TurboLaw Software News
"I wanted to write to thank you and your firm for the substantial support. I have dealt with other vendors of legal software, and TurboLaw is by far the best, both with respect to the product itself and also with respect to the technical support assistance which you provide.
"Your services and product has promoted the efficient running of my office."
Joyce G. Perocchi
North Andover, MA
TurboLaw 2.73 Released
January 14, 2010
We are happy to announce that TurboLaw 2.73, the latest version of our popular automated document assembly software, is now available. If you have TurboLaw, the next time you open it, you should see a notice about the updated version appear in the bottom-right corner of your screen (it may take a short while to appear, depending on your Internet speed).
This new version features a number of changes designed to make it even easier for you to get your work done:
- The TurboLaw Migration Wizard is now bundled with TurboLaw itself, to help make it even easier to move your TurboLaw data from one computer to another (as when you get a new computer or switch computers)
- The registration window has been revised to allow you to try to register online again, instead of only allowing you to click it once
- Text on the registration window has been re-worded to make it more clear
- The Update Utility has been improved to better handle random Internet connection problems that some people encounter (especially when using wireless Internet)
As always, we continue to update TurboLaw based on feedback we hear from our customers – so if you have an idea or suggestion for TurboLaw, we’d love to hear from you!
TurboLaw Time and Billing 1.16 Released
November 19, 2009
It may not have a big red bow tied around it, but the latest release of TurboLaw Time and Billing – Version 1.16 – could be considered our “early Christmas present” to all of our users.
The biggest change in this new version is undoubtedly the incredible variety of new bill templates we’ve added.
These new templates not only give you the ability to create fantastic-looking bills, they also show just how much you can do with TurboLaw Time and Billing’s template system and a little bit of creativity.
Here is a preview of all the new bill templates (click on any image to see a larger version):
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- “Atlantis”
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- “Boston”
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- “Woodstock”
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- “Phoenix”
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- “Manhattan”
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- “Papyrus”
We hope you enjoy these new themes – and remember, you can always pick one of these themes and customize it further to suit your taste.
As always, your TurboLaw Time and Billing will check for updates automatically and notify you when a new update is available. Just watch for the pop-up balloon, or for this message at the bottom of your screen:
This message lets you know a new update is available.
Remember – we welcome your feedback as well, so don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any thoughts or comments about the program.
We hope you enjoy this latest version of TurboLaw Time and Billing!
Time and Billing Reports: “Aging Report”
November 16, 2009
Often, users of TurboLaw Time and Billing who are switching from another time and billing system want to pull up certain types of reports, but they only know the name of the report from their previous billing system.
To help with this, we are going to be posting a series of articles that describe step-by-step how to produce the same reports you’re used to from your old billing system in TurboLaw Time and Billing.
Displaying an “Aging Report” in TurboLaw Time and Billing
In today’s article, we’re going to show you how to display what other billing programs might call an “aging report.”
Note: you can click any of the images in this article to enlarge the picture.
Step 1: Switch to the Bills view by clicking Bills from the left-hand navigation bar.
Step 2: Using the options at the bottom of the left-hand navigation bar, choose to see bills grouped by Age.
That’s it! The bills you see are now grouped by age, so you can see at a glance how many bills are in each age category, and what the totals are for each age category. This is what some programs might call an “aging report.”
You can also print this view by clicking the File menu and choosing Print.
As always, our goal is to make TurboLaw Time and Billing as easy to use as possible – and that includes making it easy to switch to TurboLaw Time and Billing from another billing program. If you have questions about how to produce a report from your old billing program in TurboLaw Time and Billing, feel free to ask us!
Time and Billing Reports: Client Recap
November 9, 2009
Often, users of TurboLaw Time and Billing who are switching from another time and billing system want to pull up certain types of reports, but they only know the name of the report from their previous billing system.
To help with this, we are going to be posting a series of articles that describe step-by-step how to produce the same reports you’re used to from your old billing system in TurboLaw Time and Billing.
How to Produce a “Client Recap” Report in TurboLaw Time and Billing
What some billing programs might call a “Client Recap,” TurboLaw Time and Billing calls “Account History.”
TurboLaw Time and Billing makes it very easy to see a “client recap” report for a particular client.
Step 1: Open the client you wish to view the recap report for.
Step 2: Click the Account History button.
That’s it! The account history window is the TurboLaw Time and Billing equivalent to a “Client Recap” report in some other billing programs. You can view the account history as either a “tree” type view (with items “grouped” into 4 main groups) or as a grid (like a check register). You can also print both views by clicking the Print button.
