Clearing Out the Haunted Past

A few months ago, Easy Soft introduced a service known as Lien Release Tracking. Already, it’s one of our more popular services. It’s available to real estate attorneys and other Easy HUD subscribers. For just $35 a pop, you can pass the responsibility for tracking releases after the payoffs to someone else (i.e. us). You can close the customer file, and go on your merry way.

However, what you might not have known is there is another related service which is equally valuable, especially when you need it.

Say you’re representing the buyer, seller, or bank on a HUD-1 closing. The title insurance company comes back with bad news. There’s a lien on this property, but it predates the current ownership. Or there are defects in the chain of title, and it’s unclear who owns the property, or what property they own.

We’re sure you already know this, but it happens all the time. It’s a tricky situation, since the seller - much as he/she would like to clear it - often doesn’t have access to the lienholder. Perhaps a bank holds an old mortgage. Or a public entity has an old easement. Or the lot lines are ambiguous, or inconsistent. Sometimes, the lien goes back many decades - and several generations. You can’t even tell if the holder of the lien is still alive.

If your client wants the deal to go through, you need that lien cleared and released.

We have a solution for you with our Curative Title service. For $250, our real estate title professionals will attempt to clear a title with an old lien, and provide the proof. The service isn’t guaranteed. But if we can’t do it, we don’t charge you.

As with our Lien Release Tracking Service, you can pass the cost to your client.

To learn more about our Curative Title service, call Easy Soft at 800.905.7638 today.

Steps for Setting Up Your E-Billing Service (2 of 2)

Effective on November 15, 2011, Easy Soft rolled out its newest legal billing and accounting feature: the optional E-Billing module. As discussed in our last blog post, this module has the ability to produce any bill into an electronic format that’s readable for companies that use auditing software.

How do you give yourself the option to send your client an e-bill?

First, become an Easy TimeBill subscriber, and obtain the optional e-billing module. Not only will you join a class of law firms that has this relatively new capability, you’ll find that all of your law firm billing and accounting needs - including tracking time and expenses, sending invoices and invoice reminders, calculating interest on certain invoices, replenishing your retainers, collecting money through a range of electronic payment options, and transferring money between your operating and trust accounts - becomes easier.

Next, open Easy TimeBill, our popular legal accounting software.

Now go to Tools. Scroll down the pull-down menu, and open “Billing Settings.”

If you’re already an Easy TimeBill subscriber, you’ll notice a new tab entitled “electronic billing.” Enable the option and set your Law Firm’s ID. Now, you can open matters of those clients who desire electronic billing and set e-bill flag.

For these e-billing matter’s invoice tab, select the invoice and click “export invoice.”

The act of exporting your invoice into the Ledes format creates a Notepad file (the extension is “txt”). If needed, the software will prompt you for all relevant missing information, including client and matter codes.

Save the new e-bill file, and voila! You’re done! You can send it to your client, along with a regular Word or PDF invoice (if he/she needs one). The conversion is completely seamless.

To try the new e-billing feature (or view a live demonstration), call Easy Soft at 800.905.7638 today.

Easy Soft Launches New E-Billing Service (1 of 2)

If you’ve been following the advice in our blog posts, life should be hunky dory. You’re using our law firm billing and accounting software to both capture your billing and expenses, and collect on them in a systematic way - providing a cash flow that’s as steady as your workflow (or better). You’ve even been accepting credit card payments and calculating interest on overdue invoices. Your law firm is set up to thrive - and we’re glad.

Now, one of your clients tells you they need e-bills from now on. Uh-oh.

Never fear: Easy TimeBill is here! Effective today, Easy TimeBill's optional E-Billing module can produce invoice into an electronic format - while retaining the original paper format for printing / filing purposes.

E-billing itself isn’t new, of course. For years, large corporations such as insurance companies and banks have been converting to e-billing in order to maintain uniformity and institute audit controls. (Scanning isn’t enough: e-billing requires standard formats (as you’ll see below), and often contains different information than on a paper invoice).

For now, the industry standard format is known as Ledes1998B. (As more formats become necessary, we will add them to our billing software.) Once you have licensed the add-on E-Billing module, our legal accounting software takes it from there.

To add e-billing to your Easy TimeBill license (or view a live demonstration), call Easy Soft at 800.905.7638 today.

