Hi there
Can one have one customer account with eg various “cases”
Eg you are an attorney firm with one client. He has a divorce matter, a last will and testament matter, selling of house matter.
So you want to create your customer with eg the surname is Banks BAN001 and then in the you have J1029 - Divorce, J1482 Selling of house etc etc.
How can I do this.
Use Non-Inventory items for each different type of charge
It is normal to have multiple invoices to the same customer for multiple different services. That would be the usual way to handle similar situations
But yes you could create virtual customers
how do you do that?
I know at a firm they would create a client on a program and it creates and “s” number and then every time they have a matter/case you will open a “W” number that is linked to that “S” number
does that make sense?
so do each charge get a differnt number as eg divorce will be invoiced and charged then later the client will be invoices and charged for property etc,. etc
Manager does not directly support project level reporting.
Tracking codes may achieve what you want.
If you use one income account use non-inventory items or have different income accounts. Personally I would use non-inventory items
it says that is mostly used for sale and purchase of physical goods?
can you do invoices for each tracking code then ?
Have a look at this guide
Billable Expenses: Record billable expenses | Invoice billable expenses
I suspect it, probably with tracking codes will achieve what you want. Creating a test Manager business and entering some data is the fastest way to see if what will work for you.
I am guessing though as you have not said what your billing an reporting requirements are. You have only said a program you have used in the past is different (which moving forward will rapidly become less relevant).
sorry I am not sure what you mean. My billing/invoice is per client. Which has various, as we call it, matters. so the client/customer has one account to which all accounts are linked. So the client account should reflect the various sub-accounts which are invoices, when payment is recevied it gets allocated to that specific client code
If you need to separate the charges to different sections of your firm (e.g. Family law, property conveyancing, civil matters, etc) then Tracking codes would be the best as Patch has suggested
thank you
so I will have a customer/client with a number eg BAN001 and then I can under tracking codes open J0001 Divorce or J1004 files/matters/cases.
As the one thing will be happening now and the other in near future. So every client that comes in has a Customer number and number (which would be the file number). Even if they only ever comes in once.
For reference number associated with a customer, you can use custom fields
I imagine that the file numbers will be unique to each customer. e.g. J0001 Jones Divorce, J0004 Jones Conveyancing, R00001 Reid Divorce, R0004 Reid Conveyancing.
If this is the case Tracking codes may not be the best and Non-inventory items would work better.
Read the guides on these topics and trial them in test businesses to see which would best suit.
Costing for a customer can be divided based on
What mix will work best for you will depend on personal preference and details of your business practices.
what is the significance of the job separation. Is it just the work you have quoted for. Do different departments do different job sets. Do you require performance analysis based on job type. Is there only a few (well less than 10) relatively fixed job areas which many customers will eventually use or 1000’s of different job’s customers may require.
is you service cost plus or price fixed by a quote prior to starting. Do the job span multiple accounting periods/ years.
about what sized business are you designing for. Hundreds of employees with 1000’s of current customers. Or a couple of employees with perhaps 50 current customers
Without knowing a lot more about your business it is hard to make specific recommendations. A description of a competing software product doesn’t help me at all.
An excellent suggestion.
Thank you I have read that.
I guess one will have to have knowledge of how a law firm works. I am a one man band that specialises in a couple of fields of law.
to date I opened customers on here (I am a lawyer not a bookeeper - but still trying to do it myself sometimes with a little help). but was advised that the customer is the main account and under that I must have my separate accounts (eg divorce, property etc)
So client B comes in for a consultation, a file is opened and (the firm I used to work for as a secretary obtained an “S” number which is what that program allocated. You will have all the client’s details address, telephone etc etc on there. Client B says he wants to sue someone so we open a file for him with a reference nr J1003 (this number is alocoated chornolotgically so each client in the firm will have a file number and they get issued chronologically so next cilent will be J1004 (does not have to be this one) and then Joe Soap comes in and we open a file J1005 and so on and so on.
5 years later client B on top wants to divorce same story open a file reference as he is already on the system.
3 years later B dies and his family wants us to do is estate.
so not sure if anyone works or has working with something similar that can hep please.
Patch - your questions are way over my head, so not really sure wat exactly you want me to answer.
thanks for your feedback, no not quite, I have no responded below to Patch’s response.
@Jmandyass, Manager does not function the way you describe. So you cannot do what you did at your prior law firm. A customer is a customer, and is already a subsidiary ledger of the Accounts receivable control account. The customer cannot have subsidiary matters or records underneath.
Tracking codes will not work for this purpose. They were originally designed to separate income and expenses for divisions of a business. While you could assign tracking codes for each new matter for every client, those tracking codes would not be related to the client in any way within the program. They would be better for tracking, as an example, how much income you made overall from settling estates or your net profitability from your divorce practice.
One feature of Manager that might be useful is to make extensive use of Billable Time. Read the Guides about recording and invoicing billable time. Adding custom fields to your billable time entries would allow you to designate which matter a particular entry applied to. But that will be information only.
Understand that Manager is an accounting system, recording financial transactions. It is not intended as, and does not perform, the functions of an integrated practice management system like you describe. It would not allow you to link one matter to another or keep records and manage documents related to a matter as specialized software for legal practices often does. Sure, you could use some of Manager’s features to crudely approximate some of those functions. But you might never be satisfied.
That said, Manager can certainly handle accounting for a legal practice. First, you need to determine what your requirements are. Then, you need to decide what accounting functionality is needed to satisfy them. You might need to consult an accountant at this stage. Only then will you be able to figure out whether Manager will satisfy your needs.
Start your description in each billable time entry with your job number.
How are you intending to file all other job related information? Paper records filed by job number, or an electronic information management system? My point is, depending on the complexity of your information management system, billing maybe more logically part of that