Software - Management Reporting

LSSe64 includes an extensive list of extremely flexible management reports, all of which are included as a standard feature of the Client Accounting component. Each report has its own set of applicable formatting, selection, sort and grouping criteria to choose from – providing firms with literally millions of options. Below are just a few reports and reporting features included with LSSe64 Client Accounting.

Effective dates and code history

For reporting purposes, LSS maintains a chronological history of all codes that have been assigned to clients, matters and timekeepers over time. For example, if the responsible attorney for a particular matter gets changed on July 1, LSS knows who the responsible attorney was prior to the change, the effective date of the change, and who the responsible attorney is after the change. Similarly, if the percentage allocations for split responsible attorneys are changed, LSS knows what those split percentages were both before and after the date on which they were changed.

This applies to codes such as contact attorney (including splits), responsible attorney (including splits), office, department, sub-department, A/R status, referral source, client type, user-defined codes and others. Furthermore, if a code or split percentage allocation gets changed today, but the change really needed to be applied retroactively to a prior date, LSS allows you to modify the effective date of change as necessary.

Why is this chronological code history important? It’s particularly important when generating productivity reports that cover a time span where any classifications may have changed. For example, let’s say you need to generate a productivity report for billings by responsible attorney comparing this year to last year. There is a chance that the responsible attorney for some matters may have changed at year end. Or split responsible attorney percentages may have changed recently. It’s important that the report be able to allocate billing productivity numbers to the people who were assigned as responsible attorney at the time of each billing - not necessarily who is the responsible attorney right now.

To accommodate various reporting requirements, many of the LSS management reports provide the option to generate values based on either the codes currently assigned or the codes that have been assigned and/or changed chronologically over time.

Productivity reports

The LSS Productivity Report is a highly customizable report that can include up to twelve data columns containing values that are selected from a list of 52 available productivity metrics – from hours worked, rate deviations, billings, billing adjustments, effective rates, collections, write-offs and much more.

This report can be produced in varying levels of detail from group “totals only” to values by individual client, matter, invoice date and/or timekeeper. Values can be reported for up to two separate date ranges on the same report – which is nice when comparing to prior periods.

It includes more than 25 selection criteria including client, matter, timekeeper, responsible attorney, contact attorney, referral source, office, department, client type and more. The report can be sorted and grouped by up to five categories simultaneously – each of which has over 20 sort options. For example, a productivity report can be grouped and subtotaled by Originating Attorney, and then by Referral Source within Originating Attorney, and then by Department within Referral Source.

Once the report is formatted with various selections and options, it can be saved as a “Named Report” to be reused later. When selecting a previously saved named report, the report request form opens with all of the options automatically populated, so it takes just one click of the mouse to generate a new report with current values.

Another version of the Productivity Report, called Productivity Report by Month, provides many of the same options and features, but presents the data in monthly columns over a twelve month span with additional columns showing the twelve month total and twelve month average.

Marketing analysis

The LSS Marketing Analysis report is similar in many ways to the Productivity Report described above, except the Marketing Analysis report is used to rank categories from highest to lowest, based on a selected productivity metric. For example, the Marketing Analysis report can rank the top 100 clients based on fees collected over the last twelve months.

There are more than 20 categories that can be ranked, including client, matter, timekeeper, responsible attorney, originating attorney, department, office, referral source, client type and more. The report allows you to limit results to the “top #” of your choosing. The report then allows you to select the value to be used for ranking from a list of 52 available productivity metrics – from hours worked, rate deviations, billings, billing adjustments, effective rates, collections, write-offs, etc.

This report includes dozens of selection criteria so that you can limit the results, for example, to just those clients that belong to a specific contact attorney or just those matters opened this year. It also includes a sort feature that allows you to group the report with subtotals by any one of more than 20 sort options. This feature could be used to generate a report, for example, that ranks the top 10 clients within each referral source, originating attorney, department, etc.

In addition to ranking various categories, the report also shows the values of the selected productivity metric as well as their respective percentages of the firm total.

Aged account analysis

The LSS Aged Account Analysis report is a modern version of the legacy Aged W.I.P. and Aged A/R reports that firms have always relied on – with more formatting options, selection criteria and overall flexibility than ever before.

Choose the level of detail needed - “totals only” by group or detail by client, matter and/or timekeeper. Choose what values you wish to include – unbilled fees, unbilled costs, unbilled expenses, A/R fees, A/R costs, etc. – and whether to show each as a separate line item or summarized as a total.

The report can age values by days (i.e. 0-30, 31-60, 61-90…) or by transaction month (i.e. March, February, January, etc…). It can also use a “detail aging” (aging based on how payments are actually applied) or “balance forward aging” (aging as if payments are always applied to the oldest invoices first).

If you need to generate a report showing the aging as of a prior date, the report can do this as well. In fact, there are two methods by which aging as of a prior date can be generated – based on audit dates/times or based on transaction dates. The first will create a report based on a true point in time. The second will create a report after the fact based on bill dates entered that may be different than the calendar dates on which a client was actually billed.

