Every day, law firms like yours are tasked with ensuring the delivery of accurate client billing, while maximizing billable hours. The time that is spent on processing the invoices and related client expenses takes significant time away from other higher-valued tasks, such as direct client interaction.
Today, a very manual and paper-intensive process exists within law firms in order to process invoices and attribute them correctly to the respective clients and matter, but with the right solution this process can be simplified.
Approval and Accessibility
Invoice Processing —
A Time Consuming and Tedious Task
Catching Clients’ Attention
No matter the size of a law firm, it is nearly impossible for any firm to manually manage all their invoices and disbursements without error or lost productivity. The time and steps it takes for a law firm to process an invoice from the point it arrives at the firm and moved through the firm, eventually ending up at the accounting department can be a very time consuming process with many challenges along the way, including: • Increased risk of losing critical documents when
they’re in transit to and from the accounting department to the appropriate approving attorneys • Errors when manually re-keying information into
the firm’s financial system
• Transparency due to the lack of information accessible to attorneys when a client calls looking for invoice justification
• Creating and filing multiple copies of an invoice in numerous locations
• Expensive and time-consuming efforts to retrieve paper documents from dispersed files or search for lost documents
Vendor Invoice Processing
The Challenge
Every day, law firms receive invoices from outside vendors — some on behalf of their clients, while others are directly attributable to the firm. Each invoice must be received, approved, assigned to the correct client and matter (where appropriate) and eventually paid by the finance department, while billed back to the appropriate client. The challenges a firm faces in managing this process quickly and effectively, without error, and with complete client transparency along the way is daunting.
The Solution
department. Independent of the path taken, each invoice requires specific information attributed to it before it can be processed, including client billing and matter codes, and the signature of the approving attorney.
Without an electronic capture process, the possibility of documents being lost or misplaced is significantly increased by the need to manually route them around the office. This risk is enhanced even more by the need to route documents to and from the accounting department and appropriate attorneys, especially when more than one approval is required for any given document.
Retrieval and Archiving
Today, archiving invoices means filing paper documents. In order to make these accessible to everyone who may need them in the future, multiple copies are made and filed into numerous locations. While this part of the process appears simple, the expenses associated with making and filing multiple copies of the same paper document can escalate quickly. This is also expensive and time-consuming when having to retrieve paper documents from these files or search for lost documents.
previously obtained from the attorney into the financial system such as Elite® or ADERANT®. This is a repetitive and time consuming task that can introduce errors into the process. As a result of error, the reimbursement may be delayed or even worse, eliminated.
Once an invoice has obtained a voucher number, copies are made, one of which is manually attached to the vendor invoice of the firm's bill that will be going to the client, containing those charges. While a firm employee can use the accounting system to obtain the payment status of vendor invoices, without an electronic image of an actual invoice, a copy of the original invoice must be retrieved manually. All of these steps require an extensive amount of manual work when trying to track down a single invoice.
Vendor Invoice Processing
Omtool Vendor Invoice
Processing (VIP) Suite
For years, Omtool has been established as the legal industry standard to handle all the paper while providing Omtool AccuRoute® document capture platform to law firms of all sizes, worldwide. With AccuRoute, law firms are able to convert hard copy documents into virtually any electronic format and move it through electronic invoice processing seamlessly. The VIP Suite built upon the Omtool AccuRoute solution delivers:
• Vendor invoice document capture at the point of processing (by attorney or accounting department) • Invoice-specific collection of information (client and matter billing codes, date, billing category, etc.) to process along with the captured image and deliver electronically
• A streamlined electronic workflow to move invoices and related information quickly through approval cycles and into standard financial systems (such as Elite and ADERANT, among many others)
• Image archiving while also maintaining a connection to the billing system for easy and immediate client matter retrieval for the life of the client
omtool | legal infrastructure, extensive capabilities, configuration
flexibility, and the ease of use necessary to implement simple or complex solutions, involving hundreds or millions of documents per month, out-of-the-box.
At the heart of AccuRoute is the ability to capture, process, and deliver documents that originate in paper (and often electronic format). Paper documents are “captured” (scanned) from any networked scanner, scan-enabled digital printer, copier, fax, or MFP and prepared for processing by the AccuRoute Server. The AccuRoute Server converts documents to a variety of formats, collects and provides document-related metadata, validates information, compresses the documents, and then delivers the documents to the destinations required. During the conversion process, documents may be OCR’d and/or converted to any variety of formats including PDF, text-searchable PDF, DOC, JPG, RTF, TIF, TXT, XLS, among many others.
