Briefcase - Software for Law Firms

Law firms process large amounts of jobs concurrently. Each job needs to have time logged against it and eventually it needs to be invoiced using the appropriate fee structures. Briefcase is an end-to-end solution that is built on extensive industry knowledge and practice enabling accurate management and processing of jobs.

Briefcase allows the creation and tracking of ‘files’. These are the electronic versions of the paper files that are created and accumulated as a job progresses. These files can have staff assigned to them for time logging purposes and they can also have document attachments. As a job advances, the file moves from person to person and is tracked electronically for status and location.

The most valuable resource in a professional services firm is time. Briefcase allows the logging and management of staff time by giving staff the facility to log their timesheets against the various jobs they are working on. Time can be logged as chargeable or non chargeable time and invoices can be issued from the system accordingly. Extensive reporting is available from the system such as time spent on jobs by different staff members, daily time quota reporting…

Briefcase also allows the creation and maintenance of a debtors ledger where multiple debtor accounts can be tied to a single client. The debtors ledger allows the invoicing of customers, printing of statements as well as extensive enquiries and reporting on the various debtors and transactions within the system. Besides standard invoices, the invoicing module handles credit notes, debit notes and proforma invoices. These transactions can be billed from a number of companies, each maintaining its own invoice numbering sequence. A very handy feature that has proven to deliver a lot of leverage to clients is that the user has a full control over the bill format and layout, being able to determine what is shown on the bill and how it will be formatted. To ensure proper billing, fee maintenance facilities are included. These allow standard rates per staff member, special rates per account using effective dates as well as retainers with all the associated financial calculations.

A key module in Briefcase is the Company Register. This is a comprehensive register of different companies and a tracking tool for the company shareholding. Besides storing all the necessary company registration information, it also allows for the maintenance of a shareholders register with facilities such as the transfer of shares, allotment/unallotment of shares, adding shareholders, printing of annual returns etc. Each transaction is set up to print the actual Companies Act form that is required directly from within the system, for example the shareholder certificates, annual return (fifth schedule)… In addition, the system provides facilities to track the history and movements in company secretary and other organisational officials. Fees can be assigned to a company and an annual invoice raised to bill these fees accordingly. As with all Newera software, this module allows for extensive reporting on any element present within the system.

The Vessel Register is another key module present within Briefcase. It allows the maintenance of multiple addresses by role as well as the recording of various certificate types for each vessel, for example radio licence, provisional expiry etc… each certification allows the attachment of files. Reporting and online enquiries allow the searching and viewing of the various certifications and expiries due for each vessel.