Law firms have to leverage their business management and strategy to be competitive. In short, they have to increase revenue, reduce cost and increase service. To achieve all of these the keyword is efficiency. Also, clients always want ‘more for less’ and expect instant access to information on their matters and accounts. To efficiently perform functions such as trust accounting, matter/case management, fee entry, invoicing and client reporting to name a few, with the press of a button, are only possible with the use of a legal accounting system that was designed for those tasks. To find such a system is easy, the one that fits your budget might be another challenge.

LegalPRIDE ACCOUNTING OVERVIEW

The system was released in 2011, LegalPRIDE was always and still is under active development and open to your specific requirement requests, thus its functionality has evolved to what it is today, a comprehensive accounting system that meets all the requirements of a legal accounting system, flexible easy to use and transparent to the attorney, bookkeeper, and auditor. Taking care of all your needs to manage your clients, matters, and accounts efficiently. Reasonably priced, with flexible payment plans that will fit the budget, whether it be a single practitioner or larger firm. Fixed pricing includes on-going product updates, new modules, training, and support, no extra charges for additional training or support.

We pride ourselves to many years of successful trust audits, as well as on our excellent and proven clients service. LegalPRIDE ACCOUNTING is robust and cross-platform transparent, that means it can be run on Windows and Linux operating systems. At LegalPRIDE we are very excited and invest a lot of time to elevate the client experience with the across-device trend, developing interfaces for smart devices like iPad and iPhone as well as Android smart devices. Our vision is to provide legal Practice with an affordable one-stop solution and evolve around their needs way into the future.

FEATURES

Bookkeeping assistance LegalPRIDE can provide an external bookkeeper experienced in LegalPRIDE accounting on a full or part-time contract basis. This service can very helpful to the smaller practice until they are up and running like a well-oiled machine.

Access to Information LegalPRIDE has an intuitive interface making it easy to use the system for the first time with a low learning curve. For example its intuitive inquiry screens that can also be used by the attorney enables printing and even emailing inquiries of provisional statements directly from the screen to a client as you speak on the phone, whether it be month to date, year to date and previous years information. A permanent interactive mini statement for accounts is displayed alongside all transaction which may also be printed or emailed without leaving the transaction entry screen. Users can see all related transactions, notes and attachments depending on the selected search criteria and on the security level. When closing the year and opening the new year, the system provides all that is required by the auditor including the ability to send any screen or report to excel or any other format, saving time on audit hours billed.

Trust and Business Accounting Automatic trust transfer interface in a format that allows for transfers to be ticked to include or exclude or amended, then processed where it remains until released to be updated to the client and General ledger accounts. The system will suggest Trust money that is available for transfer to Business.

Transaction processing LegalPRIDE includes all required trust and business transactions such as Billing, Receipts, Payments, Collection commission, Third allowance, Cashbook, Business creditors and disbursements, Credit notes, Debit notes, journals and investment processing such as interest and guarantees, Interest and costs.

Fees and disbursements entry shortcut codes defined by the user The fee entry interface requires minimal typing skills and includes rates for standard and user-defined entries. These user-defined codes speed up the time recording and fee capturing. By entering a code, the full description and the associated fee is automatically entered. Some of the codes may have a quantity for example ‘Photocopies x 4 @ R5 each’. The codes can also be searched and changed or added on the fly. The system will differentiate between fees and disbursements.

Bank reconciliation The bank reconciliation is a real breeze, it only requires the bookkeeper to check/uncheck deposits and cheques, and once in balance, it prints the reports before accepting and processing the reconciliation.

Work in Progress A proforma or final invoice of the WIP can be maintained and printed and/or emailed as a PDF document at any stage.

Electronic Statements Statements may be sent electronically to all or selective clients, clients can be flagged to print and/or email their statement as a PDF document. Single statements may also be emailed during the month as well as statements that were reprinted as a duplicate. Consolidated statements also include each matter detail and billing on one statement for the client. All these statement features improve overall cash flow as well as eliminating unnecessary time consuming manual tasks. The firm’s logo may be embedded on invoices, statements. This improves the firm image and brand over time. The ability to embed the logo on reports and other documents is in the pipeline for the near future.

Pro-forma Invoicing and quotations proforma invoice or quote to clients may be maintained. This allows pre-invoicing at any stage. Corrections may be applied to the proforma invoices periodically before the final billing/invoice is produced, thus saving time.

