Managing expenses for cases is often overlooked, but it is an important aspect for
a law firm. These are typical payables issues for a law firm:
- Dealing with many case expenses, but inefficiently processing them
- Handling expenses for contingency cases differently
- Time consuming tracking down and researching the status of invoices
Law firms deal with a significant amount of administrative costs. Payables
for a firm with hundreds or thousands of cases being handled
at any one time is one such cost. The Payables Lockbox service alleviates most of this invoice-processing
burden by receiving, imaging, sorting, and even performing some data extraction,
such as identifying the case, vendor, invoice number, amount, and relevant dates.
This leaves the office manager and controller with only the simple task of reviewing
the invoice image online and approving it for payment.
Case expenses must be managed differently depending on if they're contingency based
or not. The Payables Lockbox system allows multiple approval processes per firm,
so the cases that require tighter budgeting can receive the extra oversight and
approvals they need. For cases that are not contingency based, a client may be given
access to the Payables Lockbox system to review the expenses for the case, or even
have some level of approval. Many times, expenses over a certain dollar amount need
special approval, by a partner or client. The Payables Lockbox system can accommodate
unique approval processes for these high dollar invoices.