Better Cash Flow; Happier Clients (Part 4 of 4)

In the last few blog posts, we’ve been emphasizing the importance of solid cash flow management practices. If you’re looking for a tool to ease the way, look no further. Consider our Payment Acceptance Plan, a merchant accounts option for law firms.

An Internet merchant account gives your clients a full range of electronic payment options. They can pay their bill by credit card, debit card, or remote check. You can also set up recurring billing. The funds can pour into your law firm operating account - or your escrow or trust account. You can even get real-time reporting - which allows you to use your desktop, laptop, Smartphone, or tablet PC to accept a credit / debit card payment, and see where your accounts stand. Best of all, the fees are low - and to prove it, we’ll compare them against your current credit card merchant payment plan free of charge. (Just fax us a cover sheet with your latest credit card processing statement: 877.439.7638). 

What’s better for you and your cash flow is also easier for your client: rather than write out a check and wait for the proper authorized signature, he or she can simply provide you with a card or checking account number over the phone (or keep one on file). It’s a win-win scenario that simultaneously eliminates your collection frustrations (it practically prints money), and keeps clients more invested in you and your law firm.

By now, we’ve reviewed many angles of your cash flow plan, including retainer collection, billing and time tracking, expenses and expense tracking, invoice reminders, retainer replenishments, and electronic payments.

Together, these tasks would appear to require a full-time bookkeeper or accounting help. That is where law firm accounting software definitely helps. Easy TimeBill is designed to solve these issues right out of the box. It funnels your cash to the right accounts, segregates and tracks client matters, and tells you what you’ve got to work with - so you can rest easily.

Learn more about your law firm cash flow management system by calling us at 800-905-7638.

Do you have a system for Replenishing your Retainer? (Part 3 of 4)

In the past two posts, we talked about the common issues that affect law firm cash flow management. These include not collecting sufficient retainers, not recording time and expenses promptly (i.e. as incurred), and not sending prompt collection reminders.

In this post, we’re going to add one pesky, persistent issue - and that’s replenishing your existing retainer balance. Law firms - especially solo practitioners and smaller firms - commonly struggle with this. You receive your retainer, and then bill from month-to-month, and before you know it, the original retainer has dwindled to zero. The culprit? Not having a system in place to ask your clients to bring their retainers back up to level - outside of hourly billing.

As creators of efficient, easy-to-use law firm billing and accounting software, Easy Soft has a solution: Easy TimeBill. With the selection of a few choices, you can easily set up retainer replenishment invoices - and email them to your clients seamlessly with your monthly invoice.

One way to accelerate your cash flow is to sign up for our Payment Acceptance Plan, or merchant accounts for law firms. As far as cash flow management software goes, it’s crucial to be able to offer a processing service that allows your clients to authorize their corporate credit or debit card or even pay by remote check (once they’ve reviewed your invoice). Get the system, and you’ll never have to wonder if the proverbial check is in the mail.

As a one-time promotion, we’re offering a $249 rebate on Easy TimeBill when you activate on Easy Soft's Payment Acceptance Plan. We’ll tell you more about this in the next and final post on easing your law firm’s cash flow management: for good.

Find out more by calling us at 800-905-7638.

Is Your Back Office Set Up for The Ideal Cash Flow Management? (Part 2 of 4)

In our last post, we set the stage for a series of blog posts on the critical tracking, billing , and collection issues which affect law firm success rates, and impact your cash flow. This post is about putting the proper cash flow infrastructure in place form the get-go.

The first prerequisite to adequate cash flow is the creation of efficient back office systems. This includes creating a fixed schedule for activities such as time and expense tracking, and invoicing.

These procedures aren't simply in place for your staff to know and follow, but they're also necessary measures for setting client expectations. Let's face it, you've got to train your clients to meet your standards - and both anticipate and pay their bills in a regulated fashion.

For law offices, time and expense entries should get tracked as they are incurred. Wait too long, and you're likely to lose track of one or the other or both…and fail to recover all that you're due. You could install a rule for time and expense entries to be entered (say) no less than 24 hours after incurred.

Likewise, law firm billing should happen on a systematic basis - according to a fixed schedule. You might compile your invoices on the 1st of every month, and mail them by the 3rd.

The same goes for invoice reminders. Your clients are busy, and might not get to their bills as promptly as you'd like. That's why our legal time and billing software includes an automated system for reminders. You can generate these on a fixed schedule as well (say, the 15 th of every month). That way, your clients know that you've noticed that they haven't paid their bills - and get to it, lest it interfere with their matter.