The Aged Account Analysis report includes dozens of selection criteria and sorting options, including the ability to sort values in descending order. When including client or matter-level detail, there are options that allow additional report content to be included, such as unapplied credit balance, trust balance, last payment date/amount, telephone numbers, email address, detailed list of outstanding invoices and collections notes.

Aged analysis of credit applications

The LSS Aged Analysis of Credit Applications report provides a view into the age of accounts receivable to which collections are applied. For example, of the dollars collected this month, this report will show how much of those collections were applied to A/R that was 0-30 days old, 31-60 days old, etc. This report has many of the same selection and sort options available in the Aged Account Analysis report described above.

Something that makes this report even more valuable is the ability to select date ranges for both collections and either billings or time entry dates concurrently. For example, you could generate a report based on only those collections this year that were applied to billings dated last year, or collections this year that were applied to time entries dated last year.

Timekeeper budgets

The LSS Timekeeper Budget Analysis report is used to compare actual values to the budgeted values entered by timekeeper, responsible attorney and/or contact attorney for a selected month or year. Available budget categories include:

      - Client time worked (by timekeeper)
      - Fees billed (by timekeeper)
      - Fees collected (by timekeeper)
      - Fees billed (by responsible attorney)
      - Fees collected (by responsible attorney)
      - Fees billed (by contact attorney)
      - Fees collected (by contact attorney)

Timekeeper profile

The LSS Timekeeper Profile report is a comprehensive management report that dedicates one full page of current values, balances and productivity metrics per timekeeper. It provides a clear, concise and complete snapshot of monthly and yearly productivity values for each timekeeper in your firm.

Across the top of the report, you’ll see columns for values as Timekeeper (month and year-to-date), Responsible Attorney (month and year-to-date) and Contact Attorney (month and year-to-date). Moving down the page, there are sections for current balances (W.I.P, A/R, unapplied credits, trust, etc.), non-billable time worked by category (admin, CLE, vacation, etc.), client time worked (hours, value, value at standard, deviations), billings (original value, actual billings, rate deviations, adjustments) and collections (fees, costs, write-offs, etc.).

This report can be sorted and grouped by position, office, department or sub-department, with individual timekeeper pages sorted by timekeeper code, name or G/L suffix number. Additional pages are included for section totals and a report total.

Optional user-defined code tables

LSS allows for several different types of codes to be assigned to clients and matters. These include contact attorney, responsible attorney, four additional firm-defined timekeeper categories (i.e. billing, working, assigned, etc.), office, department, sub-department, A/R status, referral source and client type. All of these codes are defined by the firm and they are all available as selection and sort options throughout the LSS management reporting system.

But what if your firm has a need to generate management reports based on some other type of classification that isn’t addressed with the standard code tables mentioned above? To account for this possibility, LSS provides three additional user-defined code tables that can each be given a custom name. The firm specifies a name for the code table (i.e. “County tax district”), adds various codes to the table, and can then assign these custom codes to matters – just like any other code.

When user-defined code tables are configured, client/matter lists and management reports will automatically include selection and sort options for these user-defined code tables.

Export to Excel

Nearly every report in LSS can be saved as a Word document, a PDF or an Excel spreadsheet. When saving a report as an Excel spreadsheet, the resulting spreadsheet is formatted in a way that visually resembles the original report. This can be useful when needing to make simple changes to the report (such as adding basic comments or annotations).

When the raw data is more important than the visual format, LSS provides a second way to create Excel spreadsheets from any of the LSS management reports. Each report request in LSS includes an option to send the report to “Excel (unformatted data)”. When this option is selected, the raw report data is sent directly to Excel in a tabular format without any of the visual formatting that applies to a report that would normally be printed. This provides a fast and convenient way to populate spreadsheets with management data, allowing you to perform whatever additional calculations and customizations in Excel that are necessary.

Named reports and archived reports

Named Reports. Every report request screen in LSS includes various options related to formatting, selection and sort criteria. Some of the more sophisticated reports, like a productivity report, can have hundreds of options to choose from. After selecting the various options that are appropriate for the report that you need, LSS provides a way to name and save that report request to be reused later. That specific report request, with all of the options already populated, can be retrieved from the “Named Reports” tab. Simply click the named report and the predefined report request form opens with all of the options populated as they were when the named report was saved originally. There is no limit to the number of named reports that can be saved. And any one particular report (like a productivity report) can be saved multiple times, each with its own name and unique formatting and selection options.

Archived Reports. Whenever any report is generated by LSS, a copy of that report is automatically saved in Archived Reports. This includes any report that a user specifically requests as well as any reports that are automatically generated as a result of a posting or maintenance function. Archived reports are saved in PDF format, but can also be configured to save in additional formats such as Word and Excel. The archived reports tab allows users (with appropriate permissions) to search for and retrieve any report that was ever generated by LSS. Security settings within LSS allow reports for specific users to be locked down so that other users cannot access certain sensitive information. Archived reports can be searched by any combination of date range, report ID and/or user name. Additionally, a full-text search option allows you locate previously generated reports based on words and phrases contained within the report itself.