As always, our goal is to make TurboLaw Time and Billing as easy to use as possible – and that includes making it easy to switch to TurboLaw Time and Billing from another billing program. If you have questions about how to produce a report from your old billing program in TurboLaw Time and Billing, feel free to ask us!
Time and Billing Reports: MTD or YTD billed by client or time keeper
November 2, 2009
Often, users of TurboLaw Time and Billing who are switching from another time and billing system want to pull up certain types of reports, but they only know the name of the report from their previous billing system.
To help with this, we are going to be posting a series of articles that describe step-by-step how to produce the same reports you’re used to from your old billing system in TurboLaw Time and Billing.
How to Produce MTD or YTD “Billed by Client” or “Billed by Time Keeper” Reports in TurboLaw Time and Billing
In today’s article, we’re going to describe how to produce a class of reports, and not just one particular report. Specifically, we’re going to show you how to produce MTD (month-to-date) or YTD (year-to-date) “Billed by Client” or “Billed by Time Keeper” (what TurboLaw Time and Billing calls “Staff Member”) reports.
Although TurboLaw Time and Billing doesn’t let you restrict the displayed information to just a particular range of dates (e.g., YTD or MTD), you can easily export the data you see on your screen into a program such as Microsoft Excel, which is capable of very advanced data manipulation and display – including the desired MTD or YTD reports.
In general, it is possible to pull up these types of reports in Excel in just a minute or two.
Note: you can click any of the images in this article to enlarge the picture.
Step 1: From the Home screen, click the Add/Edit Work Items button to bring up the Time/Work window.
Step 2: From the Time/Work window, click the Export button and save the exported data on your computer.
Step 3: Open the file you just saved with your preferred spreadsheet program (e.g., Microsoft Excel).
Step 4: Now that you have the data in Excel, you can bring Excel’s advanced filtering and reporting tools to bear on it. Just select the columns you would like to filter by, and then click the Sort and Filter button in Excel.
(Note: these pictures are taken from Microsoft Excel 2007 – if you are using a different version or a different spreadsheet program, your options will look different. Please consult your program’s help file for how to perform the equivalent steps in your particular program.)
Step 5: Set the filtering options you would like on the columns you have selected. You can do this by clicking the little drop-down type box which appears in the heading of each column.
Above: the Date column showing the filter drop-down button
Above: the filter drop-down lets you filter dates in any way you like. In this picture, we are filtering for YTD (year-to-date).
Above: you can also filter by name. In this picture, we are filtering by client name.
That’s it! Now your data is filtered to be either MTD or YTD, as well as restricted by client or time keeper (what TurboLaw Time and Billing calls “Staff member”).
You can print this data directly from Excel, or use it to perform other manipulations on the data – for example, you might want it to sum up the Amount column.
Of course, there are no limits on what you can do to the report – Excel provides a tremendous number of tools for analyzing data such as this. The only real limit is your imagination as to what sorts of reports you’d like to see!
As always, our goal is to make TurboLaw Time and Billing as easy to use as possible – and that includes making it easy to switch to TurboLaw Time and Billing from another billing program. If you have questions about how to produce a report from your old billing program in TurboLaw Time and Billing, feel free to ask us!
Time and Billing Reports: “Open Slips”
October 26, 2009
Often, users of TurboLaw Time and Billing who are switching from another time and billing system want to pull up certain types of reports, but they only know the name of the report from their previous billing system.
To help with this, we are going to be posting a series of articles that describe step-by-step how to produce the same reports you’re used to from your old billing system in TurboLaw Time and Billing.
How to Produce an “Open Slips” Report in TurboLaw Time and Billing
In today’s article, we’re going to explain how to produce what some billing programs call an “open slips” report.
In TurboLaw Time and Billing, what other programs might call an “open slip” we call simply an “unbilled” item. Here’s how to see a list of unbilled items.
Note: you can click any of the images in this article to enlarge the picture.
Step 1: From the Home screen, click the Add/Edit Work Items button.
This will bring up the Time and Expenses window.
Step 2: Click the Status column to sort the items by status (billed or unbilled). You’ll have to click the column twice if you want unbilled items to appear first (the first click sorts the list alphabetically, the second click reverses the sort).
Once the list is sorted, you are looking at your report of unbilled items – in other words, the “open slips.”
You can either print this report (click the Print button) or use the Copy or Export buttons to copy the list to another program or save it as a file for further modification.
That’s it! That’s how you pull up a report of unbilled items in TurboLaw Time and Billing – what other programs might call an “open slips” report.
Pro Tip: the steps above will show unbilled items for all clients – if you want to restrict your report to the unbilled items for just one client, first open that client’s window and choose the Edit Time/Work option as shown here:
This will display the same window, but the items shown will be only for that one client.