Call Easy Soft at 800-905-7638, and talk to a representative about your law firm cash flow management today.

Cash Flow (Part 1 of 4)

If cash flow isn't the key to business success, lack of cash flow is the reason that many businesses fail. These businesses neglect to set aside enough cash for the capital infusions they need. Or, they neglect to set aside the reserves needed to pay their overhead, and keep things running smoothly until the next round of receivables is deposited.
In law firms, this problem can be particularly poignant. The emphasis in a law firm isn't typically on cash: it's on billing. Yet, as we like to say here at Easy Soft: money is money. Cash flow encompasses both billables (retainers, hourly fees) and non-billables (fixed overhead, expenses) - and it's impossible to track or quantify without the proper legal billing software and other systems in place.
Moreover, if you're a solo practitioner or managing partner of your law firm , and don't have the proper attorney billing software in place to a) collect adequate retainers, b) invoice clients in a timely way, c) track your expenses, d) collect your expenses, e) accept payments, f) charge interest for late payments, and g) conduct other activities related to maintaining an adequate cash reserve, then not only does your cash flow suffer: so do you.
We're guessing, but we bet you're experiencing a low-level worry that gnaws - however subtly - in your mind.
If you can take that worry out of the picture, why wouldn't you?
You'd spend the time gaining more clients and enhancing your profitability.
You can streamline your operations, ramp up your collection process, and enhance your profitability.
In this series of posts, we will focus on the critical tracking, billing , and collection issues which affect law firm success rates.
If you want to get a jump on this information, call Easy Soft at 800-905-7638, and talk to a representative about your law firm cash flow management today.

1099-S Filings: New Law

Attention real estate lawyers! Federal deficits have forced the U.S. government to find new sources of revenue. On Sept 27, 2010, Congress passed the Small Business Jobs Act (H.R. 5297).

For your purposes, here's what the new law means. The IRS now assesses a Tier-3 $100 penalty per 1099 form for any mismatches in the seller's tax ID number and name. For ten erroneous forms, that's a whopping $1,000 penalty - something none of us should have to incur.

Mismatches can happen for any number of reasons - none of which are egregious. Maybe you have a wrong name on file. Maybe you're inadvertently using the seller's DBA name. Maybe you've inserted an extra space, extra punctuation, or the like. Nothing earth-shattering - but so long as the IRS catches your error, it's likely to enforce the rule, and collect its fee. (For more information, see IRS Publication 1586.)

So what can you do to avoid the penalty? Prior to closing, always obtain the Seller's TIN number. You can simply print a "1099-S Substitute Form" in your Easy HUD program, and have the seller sign it at the closing.
Alternatively, you can also use a W-9 form. Securing a TIN number in this way establishes reasonable care, and should get you excused from any penalty. Remember to keep signed substitute forms or W-9 forms in your records for four years.

Note that obtaining the Seller's TIN only protects you from a wrong TIN/Name provided by the seller. Mismatch errors are more likely to occur as the result of a seemingly innocent typo - particularly if you fill in your IRS forms manually, or re-type it for an accountant or third-party provider.

All of these points to another reason to use Easy HUD's electronic 1099-S Filing Service. With our electronic 1099-S reporting Service, you can submit your 1099-S form immediately after the closing, transfer the data seamlessly (reducing the probability of a typo), and receive instant confirmation.

Our $10 per filing fee covers both the IRS and seller reporting. Enrollment in the service is free. And in penalty savings alone: it more than pays for itself.

With our popular value-added post-closing services such as 1099-S Filing and Lien Release Tracking, we eliminate cumbersome work - and penalties that can add up.

For more information on our HUD software programand lien release tracking services, call Easy Soft at 800.905.7638.

Streamline Your Closings: Beginning to End

Handling real estate closings has never been easy. But these days, the number of parties, dollar amounts, regulations, and last-minute changes has increased - complicating things even more. Without a corresponding increase in your technology, keeping up is an uphill battle - and one you're likely to lose, given the tendency of most real estate lawyers to accept flat fees for closing work.

That's where Easy Soft comes in. The legal software specialist produces Easy HUD, HUD 1 friendly software that streamlines your closings - and then closes the file.

Let's track how this works.

When you get a new case, you enter all of the information - from buyer and seller names to lender and title company addresses - only once, at the outset.

