Case Studies
Hewitts - Accounts
Linetime’s award winning accounts and practice management system (PMS) has been in constant development over the past 25 years. To say it is the most comprehensive legal PMS system on the market is probably an understatement as testified by Linetime’s constant high standing within the Law Society’s Software Supplier’s Guide and its growing base of highly satisfied customers. For example. . .
Hewitts is one of the fastest growing firms in the North East servicing the needs of the private client and business alike from a number of offices in County Durham.
Following the merger of Cohen’s solicitors, Hewitts’ Practice Manager John Elmes was faced with the dilemma of deciding which of the two separate practice management systems to retain and which to abandon. John comments, “Once the merger was finalised there was a need to integrate the two operations quickly and we felt it would be more effective to adopt the Evolution practice management system that was in use at Cohen’s as this had been deployed to a greater number of users.
“However, this did not prove as efficient as we had hoped especially with respect to the ability to handle a large and growing number of users. Therefore after detailed analysis of both systems we decided to revert to our original plan and roll out Liberate to all our offices, including the ex-Cohen’s locations. The decision was actually made jointly by a committee of IT and user representatives who after much discussion and careful consideration unanimously voted in favour of Liberate.
John continued “Whilst both systems have their strengths, the specific areas which are very important to us; accounts, automated bank reconciliation and management reporting are so much better with Liberate.
“For example, we have found the Liberate Accounts system to be precisely what the Linetime documentation said it was, ‘highly flexible and easy to use’. We have a full ledger set with aged debt, forecasting and budgeting capabilities. The nominal produces profit and loss, balance sheet and trial balance reports automatically by cost centre and branch - so important when you have a multi-branch practice like ours. With full accrual, pre-payments and reserve postings, plus traditional nominal ledger journal posting facilities, the Liberate software allows us to accurately manage our accounts at all levels. In fact, we can produce budget variance reports over any period up to two full accounting years.
“The purchase / counsel ledger is also at the leading edge of accounting software, providing excellent management of all our purchases, thereby helping us to improve our cash flow. As with other areas of the Liberate suite of software the management reporting is second to none with an excellent and flexible system for storing past supplier histories.
“All in all we definitely made the right choice and look forward to many more years benefiting from what in our opinion is undoubtedly the leading legal software supplier in the country.”
Liberate Practice Management – Features
Recognising the differing needs of accounts staff and fee earners Liberate supports all aspects of Practice Management, providing full Client Management, Practice Diary, Time Recording and Relationship Marketing functionality, together with a comprehensive legal Accounting System. It is an ideal choice for practices wishing to link ‘back office’ and ‘front office’ functions to improve operational efficiency. Seamless integration to Microsoft Outlook, Word & Excel is standard.
Liberate Practice Management includes:
• Client Ledger Nominal, Purchase & Counsel Ledgers
• Fee Earner Desktop & full Credit Control system with Time
Recording & Automated Billing
• Money laundering & Conflict Checking – 3 levels & Automated Bank
Reconciliation
• Management Accounts, Reporting and Enquiries
• Plain English Language Report Generator & Retrospective reporting
• Centralised Client Record – single database
• Flexible disbursement, fee and WIP limits & Open period accounting
• Multiple client, office & deposit accounts
• Budget analysis with variance reporting
• Daily audit trail on all transactions
• Multiple VAT categories – automatic VAT returns
• Client mailing & strongroom registry
Liberate Practice Management complies with the Law Society's Solicitors Account, Deposit Interest & Franchise Rules and is Criminal Defence Service compliant.