As always, our goal is to make TurboLaw Time and Billing as easy to use as possible – and that includes making it easy to switch to TurboLaw Time and Billing from another billing program. If you have questions about how to produce a report from your old billing program in TurboLaw Time and Billing, feel free to ask us!
Time and Billing Reports: “Open Invoices”
October 19, 2009
Often, users of TurboLaw Time and Billing who are switching from another time and billing system want to pull up certain types of reports, but they only know the name of the report from their previous billing system.
To help with this, we are going to be posting a series of articles that describe step-by-step how to produce the same reports you’re used to from your old billing system in TurboLaw Time and Billing.
Displaying an “Open Invoice” Report in TurboLaw Time and Billing
In today’s article, we’re going to show how to display an “Open Invoice” report in TurboLaw Time and Billing.
In TurboLaw Time and Billing, “Invoices” are called simply “Bills,” and bills can be either Open (Unpaid) or Closed (Paid). Here’s how to bring up a list of Open (Unpaid) Bills, or what other programs might call “Open Invoices.”
Note: you can click any of the images in this article to enlarge the picture.
Step 1: Switch to the Bills view by clicking Bills from the left-hand navigation bar.
Step 2: Using the options at the bottom of the left-hand navigation bar, choose to see Unpaid Bills. You can choose to group the bills in any way you want – for simplicity in this example we choose No Grouping to produce just a simple list of bills.
The list you see will be all of your open (unpaid) bills – that is to say, all of your “open invoices.” You can print this list by clicking the File menu and choosing Print.
That’s it! That’s how you bring up what other billing programs would call an “Open Invoices” report in TurboLaw Time and Billing.
As always, our goal is to make TurboLaw Time and Billing as easy to use as possible – and that includes making it easy to switch to TurboLaw Time and Billing from another billing program. If you have questions about how to produce a report from your old billing program in TurboLaw Time and Billing, feel free to ask us!
Webinar: How to Run a Paperless Law Office
September 28, 2009
“Lawyers are increasingly challenged to track information that’s growing at unprecedented rates. The rise of digital information has only increased that challenge. We are learning that processing information stored in paper is costly, cumbersome and inefficient. The solution is to switch to a paperless practice, which is challenging—but not as challenging as trying to manage both paper and digital information.”
If you’ve ever thought about trying to cut back on the amount of paper used in your law office, you may want to attend this (free!) webinar.
For more information and to sign up for the webinar, visit Ernie the Attorney’s site.
TurboLaw 2.72 Released
September 14, 2009
As always, we are happy to announce the release of the latest version of TurboLaw – Version 2.72. This new version introduces some new features as well as some improvements that will make TurboLaw even easier to use. Here’s a list of all the new features and changes, as well as a brief explanation:
- Easier Registration - the registration process has been streamlined by replacing the multiple registration option buttons with a single button which simply says “Click here to register.” Since every copy of TurboLaw must be registered, and you must also re-register when you get a new computer, we try to make this process as simple and streamlined as possible.
- Recent Update History - the TurboLaw Update Utility will now keep a record of all the updates (new or changed documents) it has downloaded, so that you can see what has been updated previously, rather than just in the current session. This is useful if you want to see if, for example, your TurboLaw downloaded a new version of a form that came out last week.
- Safer “Alternate Case Folder” Option - previously, it was possible to select folders using the “Alternate Case Folder” option that would cause problems for TurboLaw – for example, the infamous 4160 error. Now, TurboLaw will warn you when you attempt to use a folder that might cause trouble later on.
- Update Timeouts - a small number of users of TurboLaw were reporting that the Update Utility was occasionally (and randomly) “timing out” when trying to download updates, even though their Internet connection was fine. This new version of TurboLaw includes enhancements to prevent this problem from happening.
Although this is a (relatively) minor update, we do encourage all TurboLaw users to download and install this update.
If you have automatic updates turned on in TurboLaw, you will be notified about this update. If you don’t have automatic updates turned on, you will have to check for updates manually by clicking the Update menu in TurboLaw and choosing Check for Updates.
This window will appear on your screen when a new TurboLaw Update is available.
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble getting this latest update, or if you have any questions or comments. We welcome your feedback!
TurboLaw Time and Billing 1.15 Released
August 3, 2009
Once again, we here at TurboLaw Software are extremely pleased to announce the release of the latest version of TurboLaw Time and Billing: Version 1.15! We’ve worked very hard on this latest release, adding more than a dozen major new features/improvements to the program – many of them based directly on feedback we receive from you, our wonderful customers. As always, our goal is to bring you nothing less than simply the best time and billing program possible.