Then, you choose the forms you need. They're all built within the software, including your complex RESPA-compliant HUD 1 or HUD 1 forms. They're fully automated to draw from your case data and generate all internal calculations with the press of a button.

Finally, come closing, you use Easy HUD's automatic ledger feature to balance your ledger and make sure you arrange the right disbursement, and neither under- or over-collect. You can even print your checks directly from this feature. (Add Easy Trust, our trust accounting software, and you keep all closing funds exactly where the state bar wants them - in a protected escrow account.) Even lender deductions have already been accounted for - using NET flags.

If the closing date changes? Press a button, and your amounts simply adjust themselves, with little effort on your part.

After closing, you've got the lingering issues of the 1099-S IRS filing, and tracking any remaining liens within the statutory period. Easy Soft's got you covered on both counts. Register for our one-click electronic filing at just $10 a pop, and we meet all your reporting requirements for you. As for lien tracking, you'll eliminate any post-closing title clearing headaches (and precious staff time) by registering for our lien tracking services at just $35 per file.

At the end of the day, you've got a balanced ledger, a clean transfer, and a case that's been satisfactorily closed. Can't beat that.

For more information about our HUD 1 closing software , call Easy Soft at 800.905.7638.

Operating v. Trust Account 101

Here’s a question that you might remember from your bar exam. There are operating retainers and trust retainers. How do you know where to deposit your funds?

More importantly, once you’ve determined the answer, how do you keep track of it?

Hint: if you’re using generic accounting software, that last bit gets pretty challenging.

But if you’re using Easy Soft’s Easy TimeBill (ETB) and Easy Trust (ET) modules, then you’ve got it made.

You see, ETB and ET are specialized billing software for attorneys that allow you to make spot decisions: seamlessly. You can consider each scenario on its individual merits. And if you change your mind later, press a button, and voila! you’ve switched accounts without having to reinvent the wheel. That’s strong technology at work.

In contrast, generic accounting software - particularly if it’s not made specifically for law firms - only accounts for a single type of account (i.e. an operating account). Or, it might segregate trust and operating accounts across programs. Often, generic software doesn't specify which type of account you're dealing with at all. We've seen lawyers keep parallel sets of books to separate their trust accounts from their operating accounts.

In a competitive market, seamlessness is what you’re going for. You spend less time on your legal billing, and more time on your clients. Speaking of which, those clients don’t need to know - and don’t care - about your escrow accounting. So making it seamless works better for you…and better for your client relations. 

By the way, the answer to that bar exam question is perfectly grey. Usually, earned fees, personal funds, operating funds, and business funds go into your operating account. But not always. For example, what if your client gives you an advance for next month’s work? Where do you deposit it? Are you now channeling funds between accounts?

Go the easy way: with Easy Soft. For more information about our escrow software, call us at 800.905.7638.

 

What's the Matter? Billing

If you’re the kind of lawyer whose clients come to you with a single matter or case, then for you, there isn’t much of a discrepancy between client and matter billing. You treat them as one, and your escrow accounting follows suit.

But let’s say you’re the kind of lawyer that has corporate clients assigning you multiple matters - all very similar. Say you’re collecting bills on behalf of a utility or cell phone company. The company (your client) has 1,000 unpaid accounts. You successfully collect on all accounts - leaving you with 1,000 different checks.

 Now: the state ethics rules want you to keep matter funds separate. So where do you keep these payments, pending transfer to your client? Are you going to cut 1,000 different checks for each, and deposit them into separate accounts? What about your fees? Are you going to require your client to divide that into a separate amount for each matter? How would you even do the math?

You can cut a single check to your client, but you need to annotate the check with reference numbers for the accounts that have been satisfied. You can receive a single check (for your fee) from your client, but in nearly all cases, your rules require you to track and segregate each matter - on a matter level. Generic accounting programs aren't designed to handle these specific challenges, or to move money around seamlessly. Even many law firm billing software programs don’t always support the circumstances at hand.

What you need is software which is both granular enough to itemize all matters in your record keeping, and yet flexible enough to translate the actual monies into a single check for or from your client. That’s where our legal trust accounting software comes in.

Easy Trust allows law firms to cut a single check, and charge it to thousands of matters. Your client gets clean records, and no one has to spend all afternoon at the bank writing or depositing checks.

Easy? You bet.

For more information about our specialized legal billing and accounting software, call Easy Soft at 800.905.7638.