How NetSuite Streamlines Legal Firm Operations with Time Tracking

Operating a successful law firm requires wearing many hats – attorney, manager, accountant, and more. With so many responsibilities and so much at stake for your clients, efficiency is critical. How can you keep your firm running like a well-oiled machine amidst the constant flurry of casework, client meetings, court dates, research, and administrative tasks? 

The answer lies in utilizing the right legal firm operations software. And when it comes to comprehensive solutions for law practices, NetSuite stands out for its ability to bring order to the chaos. This cloud-based platform integrates nearly every aspect of running a law firm – from accounting and billing to case management and calendaring.

But one of NetSuite’s most game-changing features for lawyers and legal staff is its robust time tracking capabilities. In an industry where time is quite literally money, having a streamlined system for logging and monitoring where and how every minute is spent is immensely valuable. 

Let’s take a deep dive into the ways NetSuite’s time tracking tools help law firms boost productivity, ensure accurate billing, make data-driven decisions, and ultimately improve their bottom line.

Improving Time Capture and Billing Accuracy

It’s an all-too-common scenario in law firms: attorneys get wrapped up in casework, neglect to promptly log their hours, and then struggle to reconstruct their time later on when preparing invoices. This leads to “leakage” – billable time that slips through the cracks and goes unaccounted for.

Studies have shown the average lawyer leaves as much as 20% of their time unbilled due to insufficient time tracking habits. For a firm billing hundreds or thousands of hours per year, those lost minutes equate to substantial sums of money left on the table.

NetSuite puts an end to guesstimating with its seamless, real-time time tracking interface that’s easy for attorneys and staff to use. Whether working from a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone, users can start and stop timers with just a click to log work as it happens throughout the day.

The platform even allows you to preset commonly-used timer descriptions for different activities, so logging entries is as simple as hitting Start when you begin a client phone call, attending a meeting, drafting a brief, or any number of billable tasks. This effortless, unobtrusive system greatly increases the likelihood that all time gets captured.

When it comes time to generate invoices, NetSuite makes billing a breeze with its ability to automatically convert logged time into client bills. You can create custom invoice templates that pull in your timed activities with just a few clicks.

This not only saves administrative staff immense amounts of time and effort preparing bills, it also ensures invoices go out promptly and accurately reflect the work performed. No more writing off time because it wasn’t properly documented – or worse, billing clients for estimated hours and risking disputes.

With NetSuite, your firm can have confidence you’re getting paid for every minute worked, maximizing your overall profitability. But the benefits of comprehensive time tracking extend far beyond the billing department.

Analyzing Data to Boost Firm Performance 

In addition to ensuring you invoice for all your time, NetSuite provides powerful tools for analyzing exactly how those hours are being spent. Its reporting features allow you to dive deep into time tracking data and surface valuable insights about your firm’s efficiency and productivity.

For example, you can run reports to see:

– How much time each attorney is spending on billable vs. non-billable activities

– Which tasks or practice areas are consuming the most hours

– How long certain types of projects or matters typically take to resolve  

– Which clients are your top consumers of time and attention

– Individual and firm-wide trends in time usage over days, weeks, months or years

Armed with this granular information, you can identify bottlenecks, pinpoint areas for improvement, compare performance against benchmarks, and make data-driven decisions about resource allocation and pricing.

Perhaps the reports reveal an attorney is getting bogged down in administrative work that could be delegated to support staff, freeing them up to take on more billable casework. Maybe you discover certain types of matters consistently blow past budgeted hours and need to be priced differently. 

The insights you glean can help you coach individual attorneys to be more efficient, reorganize workflows for better productivity, adjust your service offerings and fee structures, hire additional staff to meet demand, and otherwise optimize your firm’s operations from top to bottom.

Without reliable data on where time is going, it’s all too easy for inefficiencies and missed opportunities to stay hidden, slowly eroding your profitability. NetSuite shines a bright light into every corner of your practice, empowering you to take control and steer your firm in the most profitable direction.

The ability to slice and dice your time data from every angle is especially crucial for practice group leaders and other managers tasked with overseeing departmental performance. With just a few clicks, they can access up-to-the-minute KPIs and drill down to the individual timekeeper level to monitor progress against budgets and goals.

This real-time visibility enables proactive course corrections when problems arise, rather than waiting until the end of the month or quarter to discover that a team or project has gone off track. It also helps managers identify top performers, coach struggling timekeepers, and make informed staffing decisions to put the right people on the right matters.

In an increasingly competitive legal market, firms that harness their data to work smarter and more efficiently will be the ones that thrive. NetSuite’s robust reporting capabilities give you the power to continuously optimize your operations and stay one step ahead.

Managing Deadlines and Workloads

Tracking time also gives you a real-world picture of how long tasks and projects truly take, which is invaluable for planning and allocating resources. NetSuite allows you to set budgets on matters and configure alerts to notify you if hours worked exceed certain thresholds, helping you keep cases on track. 

