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Practice Panther Now Integrates with firmTRAK

firmTRAK set out on a mission to provide the best legal tech services for solo and growing law firms.  That mission hasn’t changed, but the platform and the approach has gone through many iterations.  firmTRAK started as a way for our founder Rich Marvel to stop wasting time running reports from multiple different data sources and combining them manually each month.  

The result is firmTRAK, an integrated legal key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard and law firm metric software combined with an accounting service focused in the legal industry.  This fusion of software to make business decisions and service to facilitate the day to day administrative functioning of the law firm, results in a big advantage for attorneys looking to grow their firm.  

Our software’s newest integration with PracticePanther has launched.  The same integrated dashboard with client and matter trends, new client and matter snapshots, and time and revenue data is live!

PracticePanther has the same access to all the other areas of focus in the application.  These areas include, clients, matters, financials, productivity, trust, AR, and matter tracker.

firmTRAK loves the PracticePanther system and we wanted to offer a robust law firm reporting package to its users.  Our selection of reports easily allows managing attorneys to set and track associate’s productivity. This approach of data driven decisions allows for a true understanding of the most profitable people and practice areas of your law firm to drive business performance over the long term.

Other law firm key performance indicator (KPI) solutions can cost six figures and completely disrupt the workflow of the law firm.  firmTRAK Software is plug and play with simplified pricing based on the number of users.

Visit our pricing page today to find out more or register for a free 30 day trial.

First let’s take a look at their listed features on each website’s self-labeled most popular.  For PracticePanther this is the Business plan at $79 per user per month, billed annually (~$948).  For CLIO this is the Elite plan at $99 per user per month, billed annually (~$1,188).

Here are their listed features. Let’s pick out any differences.

I have sorted and matched up the offerings by feature as best as possible.  Let’s first take a look at what PracticePanther has that CLIO doesn’t and try to determine if they are consequential or not.

PracticePanther Haves

• Internal Chat
• SMS Alerts
• Daily Agenda Email
• Invoice Read Alerts
• Trust Account Ledger & Reconciliation

Internal chat is a nice feature, but most VOIP phone services and email services like GSuite and Microsoft have their own versions of chat that a firm is probably already paying for, if not using. By offering it within the program, PP provides organization to the chats that may not exist with a third party.

SMS and Daily Agenda Alerts I would put in the same category of notifications I receive, read, and then ignore.  More sources of push notifications generally can lead to having higher levels of noise and alerts to sort through without any clarity.

Invoice read alerts are a great feature and let you know when a client has viewed their outstanding balances. As far as I was able to find, CLIO does not have a version of this feature.

The last feature, Trust Account Ledger & Reconciliation, is a handy interface with a quickbooks account to perform some limited functions of the bank reconciliations within practice panther to create a 3-way trust reconciliation. This functionality requires an understanding of both the account software and Practice Panther. A knowledgeable book keeper can take advantage of these features.   CLIO does not interact with Quickbooks in this way at all but this feature I consider to be fairly sophisticated and your accountant must be comfortable in both systems to make full use of this feature.

Now let’s take a look at the CLIO Only Features.

  CLIO Haves

• Clio Launcher
• Firm Dashboard
• Matter Budgets

CLIO launcher is a nice feature and allows you to edit documents within the system instead of having to download, edit, and replace. This functionality may be replicated with one of the 3rd party cloud storage and document SAAS that is compatible with PracticePanther.

The Firm Dashboard in CLIO does have some nice productivity features and graphs and allows you to see utilization, realization, and collection rates over time for the firm.  There is also a target billable hour metric for your own user login to keep track of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual billing targets.  There aren’t a large amount of features, but they can be very helpful. One thing to note here is, if matters are shared outside the firm with another clio user, their time will be registered under the wrong user.  This leads to some funky metrics where you have more billable hours than are actually possible and other distortions on the CLIO dashboards.  PracticePanther has some custom reporting options and the ability to run certain reports but their metrics aren’t packaged as nicely and require some setup.