Metadata collection can be implemented with AccuRoute through a number of options including: • Profiling documents
using native document management systems profile screens • Extracting data from
barcodes
• Printing/Scanning with prompts to capture new information at MFP panel when scanning • Validating collected data
against pre-defined values
The delivery to destinations includes:
• Scan-to-Self — email, network folder, or web folder • Scan-to-Distribute — email, fax, printer, and/or
distribution list
• Scan-to-Store — enterprise content management (ECM) including document management, records management, and traditional enterprise content management systems, repository, archive, network folder
• Scan-to Line-of-Business Application
Achieve Seamless Invoice Processing
with AccuRoute Solutions
Image-In
™Queue — Managing the Approval
Cycle Invoice by Invoice
Image-In Queue is the electronic document delivery component of the Omtool VIP Suite that is the central dispatching point for invoices and required approvals. Instead of manually delivering an invoice to an attorney for approval and then returning to accounting to obtain a voucher number, Image-In Queue can automate the approval process. After capturing invoices with AccuRoute, Image-In-Queue automatically identifies documents that have not met all the criteria required for their defined process, and provides the capabilities to manage queues of these documents through until completion.
Image-In Queue minimizes lost or misdirected documents by routing them through one central location. There's no need to make multiple copies or manually deliver documents. Image-In Queue can simply send the selected documents to all authorized recipients — automatically. It can deliver the appropriate scanned images to the approving attorneys and again to accounting for processing until complete. What's more, there are no hard copies to file — you can keep them all in one central, image-centric electronic archive.
AccuRoute Web Client — Viewing and
Approving Invoices, Electronically
Whether at the office or working remotely, attorneys can review and approve their invoices through the AccuRoute Web Client which provides a clear view into the invoice approval process. This "viewer" provides constant and immediate access to current and archived images should you need them in the future for reference.
ObjectArchive
™— Image Archive for
Electronic Invoices
This high-performance file system stores the invoices, documents, forms, images, and other client billing documents that have been captured electronically. With ObjectArchive, you have immediate access to the documents, invoices, and records you need, where and when they are required. Invoice images may be viewed through the AccuRoute Web Client or through a direct link from the firm's financial system.
omtool | legal captured electronically, the need for
copying and the physical movement of paper within a firm is diminished. In addition, since these documents are no longer manually routed, they are less likely to be lost.
Improve Time to Revenue by
Decreasing Billing Cycles
Electronically streamlining documents and approval cycles greatly improves invoice turn around and time. As a result, this greatly decreases the time it takes to complete a client specific billing package at the end of a billing cycle, in turn greatly increasing a firm's time to revenue.
Increase Productivity Through
Reduced Data-Entry Time
As invoice specific information (date, client and matter codes, billing category, etc.) is entered upon receipt, it can be transmitted with the invoice image electronically to avoid repeated data entry of the same information in the financial system.
even, located in another office the invoicing processes can continue regardless of the location barriers. Attorney can review, edit, and approve invoices using any In-ternet connection, including their mobile device.
Increase Document Accessibility
Anytime during or after the invoice processing is complete, accessibility to that electronic invoice image is always available. This greatly reduces the amount of time spent searching for specific invoices in volumes of paper files, and, in some circumstances, reduces expensive off-site retrieval costs.
Support Green Initiative
For more than 20 years, Omtool has helped some the world’s largest corporations and leading law firms cost-effectively manage their document-intensive process-automation challenges. Continually refining its technology innovations, Omtool offers a platform with an architecture that incorporates our extensive experience in high-volume document processing to address “all the paper.”
Today, AccuRoute provides the infrastructure for automating document processes in well over 300 law firms worldwide, including more than half of the top 100 law firms in the U.S. Our solutions are now the standard for firms of all sizes looking for enterprise-wide automation of their paper-centric processes. With our extensive experience automating processes involving millions of documents per month, multi-function device vendors, software and service providers, and law firms trust Omtool to handle all their paper-document process automation needs.
Find out more about how Omtool can help your legal team. Visit www.omtool.com or call 800.886.7845.
www.omtool.com
The Leader in Legal Document Process Automation
Corporate Headquarters Omtool, Ltd. 6 Riverside Drive Andover, MA 01810 t. 978. 327.5700 f. 978.659.1300 sales 800.886.7845 European Headquarters