Its calendar and tasks features help you monitor upcoming deadlines, schedule appointments, assign to-dos, and ensure deliverables stay on schedule. Managers can get a bird’s-eye view of everyone’s caseload and easily redistribute work as needed to keep the entire team operating at optimal capacity – without burning out.

By understanding how much bandwidth your attorneys realistically have based on their logged hours, you can avoid overcommitting and set reasonable expectations with clients about timelines for work product. This not only keeps existing clients happy but allows you to accurately forecast capacity to take on new clients.

Visibility into workloads also helps with longer-term resource planning. If you consistently see practice areas or departments struggling to keep up, even with matters properly budgeted, you’ll know it’s time to recruit additional staff before employee morale and client service start to suffer.

On the flip side, if certain practice groups perpetually have more capacity than work to fill it, that’s a signal you may need to adjust your business development strategies or consider staffing changes. NetSuite’s holistic view of your operations allows you to be proactive in optimizing your most important asset – your people.

With NetSuite, resource management becomes a science rather than guesswork. You can finally align your staffing with your workload and make informed decisions to keep your firm firing on all cylinders.

Enforcing Outside Counsel Guidelines

If your firm works with corporate clients or insurance companies, you’re likely familiar with their outside counsel billing guidelines – rules you must follow regarding what time can be billed, in what increments, at what rates, described how in invoices, and so on.  

Abiding by these guidelines is imperative to getting paid, as clients may outright reject invoices that fail to comply. But with different clients having different rules, the burden is on your firm to ensure your time tracking and billing practices measure up across the board.

NetSuite streamlines this compliance piece by allowing you to customize time entry fields and invoice templates to match what each client requires. You can configure the system to enforce time tracking rules, such as automatically rounding entries to the proper increments, using approved terminology, disallowing certain activities, and more.

This gives you peace of mind that your timekeeping and invoicing are always above reproach, minimizing billing disputes and write-offs. It also saves your accounting staff huge amounts of time and frustration that would otherwise be spent manually scrubbing entries and bills to ensure adherence.

Noncompliant billing is one of the quickest ways to damage client relationships and erode trust. With NetSuite as your safeguard, you can breathe easier knowing every invoice going out the door meets the highest standards of accuracy and integrity.

And thanks to NetSuite’s flexible configuration options, accommodating each client’s unique needs is simple and straightforward. Rather than trying to force your existing processes to fit every scenario, you can easily tailor your system to align with client expectations.

This adaptability is crucial in today’s legal market, where clients are increasingly calling the shots. Firms that can demonstrate a commitment to compliance and transparency have a distinct competitive advantage in winning and retaining business.

With NetSuite, you have a powerful tool for ensuring your timekeeping and billing practices are always in lockstep with client requirements. That’s one less thing keeping you up at night.

Facilitating Trust and Transparency 

Beyond improving internal operations, NetSuite’s time tracking features help foster positive attorney-client relationships. Clients today expect a high degree of transparency and accountability from their law firms, including detailed backup for the services being invoiced.

NetSuite makes it easy to provide this, as all your timed activities are meticulously logged and can be summarized on bills as line-item descriptions of work performed. You can even configure the system to automatically send periodic time entry reports directly to clients for real-time viewing of what your firm has been doing on their behalf.

This granular, on-demand access to your activity helps put clients at ease knowing exactly what they’re paying for and getting. It builds trust by demonstrating you’re working efficiently on their matters and allows them to monitor progress and expenditures closely to keep everything on budget.

Transparency is especially important for clients with alternative fee arrangements, such as flat fee or contingency-based billing. Even though the time spent may not directly correlate to dollars on an invoice, clients still want visibility into your efforts to ensure they’re getting value from the relationship.

With NetSuite, you have everything you need to deliver the responsive, transparent service that keeps clients coming back matter after matter. No more wondering what’s going on behind the scenes or feeling in the dark – just clear, open communication about the work being done.

In an era where client empowerment is the name of the game, firms that prioritize transparency will be the ones that thrive. By giving clients an unobstructed view into the inner workings of their matters, you demonstrate that you have nothing to hide and everything to gain from an open, collaborative partnership.

This level of transparency is impossible without a robust timekeeping system like NetSuite. When every minute is tracked and accounted for, you can provide clients with the detailed insights they crave, without having to wade through a morass of paper records or spreadsheets.

The result is a new level of trust and collaboration between attorney and client. With NetSuite powering your transparency efforts, you can focus on delivering exceptional legal service while your clients enjoy the peace of mind that comes from always being in the loop.

Capturing Every Communication

Phone calls. Emails. Texts. Video chats. Client communications can take many forms in today’s tech-enabled world, and they all count as billable time. But letting those conversations fall through the cracks is all too easy if you don’t have a way to seamlessly log them as they occur.

