Time Tracking Software That's Automatic

TechnoLawyer NewsWire on Chrometa 4.0 by

If you’re like most attorneys I know, you probably wouldn’t mind getting paid by your clients faster – and more often – for all the hard work you put in.

We’ve designed our new invoicing tool to bypass the usual payment collection hassle. After capturing ALL of your billable time passively, Chrometa can create your entire month’s worth of invoices with the click of a mouse.

The invoice looks very professional – with your company logo if you choose. And best of all, it’s a snap for your clients to pay you directly online.

Please request a sneak preview of our new invoicing tool now, so that we can send you a special access code next week:

Dear Fellow Attorney at Work Reader:

Like you, I hate keeping track of my billable time. I used to spend hours each week going through sent emails, my calendar and my notes to figure out what I did every day.

I knew there had to be a better answer than notepads and start/stop timers.

The problem with the start/stop timer, for me, is that I’m constantly getting interrupted throughout the day. So I’d start the timer once in the morning – and realize 5 hours later it’d be running against the same task ever since, because I forgot to toggle it!

Time entry methods were equally ineffective – I am far too busy and multi-task far too much during the day to be bothered with the tedious effort of creating a new time entry when I change tasks.

Finally in 2007, I’d had enough – so I designed a product that’d automatically track my time and let me easily organize that time so I could accurately and easily bill my clients.

I’m excited to announce that our groundbreaking timekeeping product, Chrometa, is now available to Attorney at Work readers.

You can get started with Chrometa for free – and be up and running in a matter of minutes.

Please start capturing your billable time automatically with Chrometa now. (Available for PC and Mac)

Sincerely,

Adam Tope, Esq.
Special Advisor to Chrometa, LLC
adam@chrometa.com

A recent survey found that attorneys work three hours for every two they bill.

Picture a publicly traded companythat disclosed it had only billed (forget about collecting) two-thirds of the items it sold. The Board of Directors would reprimand and probably terminate the CEO, CFO, and CTO for failing to develop processes to prevent this catastrophe. Shareholders would file class action suits. And yet, this scenario is essentially the current state of most, if not all, law firms.

This situation exists for many reasons, including: (1) administrative overhead, (2) reasonable accommodations to the financial circumstances of clients; (3) write-offs for poor results, and (4) write-offs for training new associates.

And then there is the significant amount of non-billable time spent by lawyers just reconciling their time — over two hours per week on average. But none of these factors explain the majority of the unbilled time. The reality is there is no legitimate business reason for the majority of unbilled time. So the question arises — how can you increase your billable time?

Read On: The Top Five Ways to Increase Billable Time

The average small law firm of 1-9 lawyers, including yours most likely, leaves 10-25% of billable revenue on the table in the form of work you performed for your client, but were not able to track down after the fact.

This is a fact based on a recent study.

It’s crazy to leave such large amounts of money unbilled in this environment. Most of your competitors are not reading this TechnoRelease so you’ve got a leg up.

Watch this free video now: “How to Increase Your Billable Time by 10-25% — While Actually Working Less.”

AUTOMATIC TIME CAPTURE SOFTWARE: THE LAST BEST HOPE FOR FINANCIAL SUCCESS

There’s a lot of talk these days about alternative fees.

That’s all well and good but guess what? No matter how you bill clients, you need to accurately understand how much time you spend on your cases.

The problem with keeping time via a start/stop timer or any other manual method is that you’re constantly getting interrupted throughout the day. So you start the timer once in the morning — and realize five hours later it’s still running against the same task because you forgot to toggle it! Being ethical, you then conservatively underestimate the amount of time you spent.

Time entry methods are equally ineffective — you’re probably far too busy and multi-task far too much during the day to be bothered with the tedious effort of creating a new time entry when you change tasks.

It only took 100 years, but Chrometa solves this problem.

As a growing number of attorneys can attest, Chrometa automatically captures every second of your billable time with no effort or data entry on your part.

The “magic” of Chrometa is that it runs in the background of your PC and/or Mac, quietly making note of your activities. It’s like having your very own personal timekeeper.

When you open or compose an email, Chrometa captures that activity. Same for documents you draft, web research, and even phone calls and meetings — everything is captured passively without you lifting a finger.

THE RESULT OF USING CHROMETA?

Chrometa has been around long enough that we have some data to share from our customers, virtually all of whom work in small law firms.

Their feedback suggests that you will increase your monthly billings by 20% or more while actually working fewer hours.

Available for PC and Mac, try Chrometa for free now.

By Neil Squillante

Late last year, Business Insider, a publication that breathlessly covers startup companies and new technologies, admitted that the world is not changing that fast. The article noted that every minute people post 695,000 Facebook status updates (impressive), but send 168 million email messages (off the charts). Among lawyers, the numbers are likely even more skewed in email’s favor. Because lawyers spend so much time in email, that’s where they lose the most billable time. Did you spend 25 minutes or 35 minutes replying to your client? Most lawyers are honest so they under-guesstimate, but accuracy is not a crime. The new version of a popular time tracking program can help.

Chrometa 2012 … in One Sentence
Chrometa 2012 automatically captures and categorizes the time you spend working on your computer plus it can track offline time too.

The Killer Feature
Previous versions of Chrometa would tell you how much time you spent in Outlook or in Gmail throughout the day, enabling you to capture all that time. But it didn’t list the time per message so if you read 25 work-related email messages, and sent 10 you’d have to look back at your messages and apportion the time among them — a fair amount of work.

Chrometa 2012 now shows you the time spent per message, identifying each message by subject line, to/from/cc fields, and if applicable even the email folder name.

