Insightful Reporting: Harnessing Rocket Matter for Clear Billing Reports

1. Get rid of the awkward: eliminating client friction with Rocket Matter’s Statement Report 

When clients are behind on multiple payments, it can get a little… awkward. It can also be time-consuming to gather all the relevant information, present it in a simple format, and send it to a client with a meticulously crafted “please just give us our money” notice.  

This is where the Statement Report comes in. When you run Rocket Matter’s Statement Report, you’ll see all the unpaid invoices a client may have. 

Now, Rocket Matter users have always been able to generate a list of invoices that were still pending. But remember what we said about making your job easier? 

The Statement Report provides a quick, easy-to-read summary. It can be used as a cover page when presenting multiple invoices to a client or simply as a way to remind a client which invoices still need to be paid. It’s easy to understand, straight to the point, and can also be a helpful tool in client relationships.  

2. Don’t break the bank: staying on budget with Matter Budgets 

In addition to the new Statement Report, there are additional high-value reports that you can run through Rocket Matter to help make strategic decisions about how you focus your time.  

Consider the Matter Budget report.  

A law firm is a business, and businesses have to know if they’re sticking to their budgets. With the Matter Budget report, law firms can monitor whether or not they’re staying within their budget and monitor for any financial issues.  

Potential issues to watch for may include: 

• Over-expensing to certain clients or case matters 
• Spending an absurd amount on paper for contract documents (why not go digital?) 
• Too many team members (or too few!) working on a particular case 

This information will help you to use the resources you have more effectively. It can also assure clients that you have their best interest in mind!  

Let’s say you have a client that’s mindful of their budget for your services. To assuage their anxiety, you can set a limit on the amount of money that can be billed for their case matter. This sets the stage for a more positive and trusting client relationship and maintains open communication regarding billing for clients with more financial constraints. 

3. Who’s doing what and when: tracking billable activity by user 

How much time are Jason and Blake spending on the Kelce vs. Swift matter? And how much time did Timothy and Dennis track on Dune Part II discovery? Attorneys work long hours, but sometimes clarity about how they spend time can be difficult to visualize.  

Here's where a report showing billable hours per user comes in handy. Tracking billable time by user lets you see a 30,000-ft view of totals by dollar amount and hours. From this report, you can also see what has been invoiced/not invoiced, expensed/not expensed, and more.  

Getting a bead on where attorneys are tracking time is important for numerous reasons, but particularly for budgetary considerations. The more you understand how your team spends their time, the better you can allocate resources and track progress on individual matters. 

Tracking billable activity by users can also help identify lagging performance on your team. If certain attorneys or legal staff consistently take longer to complete tasks, they might need additional resources or assistance. On the other hand, if they're completing tasks quickly (and clients are satisfied), they may have the capacity for more work. 

4. It's all about trust: keeping an eye on trust accounting issues 

Magic Eye headaches are nothing compared to ones that come from trust accounting missteps. Precise trust accounting is essential for law firms, but the processes that go into it might as well include a bottle of Ibuprofen. 

We're not promising you'll love trust accounting because of a report, but we can confidently say that the right reports reduce the pain involved. With Rocket Matter's trust accounting reports, you can quickly: 

• Spot trust account balances that need a top-up 
• Request deposits and transfers 
• Adjust for deposits and transfers  

5. Pre-bill bliss: send invoices with confidence 

Ever sent a text to the wrong person by mistake? It's mildly embarrassing and leaves you vowing to double-check your texts a little more carefully before hitting "send." 

Pre-bills, or the draft invoice reviewed by attorneys before final billing, are a similar (but more important) act of diligence. By running a pre-billing report, you can: 

• Check for errors or omissions and rectify them before sending the final invoice 
• Ensure that all billable activities are recorded accurately 
• Verify that expenses have been properly reimbursed 
• Add notes or additional information as needed 

With Rocket Matter, you can access more than easy-to-review prebills, though. Because billing is built into Rocket Matter, paperless prebills can be generated, reviewed, and transformed into bills without ever needing to leave the Rocket Matter system. 

Put your reports in one place: Rocket Matter 

What's better than having legal practice management software that lets you run detailed, customizable reports to make your billing easier? 

Having it all in one place. Rocket Matter allows users to create real-time billing dashboards that give you an at-a-glance view of your data.  Rocket Matter’s robust analytics provides law firms with the information they need to work more effectively than ever before.  

Alongside project management features that increase productivity, these gains are a recipe for long-term success. 

Schedule a demo today.