Cloud-based File-Manager

Each matter has its own File Manager built it, just like your desktop file-manager that you're used to

  • Simply drag&drop files into your matter
  • Have constant access to all matter documents wherever you are
  • Create documents from templates
  • View your files without the need to download them
  • Email documents out
  • Create and edit .txt files
  • Manage files & folders with right-click functionality or drag&drop functionality -- just like you're used to in your Windows File Manager.

Each matter has its own File Manager built it, just like the desktop file-manager that you're used to.

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).
  • You can create as many separate Trust Accounts as you need.
  • 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 minimize 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.
  • fastMatter knows in real-time what available financial resources each matter has and allows you to pay the invoices while creating them. This saves a tremendous amount of time and avoids the possibility of human error, while creating complex (and compliant) transactions in the background.

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.
  • No Human-error.
  • No more money going into the wrong type of account.
  • It will cost your client 1.95% -- cheaper than any other payment gateway.
  • No more need for bulky payment terminals!!! No more need for ~£20/month subscriptions.

Bank Reconciliation

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. fastMatter can "read" and make sense of CSV files from any UK bank, allowing for easy categorization and matching of transactions.

SRA Compliance

fastMatter helps you 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. Other forms of compliance include GDPR compliance, MTD (Making Tax Digital) compliance, and Automated Client-Care letters generation.

Making Tax Digital READY

Submit your quarterly VAT returns from inside fastMatter. fastMatter does all calculations for you, both Standard (accrual) and Cash Accounting methods. fastMatter is one of the very few Legal Software providers listed on HMRC's approved suppliers list!

True Realtime Collaboration

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

  • Constant connectivity.
  • Creates incredible sense of teamwork!
  • Your screen becomes the virtual office - Depending on permissions, everyone can see who is working on what. Especially great when some are working remotely.

Matter Templates

  • Huge time-saver!
  • Create matter-templates for recurring types of matters (e.g. Consultation, Litigation, Property Purchase, Divorce).
  • Customize everything from color, to assignees, contacts, task-list, priorities, workflow, attached files, flat rates, hourly rates or even hourly rates per activity type etc.
  • Next time you create a new matter from a template, all your presets will be automatically inherited, and you can further modify them as you wish.

Document Automation

Choose from hundreds of tokens which you can insert into a Word document; and then put into your Templates Library. Huge time saving on repeated Copy/Pasting, no human errors!

Tasks Management & Workflows

  • Create tasks for each matter.
  • Assign tasks by simply dragging a user onto that task.
  • Dates: Deadlines, Key dates, Calendar.
  • Attach files to tasks.
  • Drag tasks to rearrange priorities.

Calendar & Key Dates

  • Firm’s calendar of deadlines and Key-Dates.
  • Personal user’s calendar.
  • Easy drag-&-drop functionality.

Time Recording

You can use the Stopwatch Timer or manually add time-recordings. You can add 6-minute Units, or whichever granularity suits your law firm.

Reports & Visualisations

  • Who's working on what.
  • Billing Targets.
  • Fee-Earner Productivity.
  • Expense tracking.
  • Live Charts.

Reminders & Notifications

Whenever changes happen to matters and tasks that a fee-earner is assigned to, they will be instantly notified. This helps all involved fee-earners stay up to date with the progress on each relevant matter and task.

Teams & Branches

  • Create Teams or Branches and assign users to them.
  • Fee-earners and Team-leaders can have a filtered view of tasks pertaining to a particular team.
  • This allows your fee-earners to navigate between matters that pertain to their designated teams with much more ease, improving task management tremendously.

CRM for Law Firms

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software tailored for law firms.

  • Quick Intake - easily record where that new lead emerged from.
  • Kanban-based Sales pipeline - easily drag&drop leads between pipelines as they progress from a lead into an instructing client.
  • Campaigns & Sources - keep track of how your clients find you.
  • ROI reports - record spending on campaigns, or link to a particular overhead account to track spending and ROI.

Attendance Notes

Record at the speed of thought in real-time. Notes Dictation, to save time on typing.

Conflict of Interests Checker

fastMatter has one of the most thorough COI checks using "layered-array" search, minimizing the chance of COI tremendously.

Contacts & Relationships

Search by a multitude of fields, not only names.

  • Take annotations about each contact and use this Contacts library as a basic CRM.
  • Create named relationships between different contacts, enhancing checks and knowledge about your contacts.

Privacy & Permissions per Matter

You can set up Roles and give permissions to users in that role, which will apply across all matters. Individual matters can have specific permissions and restrictions as well.

Complex Matters

Some matters can have several Clients and Other-Parties, and fastMatter starts with ease-of-use and flexibility in mind.

Inter-organisational Collaboration

A fastMatter user can be a member of several law firms simultaneously with 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.
  • Managed data centers meet the rigid SSAE 16 specifications.
  • ISO27001 compliant.
  • Backups are performed every hour!