NetSuite closes this gap with integrated functionality for tracking all your client touchpoints right alongside your other time entries. You can start a timer for a phone call with one click, attach time to emails sent through the system, log meeting notes, and more – ensuring every interaction is accounted for.

This is particularly crucial for attorneys who do much of their client advising electronically or over the phone, as those activities can add up to significant chunks of time that might otherwise go unrecorded and unbilled. It also provides valuable documentation of your responsiveness if a client ever questions their bill.

In today’s 24/7 business environment, client communications can happen at all hours of the day and night. NetSuite’s mobile app makes it easy to capture those after-hours emails, texts and calls in the moment so nothing falls through the cracks.

By making time tracking an effortless part of your everyday workflow, NetSuite empowers you to bill with confidence knowing every minute of client service is accurately recorded. That’s more money in your pocket and less time spent reconstructing your day come billing time.

And NetSuite’s time-tracking capabilities extend beyond just client communications. Whether you’re conducting legal research, drafting a memo, or collaborating with colleagues on a project, you can log your time with ease and precision.

This comprehensive approach to timekeeping ensures that no billable work goes unrecorded, no matter where or when it happens. With NetSuite, you can finally capture the true value of your time and expertise, down to the last second.

Enabling Remote Work

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many law firms to rapidly transition to remote work arrangements, and some may never fully return to the traditional office environment. But “out of sight” cannot mean “out of mind” when it comes to tracking time and productivity

NetSuite’s cloud-based platform is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, so your attorneys and staff can log their time whether they’re working from home, a coffee shop, the courthouse, or somewhere in between. Location is no barrier to maintaining detailed records.

This location-agnostic flexibility has become table stakes for attracting and retaining top talent in a competitive market where work-from-home and hybrid arrangements are increasingly the norm. Associates want the option to work remotely without being tethered to the office, and NetSuite enables that without sacrificing visibility.

Remote work also introduces new challenges for supervision and mentoring. Junior attorneys can’t just pop into a partner’s office to ask questions or get feedback on their work. But with NetSuite, supervisors can easily monitor associates’ time entries to ensure they’re staying on track, identify coaching opportunities, and step in if someone seems to be floundering.

The ability to work seamlessly from anywhere is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s a must-have for any modern law firm that wants to stay competitive in the post-pandemic world. With NetSuite, you can give your team the flexibility they crave without losing sight of their productivity.

NetSuite’s mobile app is especially crucial for enabling productive remote work. With just a few taps, timekeepers can log their hours, view their schedules, access client information, and collaborate with colleagues from their smartphone or tablet.

This mobile-first approach ensures that no matter where your team is working, they have everything they need to stay on task and on track. And with real-time synchronization across devices, you never have to worry about data falling through the cracks.

Embracing remote work is about more than just enabling flexibility – it’s about empowering your team to do their best work, wherever they are. With NetSuite, you have the tools to make that a reality.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, NetSuite’s time tracking features are all about one thing: helping your law firm achieve peak performance. By optimizing your timekeeping practices, you can:

– Maximize billable hours and profitability 

– Generate insights to drive productivity

– Keep cases and projects on time and on budget

– Ensure compliance with client billing rules

– Provide transparency to foster client relationships

– Capture every minute spent on a client’s behalf

– Enable your team to work efficiently from anywhere

In an industry where time is your most valuable resource, NetSuite gives you the tools to make every minute count – for your clients, your staff, and your bottom line. Its integrated, intuitive interface takes the pain out of time tracking and empowers your entire firm to operate at its highest level.

Of course, NetSuite offers far more than just time tracking – from general ledger accounting and financial reporting to case management and CRM. It’s a true end-to-end solution for running a modern, profitable, and growth-oriented law practice.

For firms looking to eliminate silos and implement a single source of truth for their operations, NetSuite offers unprecedented opportunities to achieve clarity and control. By integrating your time tracking, billing, accounting, project management, client service and more into a singular cloud solution, NetSuite unleashes efficiencies that allow your team to work faster and smarter.

What’s more, NetSuite’s advanced technological foundation enables automation and artificial intelligence capabilities that are transforming legal service delivery. The platform leverages machine learning to streamline routine tasks like billing predictions, customer insights and approval workflows.

For forward-looking firms, these hyper-efficient, intelligent workflows represent the future of law firm administration. Empower your firm to evolve ahead of the curve by embracing the most advanced tools the industry has to offer.

But don’t just take our word for it. Schedule a free demo today to see firsthand how NetSuite can help your firm harness the power of time tracking and other cutting-edge tools to streamline your operations like never before. Your future as a leaner, more productive, data-driven law firm awaits.

With NetSuite, you’re not just investing in software – you’re investing in the long-term success and competitive advantage of your practice. Take control of your time, your profitability, and your potential with the industry’s leading cloud business management solution. The sky’s the limit.