Reports and the firm's figures

The overview

Reports opens on the firm's headline figures for the year so far, set against the same months last year: fees billed and collected, work in progress, what clients owe, utilisation and realisation. Under them is what needs attention, what clients owe by age, and billing and collections month by month. Each figure opens the report behind it. You see only the figures your role lets you read.

The library

Library lists every report you may open, by what it answers: money, the financial statements, client money, people and time, matters, clients, intake, operations and compliance. Star a report to keep it at the top. Some entries open screens elsewhere that already report, such as the trial balance or the intake funnel.

Running a report

Choose the period, or the day for a report that stands on a day, such as what clients owe. Compare it with the period before or the same period last year, choose how to group it, and narrow it by office, practice area or person. A figure you can click opens the records behind it: the bills behind an amount owed, the time entries behind work in progress.

Every report reads only the matters you may read. A matter behind an ethical wall that keeps you out is never counted.

Under each report are the definitions of its figures, the notes on how it was worked out, and when it was run. Definitions lists every figure in one place.

Exporting

Export a report as PDF, Excel or CSV. You are asked first, and every export is recorded against you. The file carries the period, the definitions and who ran it.

Saved views, packs, schedules and alerts

• Save this view keeps a report with its settings under a name. With the right to share, you may share it with the firm; each person who opens it reads only what they may.
• Packs put saved views together to export as one PDF, such as a monthly finance pack.
• Schedules send a saved view every day, week or month to the people you choose. Each receives it as they may read it when it goes out. Anyone who may no longer read it is skipped, and you are told.
• Alerts watch a figure on a saved view and tell you the first morning it crosses the line you set.

Cost rates and what matters contribute

Settings, Cost rates holds what an hour of each person costs the firm, from a day. What matters contribute takes fees collected, less the cost of the time spent and the disbursements not recovered. It is a contribution, not profit: the firm's overheads are not taken off. Cost rates show what people are paid, so only those who keep them see them.

Closing a financial year

Ledger, Year end shows the year's income, expenses and profit and what stops the year closing. Close every month of the year but the last, then choose Close the year: one journal on the year's last day moves the profit into retained earnings. The profit and loss still reads the year as it was earned. Reversing the journal opens the year again.

Download the auditor pack gives the firm's auditors one zip with the trial balance, the general ledger, the profit and loss, the balance sheet and each month's bank reconciliation standing.