Matter budgets are a useful feature.  This allows a matter to send out a notification when matter funds are expended past the threshold set in the system, including work in process. CLIO will notify whatever attorney or user is responsible for collecting more funds. This can be a powerful reminder to keep attorney fees covered by the advance fee deposits.

One big feature that isn’t mentioned in the feature list is CLIO has a standard field called “Practice Area” with a standard or recommended set of practice areas. PracticePanther handles this by using custom fields.  The result is, this type of data structure isn’t as widely adopted in PracticePanther.  Practice areas are a great way to view and prioritize what types of law are the most profitable for your practice.

Is there a free trial? PranticePanther has a free 30 day.  CLIO offers only a 7 day free trial.

Overall, the biggest differences between CLIO and PracticePanther comes down to price and user experience.  I wouldn’t label any feature from one or the other as a must have.  Both are great practice management tools.  However, some attorney’s love PracticePanther and hate CLIO and vice versa.  In my opinion, they have a lot of the same features.

One of the biggest areas I didn’t cover was customer service.  I have had very fine experiences with CLIO support and my experience with PracticePanther is too limited to form an opinion.

In Feb 2020, founder Rich Marvel was honored to present at the American Bar Association’s techshow.

The ABA Techshow is a rather large conference geared towards introducing those in the legal industry to various tech tools designed to help with all aspects of running a law firm. Past sponsors have included CLIO, PracticePanther, Price Waterhouse Cooper, PWC, Ruby Receptionists, Smokeball, and many others.

The ABA Techshow is held every year and lasts for five days.

More information about ABA techshow can be found here.  

https://www.techshow.com/

A link to the presentation can be found here. 

https://www.facebook.com/100063830340894/videos/191085942165958

Full transcript of the presentation is below.

I’m Rich Marvel. I’m the founder of firmTRAK. firmTRAK is an advanced analytics platform that provides real time data assessment of your existing law firm data.  

I created firmTRAK because I needed a quick assessment of my own law firm’s data. I needed a way that I could quickly assess my firm, and identify the areas that I could improve on, the areas I could build upon. It was important to me to have a platform that I didn’t have to buy new software. I didn’t have to train my staff because I know the gravity of change in law firms is very strong.  Especially with my team.

So how does it work? What we do is, we take your data sources, which would include QuickBooks, CLIO (which we love Jack *Newton*), and what we do is we combine it with user defined variables within our firmTRAK platform, basically transform our data into dynamic visualizations.

We call our homepage firmTRAK Visualize.  firmTRAK Visualize is a top level assessment of the movers within your law firm.  From here you can explore a variety of metrics.  We have over 150 and growing KPI’s that are presently operating. Those which include financial information, accounts receivable, basic information and we talk about employee utilization and some other aspects.  

Employee management is important for us because in law firms, I think that the most expensive resource we have is our staff.  So I think we want to quickly assess our top producers. 

Another personal issue that I have is the ability to personally identify those files that are sitting on the edge of my desk that need my attention. Those ones that I don’t like to work on. I want to be able to know when I go in for the day, which ones need my attention. There’s no task pending, there’s no appointments pending. These aren’t forgotten about. These are important and we need to follow up on these. 

You know, by enabling firmTRAK I was able to increase my own personal law firm productivity by about forty percent. And this it at the same time that the industry is telling us that we all need to make data driven decisions within our  law firms. And everyone of us, every lawyer, can implement data driven decisions by utilizing your existing systems combining it with firmTRAK so you can get better optics on your law firm. 

I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to seeing everyone at the techshow.

Thank you very much.

Rich Marvel explains how data can pinpoint areas of success and weakness to help lawyers make better business choices.

