CARET Legal Feature Releases 2019
February 2019
- Rules-based calendaring
- Automates procedural, administrative and regulatory deadline
- Automatically enters critical deadlines into your calendar
- Monitors for rule changes
- Matterscapes™
- Customized matter view
- Filter matters by practice area, responsible attorney, open date or custom fields
- Save filters so users can efficiently manage their caseloads at the click of a button
March 2019
- Two-factor authentication
- For extra security, you can enter in an authentication code in conjunction with your CARET Legal password when logging into your account
- Narrative templates
- Add a default narrative to any work category. The narrative template will be displayed in the time entry description
- Department-Based Accounting
- Generate Profit & Loss statements for different departments, teams or individual members
- Configurable time entries generated by email
- Users can choose to review and edit time entries generated before they are automatically saved
- This can be either a default preference by user or a toggle that can be enabled/disabled as you compose an email message
- Smart Account Reconciliation Module
- Firms who prefer to manually reconcile their accounts can now use this module to match their “books” on CARET Legal with their bank account statement by clearing or adding individual transactions
- Works seamlessly with download account activity
- Administrative Fee Soft Cost
- Easily charge your clients a soft cost expense that is a percentage of the total fees on their invoice
- Change these settings on a matter-level or in Firm Settings
- Bulk Printing
- Easily print hundreds of invoices with CARET Legal’s enhanced bulk printing options
- You can either print the 20 invoices selected on a page or all invoices in the entire recordset you’ve filtered
April 2019
- zDrive
- With zDrive, users can edit documents and a new version of the file will automatically save back to CARET Legal
- Calendar following
- Follow and view your team’s calendars
- Each member of your team is assigned a different color so you can easily differentiate the ownership of each event
- Bulk assign emails to matters
- Select multiple messages in your inbox, and assign them to a single matter and a specific email folder
- Edits to invoice line items now update the corresponding time entries
- When updating a line item on an invoice, you’ll now be presented with the option to have your changes saved on the associated time entry as well
- Bulk delete invoices
- Multi-select and delete invoices using the “Multi-Select Options” button
- Updated Firm Settings
- Collapsable menus have been added for organization
- Address information has been moved to “Invoice Customization” under “Billing” on the left side
- Billable – “No Charge” option
- If you set a matter’s billing preference to “No Charge”, time entries for that matter will now default to “No Charge” instead of “No charge, don’t show”
- AR Aging Report update
- Now presented in landscape view to accommodate additional columns of data
- Enhanced Account Reconciliation module
- Improved Reconciliation interface for better user experience
May 2019
- Consolidated invoices
- Generate consolidated invoices when there is a client with multiple matters in any given billing cycle
- User calendar view summary – My PastTime
- Individual users can track their time and progress with color-coded calendar view to make sure they’re staying on track
- Enhanced Billable Hours recap
- Now includes a calendar view with heat mapping so firm admins can easily monitor productivity
- Admin dashboard
- Users with Administrative permissions can view key business intelligence metrics through our admin dashboard
- Users can access data including AR, WIP, AP and productivity intel
- Next generation IP docketing with CARET Legal Ambient IP
- IP docketing solution that seamlessly connects with the USPTO’s systems to easily track the status of all patents and trademarks
- When a new event or action is added, CARET Legal automatically notifies the firm and creates a corresponding task
- Advanced calendar search and reporting
- Search events by combinations of owner, category, matter and date range
- CARET Legal Signature™ web portal
- A white-label portal with immersive branding, including a custom login page and branded email notifications when new documents are added
June 2019
- Billed and Collected Report
- Firms can now view billed and collected fees with a single click
- This report features a number of smart filters so you can easily sort by Timekeeper, Practice Area or Location
July 2019
- Write-offs
- Write off remaining balances for fees that won’t be collected
- Within an invoice, you can enter the date of the write-off and include a note that explains why the fee was waived
- Write-Off Report
