Legal Time Recording Software

Increase profitability and accountability by recording every activity.

Most small-sized law firms usually don't record time. But statistics show those that do have an increased billing volume, better productivity among fee-earners, and generally better cash-flow.

  • You can use the Stopwatch Timer that can be seen on each matter, on each uncompleted task, as well as at the top navigation bar. You are never at a loss as to how to launch the timer.
  • Alternatively, you can add time-recordings manually (without using the timer)
  • In your matter templates you can specify specific rates for specific matters and their activity types. Next time a fee-earner adds time in a matter (or task) of that type, the rate for that activity will switch to the rate specified in the settings for that matter (or activity type). This is a useful feature for scenarios like Legal Aid matters (where different activity types have different rates). If no such custom specifications are in place the rate will switch to that fee-earner's default rate.
  • You can also log activities without specifying duration and rate (if that's how you prefer it)
  • You can add 6-minute Units, or you can do it by whichever granularity that suits your law firm
  • By default, fastMatter will round up your timed activities to the nearest minute, but in settings you can elect a rounding style that fits your law firm's style. You can also elect not to round up at all, in which case all your subsequent WIP will display precise timing down to a second, and will be billed accordingly.
  • Depending on permissions some users can add time on behalf of others (great for assistant/secretary workflow)
  • Fee earners can record with an easy-to-use timer while working, or manually add time afterwards.

Features at a glance

Automated Full Legal Accounting

  • Most Case Management Systems on the market have basic "Trust Accounting" features, but not a full Accounting system, and certainly not an automated one! In most cases their accounting solution rests on integration with 3rd party accounting providers like Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, etc, which in most cases are not a good fit as far as the nuances of Legal Accounting is concerned. fastMatter is a full Legal Accounting Software in itself, integrated with your case-management data - all in one place!
  • Transactions are created automatically while you deposit money into Client Acc, create Disbursements, create Bills and pay them, enter Expenses, etc.
  • Full Chart of Accounts with 86 default accounts
  • Fully separate Trust Accounts (Client account, Deposit account, etc)
  • Multi-Currency (you can maintain accounts in any currency, and exchange rates are updated hourly)
  • Easy bank reconciliation
  • Income & Expenditure
  • Expense tracking
  • Profit & Loss
  • Trial Balance
  • Balance Sheet
  • Year-End functionality
  • VAT calculation (Accrual & Cash methods)
  • Disbursements from Client and Office accounts
  • Re-chargeables
  • Client Interest calculation
  • SRA rules compliance
  • MTD - file your quarterly VAT return directly to HMRC

Billing / Invoicing

  • fastMatter offers the most user-friendly invoicing interface
  • You see the Bill while creating it
  • Just a few seconds to create a beautiful invoice - everything has been thought through for user-friendly experience, to minimise your admin time and admin-related stress
  • Add billable items, disbursements and discounts while creating the bill
  • Email Bills directly to client
  • Easily track unpaid Bills
  • Pay the Bill from Client account
  • Optional Bill-Approval workflow: fee-earners can create draft bills, while Cashiers or Practice Managers approve them
  • Huge time saving on bill-processing: creation, emailing, approval, tracking, paying, refunding and cancellation
  • Credit Notes

Mass-Billing

  • Create multiple bills from a single interactive screen
  • fastMatter calculates which ones are the most billable matters, and presents you with an interface where you can create multiple bills at once
  • All the options available in standard billing interface are preserved

Accept online payments

  • Issue Money-Requests and have your clients pay straight into your Client account. You can then use these monies to pay interim bills.
  • Optionally, create Invoices/Bills that your clients can pay online directly into your Office account
  • fastMatter will process the payments and automatically record the transactions correctly

Bank Reconciliation ...the smart way

  • fastMatter lets you connect your bank accounts to online-banking, and load your transactions.
  • Alternatively, you can also upload CSV files from any UK banks, as is - without any special formatting.
  • It will then try to match the transactions from your bank with transactions inside fastMatter.
  • Essentially, this means that 99% of your accounting can be conducted from this bank-reconciliation screen.

SRA Compliance

  • fastMatter helps you to stay compliant with SRA Accounts Rules. The smart system is aware of SRA rules and will warn and guide you if you try to make a transaction that breaks the rules.

Making Tax Digital READY

  • Submit your quarterly VAT returns from inside fastMatter
  • fastMatter does all calculations for you.

True Realtime collaboration

  • Your coworkers see the changes to matters in real-time (depending on roles and permissions, of course)

Matter Templates

  • Huge time-saver!
  • Create matter-templates for recurring types of matters (e.g. Consultation, Litigation, Property Purchase, Divorce)
  • Customise everything from colour, to assignees, contacts, task-list, priorities, workflow, attached files, flat rates, hourly-rates or even hourly rates per activity type etc.

Cloud based File-manager

  • Drag&Drop files into your matter
  • Have constant access to all matter documents wherever you are

Document Automation

  • Choose from hundreds of tokens which you can insert into a Word document; and then put into your Templates Library

Tasks management & Workflows

  • Create tasks for each matter
  • Assign tasks by simply dragging a user onto that task
  • Dates: Deadlines, Key dates, Calendar

Calendar & Key Dates

  • Firm’s calendar of deadlines and Key-Dates

Time recording

  • You can use the Stopwatch Timer
  • Or you can add time-recordings manually

Reports & Visualisations

  • Who's working on what
  • Billing Targets
  • Fee-Earner Productivity

Reminders & Notifications

  • Whenever changes happen to matters and tasks that a fee-earner is assigned to, he/she will be instantly notified.

Teams & Branches

  • Create Teams or Branches, and assign users to them.

CRM for Law Firms

  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to satisfy the needs of most law firms.

Attendance notes

  • Record at the speed of thought in real-time

Conflict of interests checker

  • fastMatter has one of the most thorough COI checks.

Contacts & Relationships

  • It may look like just another library of contacts, but it's more nuanced than that and cleverly done. You can search by a multitude of fields, not only names.

Privacy & Permissions per matter

  • You can set up Roles and give permissions to users in that role, which will apply across all matters.

Complex Matters

  • Some matters can be more complex than the rest. FastMatter starts with ease-of-use and flexibility in mind.

Inter-organisational Collaboration

  • A fastMatter user can be a member of several law firms or organisations simultaneously and have different roles and permissions in each of those organisations.

Security

  • We host in the UK - in the same space where RCJ and leading multinational banks host.
  • We ensure that your communications are secure using bank-grade 256-bit SSL encryption.