This podcast from 3/26/20 is just as relevant then as it is today. Growing Law Firms have many challenges. Those challenges are related to managing due dates, legal activities, tasks and other process management at the data capture points in your system. Growing law firms also need a way to quickly review and make strategic decisions based on the metrics associated with that captured data.

firmTRAK is a total law firm KPI dashboard for small and growing law firms. There are over 50 KPIs including law firm productivity. It features a dual connection with CLIO integration and a Xero integration. More connections are in the works, including a PracticePanther integration.

See the full transcript and interview at the ABA techshow with firmTRAK founder Rich Marvel here.

https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/lunch-hour-legal-marketing/2020/03/understanding-your-metrics-with-firmtraks-rich-marvel/

Do-it-yourself bookkeeping is on the rise.  The promise of easy-to-use bookkeeping and time-saving sounds great, but often ends up not fully coming to fruition.  It becomes easy to miss some financial aspects since your expertise is law, not accounting or bookkeeping.  This issue has become so prevalent that, up to 60% of complaints against attorneys concern, either directly or indirectly, books and records violations.  The degree to which attorneys are punished varies, but in one case, “a solo practitioner was suspended for 18 months for a number of violations including the failure to safeguard client funds and maintain his law practice’s books and records as required by Rule 1.15.  He also violated Rule 8.4 by misrepresented the status of books and records.”¹

The reality is that your bookkeeping must be fully comprehensive, absolutely consistent, and expertly competent.  There is too much at stake professionally and personally to fully trust your livelihood to a program or a bookkeeper who is part-time into bookkeeping and part-time into social media promotion.

Comprehensive
Your law firm books are either current or not current, thorough or incomplete, reconciled, or in a wreck.  The great truism in accounting is that it is black or white.  Partial completion of your books is at best misguided and at its worst, misleading.  Incorporating all aspects of your firm from advance payments to trust account payments is necessary to have confidence that your books can withstand an audit.

Consistency
Consistent bookkeeping is the habit that creates up-to-date, current, and accurate books.  The habitual practice of categorizing, inputting, reconciling, posting, and confirming is often the last “important” matter that receives our attention as business owners.  Implementing the time to learn and master the concepts and then aggregate all of the necessary records often takes more time than we expect.  Blocking more time from your schedule to then accurately update, maintain, and keep these records is often costly (in regard to your hourly cost) and just not practical.

Competency
The ability to do something well is generally regarded as a competency.  You went to law school, so it is reasonably assumed that you have a great deal of competency in regard to the practice of law.  The reality is that your competency doesn’t extend into the area of accounting and bookkeeping.   One in three small businesses, including law firms, hire a qualified bookkeeper and only 23% of all small businesses hire an accountant.  Competency is important because it takes no fewer than 40 credit hours of study to earn the opportunity to take the CPA exam.

The idea of competency goes both ways.  Some people hire a CPA and that’s a great first step to get your firm on track.

It’s only the first step.  If you have a CPA with no legal credentials, then you are only partially fulfilling the needs of your firm.  You need to get on the fast track to success and growth.

The reality is that you need a CPA firm who has competency in the field of law.  If not, you are only really getting a one-sided view of the bookkeeping and accounting that you need.  You truly need a firm that has an intricate familiarity and understanding of the practice of law and how that pertains to certain records and bookkeeping.  You need an accounting firm that is able to understand the many different practice management systems in use (Clio, PracticePanther, ActionStep, etc.).  You need an accounting firm that is able to understand and operate different bookkeeping programs (QuickBooks, Xero, etc.).

Three Simple Questions You Should Be Asking
If you currently are working with a bookkeeping and accounting firm, ask the following questions to see if their competencies match your needs:

Are you competent in the use of Clio, PracticePanther, or ActionStep?  To what degree have you used them?
Are you competent in the use of other bookkeeping software besides Quickbooks?  If so, which
ones?
Are you competent in compiling Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to show me how my firm can make changes to focus on growth?