Reporting Standard reports comprises of, Fee earner by criteria, Trust control, Transaction listings, Vat reports as per SARS columns, Debtors and Creditors Age Analyses, Invoices, Statements Trial Balance, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, bank reconciliation and management reports and more. In addition to these reports, LegalPRIDE allows the design of virtually any report imaginable. Whether you need internal financial reporting, fee-earner reporting, exception reporting or even custom designed reports for your major clients, LegalPRIDE handles these with ease.

Reporting and inquiry printing an emailing all reports and inquiries may be viewed before printing. In the view mode the user may search names, amounts, numbers or any text, the system will highlight the number or name found in the report or inquiry, this is useful when looking for transactions on very large reports to verify if it correct without printing the report and possibly wasting paper.

LegalPRIDE is the only system with a unique feature that allows you to highlight, or to type a rich text note (as in MS Word) on top of the report hard copy. It also allows you to draw lines and add triangles or arrows on top of your report. When the report is then printed, these notes will be printed by the printer on top of the report hard copy as if it was part of the report image, the same effect if you had to make notes on the printed report. When the report is exported to a PDF to be stored, printed or emailed, these notes and drawings on the report will be included in the PDF file. This is a big time saver when emailing an inquiry, reports or even a statement to a client with notes and drawings on it that explains something about the transaction or information. In short, it means you don’t have to scan a hard copy with notes scribbled on it, and then email it. The View report and PDF includes the notes and will be stored that way.

Custom view on all screens that list information, the user is allowed to add, remove or re-arrange, sort, search or filter the columns. In addition, the table may be exported as a worksheet to excel, word, and PDF. The Custom view allows the user to see the most important information on any screen instantly, saving time. Shortcut keys may also be created per user, which saves time when a user performs specific tasks in a specific order on a regular basis.

Month-end processing When closing the current month and opening the new month, a set of monthly reports are printed such as trial balances, income statements, Balance sheets, Vat reports, etc. These reports may also be re-printed at a later stage.

3 tier Ledger LegalPRIDE is one of the few systems to offer a 3 tier ledger for Trust and Business Debits, Credits and Total, serving as a mechanism to ensure that financial transactions balance at all times.

Clients / Matter and Creditors All relevant information to the clients, matters and business creditors are easily maintained. When doing a transaction, only the minimum information for the transaction is used, and for inquiry and integrity, more information is shown such as notes, alerts, notifications, attachments, etc.

Archiving Closed matters and closed clients with a zero balance is being sent to an archive area where they may still be searched and their full history being viewed as well as being reinstated if necessary?

BENEFITS

• LegalPRIDE has a low learning curve and is easy to use. Whilst applying the latest technology and delivering state-of-the-art interfaces, we believe in keeping things simple.
• LegalPRIDE Multi-User environment. We allow the practice to add extra users on the server if required, FREE OF CHARGE.
• LegalPRIDE low cost. For such a feature-rich system, LegalPRIDE comes at an unrivaled
• LegalPRIDE on Linux. During 2015, legalPRIDE users will have the option to run their system on the super fast and free Linux that is also known as the only ‘virus free’ operating system as appose to the costly windows system on each of their computers.
• LegalPRIDE Free Modules. Clients joining the pride before August 2015 will be receiving free future add-on modules such as practice management, document management, debt collecting, case management, and dairy.
• LegalPRIDE helps to.Increase revenue, Reduce cost and Increase Service and promote efficiency and productivity.
• LegalPRIDE evolves around you. With the agile technology at LegalPRIDE, we are able to meet your specific request with unsurpassed turnaround time.
• LegalPRIDEis always under active development and open to your specific requirement requests. Future releases will include document management as well as practice management functions  for single or multi-users that comes free of charge making it a cost-effective one-stop solution
• LegalPRIDE Client service. Once part of the pride, our clients know they can rely on excellent client support and service as we have already proofed that we would go to almost any length in supporting our clients.
• A general observation by current bookkeepers and users of LegalPRIDE is that the system requires little input and provide ample output, its stable, meet all the requirement and is easy to use. To start with LegalPRIDE, data can be converted, or a take-on procedure must be followed. The monthly cost in comparison to other systems is probably the lowest in the market.LegalPRIDE Single user systems, as well as a server based network for multi users, are available with no binding contract.
• At LegalPRIDE we provide initial hand-holding assistance as well as training should you need it.

Feel free to contact us and take the next step … welcome to the pride Tel 072 268 0909 or 011 867 6615. email legalpride@telkomsa.net