "To" field.
Fixed an issue where the Reports Settings page wouldn't load in new trial firms.
Fixed an issue where an invalid DateTime value from QuickBooks could sometimes cause trust transaction history to fail to load.
October 14, 2022
Fixed an issue where users couldn't leave the Invoice Email Delivery page without entering a Sender Address.
Fixed an issue in the Compensation report where, if you used the Distribution filter to view a distribution made up of partial payments (such as only the origination), the Total column would reflect the full payment(s).
Fixed an issue where expenses could not be edited to $0 on the Expenses page.
Fixed an issue where editing the Introduction Paragraph on the Invoice Email Delivery page could cause your Sender Name to be forgotten, resulting in emails to be sent from "donotreply" rather than the name you entered.
Fixed an issue where users would not be able to see the Hour Limit or Rate on a fixed fee after it had been billed.
Made improvements to invoice creation logic in Ready to Bill. You can now deselect matters under clients that are set to client-accounting to exclude their billables from a multimatter invoice. You can also now deselect matters under clients that are set to matter-accounting to choose not to create an invoice for that matter.
Fixed an issue where Worked % wouldn't be calculated for attorneys if Worked % was not set as the firm's calculated value and the user was not the responsible attorney on a matter.
October 10, 2022
Added functionality to the Auto Pay From Trust feature in preparation of supporting firms that always pay from trust and firms that keep "frozen trust accounts." Now, while Auto Pay From Trust is enabled, all Gravity Legal payment links for matters with trust accounts will deposit to trust when paid. While it's off, all Gravity Legal payment links will deposit to operating when paid.
October 6, 2022
Added a protective restriction to the Change Matter function in draft invoices. If a user tries to move a timekeeper's entry to a matter where that time entry is not already involved, the button to finalize the move will be disabled and the user will be informed that they must add the timekeeper to the matter first.
Fixed an issue where $0 invoices couldn't be created while Gravity Legal was enabled.
Cleaned up the grammar and verbiage of the invoice email delivery feature.
October 5, 2022
Released the new Reports Settings page to all firms. Firms can now choose whether they wish Firm Share or Working to be their calculated value.
Fixed an issue where the Pay button (email delivery feature) wouldn't load correctly when viewed in the Outlook app.
Looking for more changes? You can find last month's release notes here.