I'm in my trial period and attempting to use the program. The following are failures and issues:

1. Entering amount of time in a timed slip does not "stick" and the amount does not show in the invoice. There is no other slip appropriate to lawyers who bill by the hour.

2. There appears to be no way to enter the date an event took place. Is that "completed"?

3. There appears to be no way to ID the timekeeper. That is essential for a lawyer's bill and many clients require it. On the invoice, these must show with the rate and most clients also require a timekeeper summary at the bottom of an invoice --- initials, rate, number of hours, total.

4. How does one show more than a single timekeeper and with a different rate? Without this, the program is useless for lawyers.

5. Identity does not have any place to put Federal Tax ID number, where it belongs, or anywhere else apparently.

6. The Invoices are bush league and juvenile. How does one get plain black type on white paper???

Thanks.

Dave

The "categories" needs refining and I could not find a way to add/delete. What does it mean? Lawyers usually bill by using such terms as

"Review [a generic term, then the text entry] new pleading from defendant Smith" or

"Attend [generic] deposition of Smith at his attorney's office" or

"Court appearance [generic] at LA Superior Court for Smith's Motion on discovery" or

"Prepare [generic] Opposition to Smith's discovery motion."

Are you using Daylite or Billings? You posted your question in the Daylite forum but the questions seem more appropriate to Billings. If indeed you are speaking of Billings:

1. I have never heard of this problem. Can you describe, in detail and with precision, the steps you are following to produce this problem?

2. Billings doesn't have the concept of an "event." For instance, timed work (captured in the form of a timed slip) has a start date and and end date, which may, but also may not, be the same day. You can choose which of these dates to include on an invoice by clicking the Options... buton in the Send Invoice window.

3. You keep track of timekeepers manually, but Billings does not have the concept of multiple timekeepers right now. What that means is, you can identify the timekeeper in the name of a slip or in its comments, and of course, each slip can have its own rates. Invoices can be customized using our WYSIWYG editor to include fields for initials, rate, number of hours, and so on, if that is what you'd like to see. It would be beneficial to us, and I'm sure to others, to see a graphical example of what you're looking for.

4. I believe this question is essentially the same as #3.

5. You can tie a tax registration number to a particular tax in Billings Preferences, in the Taxes pane. You can also customize any invoice template to include y our tax registration number anywhere and in any way you wish.

6. One of our invoices, Swiss, is exactly what you ask for. Indeed, yours is the first -ever- negative comment we have received about our invoice designs.

If you're not happy with Billings and its invoices, perhaps you'd like to provide some more detailed feedback. Your comment, "the 'categories' needs refining," for instance, doesn't really help us improve our product. In fact, your second post isn't especially clear to me. Perhaps you can elabourate with more specificity?

Also, I will point out that if you explore Billings' intuitive user interface, or check its Help book (available by choosing Help > Billings Help from the menu), you will find answers to your questions, including how to add and delete categories.

HTH,

(Edit Note: Moved this from Daylite Troubleshooting to Billings Troubleshooting, where it should have been posted in the first place.)

Adam -- Thanks for your very fast response.

Sorry I got the post in the wrong place.

As for problem entering time, is there some way I can send you a screen shot?

I think I see the work around for what we lawyers call "event." I'll try what you suggest. All the lawyers I know in big firms and small ALWAYS bill by the day and the hour. Thus, if you're in trial, each day is billed separately and the client sees you spent 8.5 hours in trial on Wednesday, 3.5 hours preparing by reading the depo transcript of the witness, and 1 hour traveling back and forth to the courthouse. Institutional clients demand this kind of billing for their lawyers.

I'd really like to see this work. I've been fiddling with timekeeping and billing for months now since I switched to the Mac for my office last July. On larger matters, I've had to rely on Timeslips 11 running on my old Dell Windoze machine; it sometimes makes noises like it's gonna' up and die on me. And, I don't really want to install it into Parallels, but I may have no choice.

Thanks again for your help.

Dave Clark

I managed to enter time, but it has to be with a : and not decimal, viz, one hour and three tenths has to be entered 1:18, which is very cumbersome and not the way most programs do it. Most accept decimal time entry.

Swiss format works great. Now where do I enter the federal tax id???

Also can work around the need for initials of attorney doing the work. Right now that's just me, so I'd default to "DC" as the first entry in the note for a slip.

Still puzzling over how to get the date for the event.

The taxes column needs to be deleted from the Swiss Invoice. How to do that?

I figured out how to delete the taxes from the column headings using the dialog for the invoice format.

I want to put FEIN number in a footer. Where are the templates i.e., what is the path to them?

How do I make the complete date the date of the event???? This is a make or break for this program. The invoice and the slip MUST show the date the work was done. It is now showing complete date as today, 3/27/07.

Not exactly pertinent to your questions, but:

have you heard of the website:

www.macattorney.com

If not, you might find it very helpful.

I've probably explored every possible Mac help group that exists, including macattorney.com. I get Randy Singer's email list, belong to MacLaw on yahoogroups, and also belong to iMacChat on yahoogroups. Billing 2.0 is about the 4th failed effort with a Mac billing program.

I'm ready to try installing Timeslips on this Mac in Parallels just so I can shut down my ancient Windoze machine.

Dave

When creating an invoice, choose the Options button beside the dropdown containing the various invoice templates.

There you will find the answer to two of your questions: how to include the date of the event (or time slip), and how to show the tax registration numbers.