Chrometa achieves this feat via two free plugins for Microsoft Outlook and Gmail respectively. The Outlook plugin works with Outlook 2007 and 2010, while the Gmail plugin works with Google’s Chrome browser on Mac and Windows.

“Our new Chrometa plugins for Microsoft Outlook and Gmail close the loop on email,” Chrometa CEO Brett Owens told us. “Once you install our email plugins, you’ll never lose another minute of billable email time or waste time reconstructing that billable time.”

Other Notable Features
Chrometa captures time on Macs and PCs. It notices when you stop using your computer such as for a phone call and can ask you about it so you can also track offline time. You access and manage your captured time using a web browser.

Chrometa can automatically categorize the time it captures. For example, now that Chrometa can capture time spent per email message, you can create a rule for each client or even matter. Then Chrometa will place all email time per client or per matter into that category. The rules work for all the time Chrometa captures (e.g., time spent in Word documents). When you log into your Chrometa account, you can convert all the time captured in a category into time entries with one click.

Also new in Chrometa is the ability to create bills (invoices). In other words, Chrometa can now serve as your billing program, not just your time capture program. You can send bills directly from Chrometa via email or export them into DOC, PDF, or XLS formats.

If you already use a billing system, Chrometa offers a growing number of integrations, including Clio, FreshBooks, QuickBooks, PCLaw, and Timeslips. You can also export Chrometa time entries and import them into virtually any billing system.

What Else Should You Know?
You can choose from three versions of Chrometa (all single user) or from two versions of Chrometa for Teams (for multiple users). Pricing for Chrometa starts at $19 per month, whereas pricing for Chrometa for Teams starts at the same price per user per month.

Please download Chrometa’s automatic time tracking software here.

Dear Fellow Attorney:

Like you, I hate keeping track of my billable time. I used to spend hours each week going through sent emails, my calendar and my notes to figure out what I did every day.

I knew there had to be a better answer than notepads and start/stop timers.

The problem with the start/stop timer, for me, is that I’m constantly getting interrupted throughout the day.  So I’d start the timer once in the morning – and realize 5 hours later it’d be running against the same task ever since, because I forgot to toggle it!

Time entry methods were equally ineffective – I am far too busy and multi-task far too much during the day to be bothered with the tedious effort of creating a new time entry when I change tasks.

Finally in 2007, I’d had enough – so I designed a product that’d automatically track my time and let me easily organize that time so I could accurately and easily bill my clients.

I’m excited to announce that our groundbreaking timekeeping product, Chrometa, is now available.

You can get started with Chrometa for free – and be up and running in a matter of minutes.

Please start capturing your billable time automatically with Chrometa now. (Available for PC and Mac)

What apps are on your holiday wish list? On this edition of Legal ToolKit, host Jared Correia, Law Practice Management Advisor with Mass. LOMAP,  joins returning guest Brett Owens, CEO and

legal-toolkit-practice-management

Co-Founder of Chrometa, LLC, to take a look at some of the top web apps for this holiday season. Brett offers up his favorite apps across a variety of categories, including for collaboration and file sharing. In addition to relaying his thoughts about the best buffalo wings on the planet, Brett makes some bonus prognostications for 2012 and beyond.

Legal ToolKit: Top Web Apps for the Holidays

Did you know that you could be underestimating your billable hours by 20% … 30% … up to 50%?

A recent survey of solo and small firm attorneys reported they were only capturing and billing for 67% of their legitimate billable time, on average.

This means that a firm with $1 million in gross billings could be losing as much as a half of a million dollars a year for work they performed but never billed the client for.

Want to learn how you can increase your billable time – while actually working less? If so, then this FREE special report, The Top 5 Ways to Increase Your Billable Time (Without Working Longer Hours), authored by Seth Rowland, Esq. (TechnoLawyer Consultant of the Year in 2002) is a must read. Specifically, you’ll learn:

• How you can save yourself two hours or more of administrative headaches each week.
• The best practices attorneys follow to bill accurately and ethically.
• How your peers are using cutting edge software to increase their billable hours by up to 33%.

For Seth’s 5 actionable tips on how to increase your billable time — without working longer hours — please download your free white paper below (no registration required)…

PS – As Seth mentions, time capture software can prevent thousands of dollars worth of billable time from falling through the cracks. Learn more here.

MAKE 2012 YOUR MOST PROFITABLE YEAR EVER WITH CHROMETA

With Chrometa’s help, 2012 can be the year you capture and bill for all your time (i.e., hard work).

Please join hundreds of your fellow TechnoLawyers and start capturing your billable time automatically with Chrometa.

We’re excited to announce that we are now providing free licenses of Chrometa for law students!

The idea spawned from a conversation that we were having with the fine folks who run Social Media Law Student. We were originally planning to offer a steep discount on Chrometa for students in their listening audience…and then I started thinking back to my days as a student (which were not too long ago).

I was always broke (some would argue I still am!) Why not just make it free. So there you go – if you’re in law school, here’s how you can get a free copy of Chrometa:

1. Download the free trial of our time tracking software.
2. Send us an email from your school email address (.edu)
3. We’ll send you a complimentary license code back!

It yours to keep – we hope that it’s of use to you in law school, and of course we’d encourage you to use Chrometa when you land your first gig.  The partners will be in awe of how many billable hours you rack up

And we ALWAYS appreciate your referrals – please refer Chrometa to friends and family who you think will benefit from it using this form: http://www.chrometa.com/refer-us.php

They’ll thank you – and so will we!