This new version has a lot of new features which we just can’t stop talking about, so instead of our usual list of new features, we’re going to go into a little bit more detail instead.
Read on for more details on all the amazing new features we’ve added and improvements we’ve made!
Totally new statement templates specialized for retainers:
This feature is one that will be especially helpful to those people who regularly take retainers for their work. You can select one of the new templates we’ve added to the program that have this feature if you want to see it in action.
Bills can now be printed in “batches” from the “Bills” list:
This is a feature we heard many of our customers ask for – and we listened to you! When looking at the list of bills in TurboLaw Time and Billing, just select the bills you want to print, and right-click and choose Print Bill(s). You can also click Print Bill(s) from the navigation bar on the left, if you prefer.
Separate fields for the “category” and “notes” of a bill line item:
Previously, line items on a bill had simply a single “description,” which was a combination of the “category” for that line item and any notes you may have entered for that item.
Above: the old bill line item "description" field in a template
The description for a bill line item always printed out in exactly the same way, as Category: Notes.
Above: a bill line item's description as it appeared on a bill
Once again, we listened to our customers’ feedback, and based on that, we added two new fields to bills – they are called category and notes. Although none of our default, built-in templates use these new fields, you can add them to your own templates easily. This way, you can choose to display the category of an item and its notes in separate columns, or perhaps choose not to display one or the other, depending on your tastes.
Above: the new "category" and "notes" fields for bills
Above: the new "category" and "notes" fields as they appear in a bill
As always, we believe that you should have total control over how your bills look – and these new fields make it possible to design your bill template to be exactly the way you want it to be.
All “list” style windows can now be copied to the Windows clipboard for pasting into other programs, or exported to a CSV file:
Because we believe that the data you enter into TurboLaw Time and billing is yours to do with as you please, we added some new buttons to all of the “list” type windows. These new buttons allow you to either copy the list you see to your clipboard (so you can paste it into a spreadsheet or a document), or export the list you see to a CSV file (a type of text-only spreadsheet). Either way, the data you see on the screen can now be easily taken out of TurboLaw Time and Billing and put into whatever program you wish. You can manipulate the data if you want, create reports of your own, or even just share the data with others who might not have TurboLaw Time and Billing.
These new buttons are available in all of the “list” type windows in the program, including:
- Clients
- Time and Expenses
- Payments
- Staff Members
- Staff Titles
- Account History
- Billing Categories
- Matters
The “list” window for work/expenses now has a column showing whether each item has been billed or not:
This feature is another one that was suggested to us by our customers. When looking at a list of time and expenses, you will now see an additional column labeled “status” which tells you whether that item has been billed for yet. An item that is marked “unbilled” has been entered into the program, but has not yet been added to a bill. An item that is marked “billed” has been added to a bill, and is counted as part of the client’s balance.
Graphs can now display data by specific intervals (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) for either a single client or staff member, or for ALL clients or staff members:
We’re always looking for new ways that people want to use the data in TurboLaw Time and Billing for reporting purposes – after all, there’s no way we could think of all the different ways you might want to use the data. One way that was suggested to us by a customer was to show a graph of (say) revenue for the past several months. To make this happen, we had to add an additional option to our graphs window to allow you to include “everyone” in the graph, rather than just restricting it to the currently selected client or staff member.
The result was the ability to graph trends in things like revenue, billed time, and payments received.
The increased flexibility and power provided by TurboLaw Time and Billing’s graphs with this new option make it possible to track your firm’s productivity, revenue, and expenses even more accurately.
Items in the “Account History” window can now be deleted directly from that window:
We always try to give you multiple ways to accomplish your goals in TurboLaw Time and Billing – that way you can use whatever method is easiest for you. In the case of the Account History window, we wanted to make it possible for you to delete an item directly from this window – so we did! Just right-click any item and choose Delete.
Other Improvements:
These improvements and changes aren’t really the sort that you can show with a picture, so we’ll just list them here.
- Newly-created clients are now “auto-saved” when you add a matter
- User-entered client ID numbers now appear on bills and statements
- Upgrades now remove old, unneeded files to save disk space
- Improved “unexpected error” message now more informative, and includes the phone number to call if you need technical support
- New “extensible” architecture (for enabling 3rd party integration)
As always, your TurboLaw Time and Billing will check for updates automatically and notify you when a new update is available. Just watch for the pop-up balloon, or for this message at the bottom of your screen:
This message lets you know a new update is available.
Remember – we welcome your feedback as well, so don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any thoughts or comments about the program.
We hope you enjoy this latest version of TurboLaw Time and Billing!
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