- Aggregate all write-offs for a given date range
- Results can be filtered by client, attorney, practice area and location
- User groups
- Add users to a group (or a number of groups) within your firm
- Matter permissions can be assigned to user groups, saving you time in selecting individual users for each matter
- Quick timer narratives
- Quickly add notes as a timer runs
- Shared Matterscapes™
- Users can share Matterscapes™ and mark them as a Shared view so the custom views are available to other users at the firm
- Flat Fee Productivity Report
- Review hours worked and collections for Flat Fee Matters
- Default folder structures by practice area
- Create default folders for documents and notes for each practice area within Firm Settings
August 2019
- Matter-level invoice note
- Enter a matter-level note that will automatically appear on all invoices for that matter
- Bulk printing sort
- When printing invoices in bulk, firms can now sort by matter number, invoice number or client name (ascending or descending order)
- The invoices will print in the same order the firm prepares the mailing
- Custom UTBMS codes
- Firm administrators can now create custom billing codes in existing categories
- User images from the Microsoft Network
- Pull user images from the Microsoft Network (when available)
- User images will be shown anywhere a user can be selected, like when assigning a task to a colleague
- Receipts
- Easily attach an image or PDF file of a receipt when creating a check, expense or vendor bill
- AP Aging Summary Report
- Outstanding payments to vendors grouped by aging period
- Generate invoices by Billing Attorney
- Option to generate invoices by Billing Attorney, as well as Responsible Attorney
- Journal entry reference and print option
- Save a reference number with a journal entry and print a PDF copy of the entry with a single click
September 2019
- PDF templates
- Use PDFs for templates in Document Automation
October 2019
- Save payment information
- Credit card payment information can now be saved via LawPay
- These saved payments can be used for future Retainer and Invoice Payments processed through CARET Legal
- P&L Report update
- The Profit and Loss Report is now drillable, so you can quickly jump into the General Ledger for the account of your choosing
- Billing Contacts added
- You can now select matter-related contacts to be “Billing Contacts,” allowing invoices to be shared with them through the Caseway™ Client Portal
- Batch billing enhancements
- Flat Fees can now be entered as unbilled activities which can easily be invoiced during batch billing
- AR Aging Report enhancement
- The AR Aging Report now has additional date ranges
- Multiselect for Matterscapes™
- The Dropdown and Radio Button Filters on Matterscapes™ are now multi-select
- Bulk actions for matter basics
- You can update an array of matter-specific information without hopping between several screens
- Update information such as Responsible, Originating and Billing Attorney, Practice Area, and Rate Card for several matters at once
- More matter-related timers
- You can have 10 matter-related timers (up from five) on your right-hand pane
November 2019
- Firm Collaborators
- Assign additional users to a matter
- Firm Collaborators are also filterable in Matterscapes
- Matter-related contact notes
- Add notes or descriptions for each matter-related contact
- Matter billing groups
- Create your own custom billing frequencies that can be set on the Contact- and Matter-level
December 2019
- Single click invites for firm users
- Invite colleagues whose calendars you follow to events with a single click
- Text and email event reminders for external invitees
- Send text and/or email reminders to invited participants
- Tag contacts
- Tags can now be associated with contact records, allowing you to easily sort your contacts and export CSV lists
- Restore deleted matters and documents
- Restore previously deleted matters and documents with a single click
- Matters and documents can only be restored within 90 days of deletion
- Import time entries and expenses on demand
- Easily import a spreadsheet with time entries and expenses right through your CARET Legal account without the assistance of CARET Legal’s migration team
- Contact us for copies of these import templates
- Account Reconciliation enhancements
- More filter and sort options so you can find and review transactions with ease
- Vendor bills search feature
- Easily locate vendor bills that have been entered into CARET Legal with our new search feature
- Vendor payments filtering
- Filter your Vendor Payments report by Vendor allowing you to see all transactions made to one Vendor at a glance
- Date calculator
- Determine future or past event dates with the option to exclude weekends and federal holidays