Automate & Accelerate: Effortless Invoice Management for Small Law Firms

Invoice management for small law firms can mean the difference between having the cash flow to hire new lawyers or paralegals, market and grow your firm and struggling to keep the lights on.

Cash flow and invoice management impact businesses across industries:

20% of invoices are two weeks overdue
33% more than a month overdue

Even if your accounting system is in place, bookkeeping is flawless, and you’re adding new clients often, not being paid on time can have drastic consequences for your firm. We’ve all been there as business owners – especially if you’re just starting a firm.

You work hard for a client, you send an invoice and you assume that the person will pay quickly. And, since you worked hard on their legal matters and were quick to respond and resolve issues, you thought that payment would come fast. Unfortunately, paying invoices seems to go on the back burner, and law firms are left waiting to be paid for a month, two, or even more.

If you automate and accelerate, you’ll get paid faster by most clients, recuperate some of your lost productivity and add more billable hours.

Automate Your Invoice Management for Small Law Firms

Invoice management should not be a manual process when you have platforms like BILL and Clio. We prefer BILL, but there are other platforms you can use as well that will help you solve many of the issues firms have with invoicing.

Main Invoicing Issues in Law Firms

What are the main invoicing issues that businesses and firms face?

Invoice delays occur when invoices are sent manually, slowing down the time to payment
Manual invoice creation means small firm owners spend less time on core, high-value tasks
Xero and PayPal found that 48% of small business invoices are paid late

You can argue that alternative fee structures, such as requiring clients to have retainers, can address some invoicing issues. But, fee structures will depend heavily on the type of services you offer.

If you’re like most law firms, you’re completing a lot of billable hours, paying workers and waiting for clients to pay invoices. Slow client payments can stop you from making strategic decisions that can help your firm grow because you don’t have the free cash flow available.

Some firms may not be able to do the following if invoice management is not in place:

Make payroll
Pay utilities and bills
Etc.

Automation can be implemented without a major learning curve. It can offload and even supercharge the invoicing process to help your firm get paid faster and save time.

How Automating Invoicing Can Help Your Firm Grow

Invoice management for small firms should be put on auto-pilot. You make your money with billable hours, and automating helps you free up time that can be better spent on client work.

BILL can be set up to automate invoicing with the help of common features:

Create, customize and reuse invoice templates to help you send invoices to clients faster. Templates help you remain consistent with your invoices across clients.
Send invoices by email rather than mail, and you can even schedule future invoices to be sent. Recurring invoices are an option that may work for you if you have an agreement with clients to perform a certain number of billable hours per month. Scheduled invoices will help you “set it and forget it,” but they may not always be possible.
Set up automated invoice reminders that nudge clients to make payments at a set duration. A simple reminder reduces the time for invoice payments and can also be done manually within BILL.
Add recurring payment options, which allow lawyers to offer subscription-based services to clients. BILL has a guide on how to set up recurring payments for a “set it and forget it” type of invoicing.

If you automate, you can get paid 2x faster, which will help you free up cash for growth-related expenses.

BILL integrates with QuickBooks Online and many other platforms to make it easier to streamline data entry and sync data between the platforms that you’re already using. You also have the flexibility to review all pending invoices within a single dashboard, giving you one-click filtering and reminder options for greater control.

You have already done the work, and you should be paid for it in a timely manner.

Automating invoice management will allow you to get paid faster and do it hands-off. If you use a platform like BILL, you add a suite of tools into your firm, such as easy ways to be paid via ACH or card, cash flow forecasting and tools to help you with expense and budget management.

When one central platform helps you in multiple areas of your firm, it becomes a time-saving asset.

We Help Law Firms Save Time and Accelerate Cash Flow

As BILL experts, we’re uniquely positioned to help make sense of invoice management for small firms. We help firms utilize BILL and can help you with:

Setup
Implementation
Integration
Troubleshooting

We’ll even help train your team on how to best use the powerful tools and features that BILL has to offer. Once we’re done working with you, your invoice system will begin working for you and your firm’s growth. Automating invoice management for small legal firms – or large ones – allows you to better allocate resources and be paid faster.

To learn more about invoice management for small law firms or how we can help you with your accounting needs, schedule a consultation now!