Is There A Better Way?
If your current bookkeeper or accountant also seems to be a part-time social media influencer, then you may want to reconsider.  You need a firm whose sole focus is analyzing your firm through the lens of law, bookkeeping, and accounting 100% of the time.  In fact, firmTRAK is the only bookkeeping and accounting firm founded by lawyers and accountants.  We are uniquely able to help put your firm on the fast track to success and growth.

We realize that you went to law school to become a lawyer, not to reconcile accounts and billing information.  We work seamlessly with PracticePanther, Clio, Xero, Quickbooks, firmTRAK KPI Reporting, and ActionStep to automate your business services.

An Industry First
In addition to bookkeeping and accounting, firmTRAK provides an industry-first Key Performance Indicator cloud-based platform called firmTRAK Visualize.  This gives you the ability to harness your practice management data to unlock the true potential of your law firm with instant, ready-made key performance indicator (KPI) reporting.  This will allow your firm to base decisions on accurate, real-time business reporting and easily maximize your strengths and make corrections in areas that need improvement.  You’ll be able to easily see your financial and practice trends with firmTRAK Visualize.

Maximize Your Time and Your Money
Instead of just looking at your firm through the lens of accounting and bookkeeping, we have a unique ability to analyze your needs through the additional lens of practicing attorneys.  Using firmTRAK will allow you to completely transform your law firm’s finances and performance starting at $499 per month for small firms.  firmTRAK is an automated accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, and reporting solution built to streamline your business and unlock your growth.

We’d love to prove our value to you with a quick 15 minute phone call.  Please fill out our questionnaire here (hyperlink will be inserted here) and we will call you to set up a time.  In this case 15 minutes could truly save you more than just money.  We can help save your firm time, money, and get you back peace of mind and a focus on what you went to law school to do – help people.

Upcoming Series
Three way trust reconciliation – we know that you didn’t go to law school to become a banker or money manager, but the fact is that if you agree to hold money in trust, you take on a non-delegable, personal fiduciary responsibility to account for the funds as long as they remain in your possession.  The legal and ethical obligation to account for those funds is yours alone, regardless of your lack of financial knowledge or how busy your practice is.  Failure to live up to this duty can result in personal monetary liability, fee disputes, loss of clients, and public discipline.

Wouldn’t it be helpful to have a system to help take this off your hands with guaranteed compliance?  firmTRAK is your solution to this state-mandated responsibility.  Keep an eye out for our upcoming three-part series on trust reconciliation.

Source: 

¹“BOOKS AND RECORDS VIOLATIONS CONTINUE TO PLAGUE LAW FIRMS.” Books and Records Violations Continue to Plague Law Firms, 2016, virtualparalegalservices.com/blog-entries/books-and-records-violations-continue-to-plague-law-firms/.

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “don’t step over a dollar to pick up a penny.”  It refers to the idea of doing all you can to save money, yet costing yourself more in the end.  Unfortunately, this happens with many law firms regarding accounting and bookkeeping.  This can come crashing down in a hurry at tax time.  According to a Forbes.com article, “the IRS has long found lawyers to be a fruitful source of revenue and information.”  It goes on to detail a program that the IRS has called Project Esquire, which specifically focuses on prosecuting members of the bar.  The IRS did release guidelines for auditing members of the bar and highlighted some specific areas to work on.  The article goes on to say that the guidelines,  “direct agents to look for good internal accounting, billing software, and to pay special attention to the adjustment log that reconciles the output of the time and billing system to the appropriate accounts in the general ledger.  Lawyer trust accounts are also vital sources of information.”¹

In order to alleviate this concern many attorneys seek to do the bookkeeping themselves, hire an in-house bookkeeper, or hire an outside company.  Let’s take a look at the true cost of each option and see if there is a better solution.

Do It Yourself
This option is usually done by smaller firms that have 1-4 attorneys in the firm.  The common thought is that you can just tabulate everything into QuickBooks for the low price of $83 for the Advanced level.  Seems like a great deal, right?  Let’s see what the true cost is.  In order for this option to work, you’ll need to spend about 5 hours per week inputting expenses and data.  If you figure the average hourly attorney rate of $250, you are spending $1250 per week on yourself to complete those tasks.  That equates to $5,000 per month that you are spending on your hourly rate to complete the tasks needed for the $83 program to do your bookkeeping.

Hire An In-House Bookkeeper
This option is pretty straightforward.  You simply hire an in-house bookkeeper.  According to Zip Recruiter ² , the average yearly rate is $4,878 per month.  The advantage is that your person is in-house and will work 40 hours per week to reconcile accounts and make sure that billing is correct.  The downside is that you’ll then have to pay benefits and payroll taxes on this bookkeeper.  Additionally, it takes time to find the right person.  Again, take into account the fact that you’ll need to conduct a search and conduct interviews to find the right person.  So, if we are being conservative with a 10 hour estimate to conduct a search and interviews, then you’re really looking at an initial cost of $2,500 plus the extra employee salary.

Hire an Outside Bookkeeping Company
There are options that exist to hire outside companies to complete bookkeeping work for your firm.  The average cost on that can depend on the size of your firm, but most of the time, you’ll be looking at $1000-$2000 per month.  If you hire the right people, then that will also include the cost to prepare your taxes.

Is There A Better Way?
The aforementioned options all reference the idea of only bookkeeping and some accounting aspects.  Bookkeeping and accounting just scratch the surface of the technology and performance analytics tools available to law firms in 2020 and beyond.  What if there were a company that could provide bookkeeping and accounting and leverage those basics into your practice management system and then provide key data-driven insights that would show you how your law firm could be more successful?

There is.  It’s called firmTRAK.  We realize that you went to law school to become a lawyer, not to reconcile accounts and billing information.  Additionally, we work seamlessly with PracticePanther, Clio, Xero, Quickbooks, firmTRAK KPI Reporting, and ActionStep to automate your business services, plus give you the ability to harness your practice management data to unlock the true potential of your law firm with instant, ready-made key performance indicator (KPI) reporting.  This will allow your firm to base decisions on accurate, real-time business reporting and easily maximize your strengths and make corrections in areas that need improvement.

Maximize Your Time and Your Money
Remember the saying of stepping over a dollar to pick up the penny?  With firmTRAK, you can make more dollars for pennies compared to the other methods listed above.  Instead of just bookkeeping, using firmTRAK will allow you to completely transform your law firm’s finances and performance starting at $499 per month for small firms.  firmTRAK is an automated accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, and reporting solution built to streamline your business and unlock your growth.

We’d love to prove our value to you with a quick 15-minute phone call.  Please fill out our questionnaire and we will call you to set up a time.  In this case, 15 minutes could truly save you more than just money.  We can help save your firm time, money, and get you back peace of mind and a focus on what you went to law school to do – help people.

Upcoming Series
Three way trust reconciliation – we know that you didn’t go to law school to become a banker or money manager, but the fact is that if you agree to hold money in trust, you take on a non-delegable, personal fiduciary responsibility to account for the funds as long as they remain in your possession.  The legal and ethical obligation to account for those funds is yours alone, regardless of your lack of financial knowledge or how busy your practice is.  Failure to live up to this duty can result in personal monetary liability, fee disputes, loss of clients, and public discipline.

Wouldn’t it be helpful to have a system to help take this off your hands with guaranteed compliance?  firmTRAK is your solution to this state-mandated responsibility.  Keep an eye out for our upcoming three-part series on trust reconciliation.

Sources: 

¹Wood, Robert W. “Dear Lawyers: Get Ready For IRS Audits!” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 13 Sept. 2011, www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2011/08/26/dear-lawyers-get-ready-for-irs-audits/#51a2268e4747.

²“Q: How Much Do Work From Home Bookkeeper Jobs Pay per Month in 2020?” ZipRecruiter, www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/How-Much-Does-a-Work-From-Home-Bookkeeper-Make-a-Month.