Financial Director is our legal accounts package that fully integrates with Access Legal Case Management meaning that you can streamline and digitize your entire accounts process making both your fee earners and accounts staff more efficient and productive.
How it started
Biscoes Solicitors are a leading law firm operating across 6 offices in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. They offer a full range of legal services for both private and business clients.
Biscoes have used Access Legal’s case and practice management system including legal accounts for more than 20 years and having been there for the past 18 years, Finance Manager Catherine Ridzuan is an experienced user of the software, particularly our legal accounts package, Financial Director, which she has used since its release in 2013.
We love how FD integrates with the case management system. We’ve never had to manually enter any information because the lawyer provides it all when they submit their e-chits via the case management system.
It’s also really easy to get new lawyers within the firm to get on board with submitting the e-chits because it cuts out the middle person and saves us all a lot of work and time.
Achieving greater operational efficiency
Aside from the integration with the case management side of things, which is timeless, the ability to import land registry searches and send them off is a really quick, two-button process, whereas before it would have taken us a fair few hours to post everything.
Financial Director comes with many more time-saving features, including the Client to Office (CTO) sweep, which allows you to view matters with both a client and office balance and select what to transfer in bulk.
Catherine goes on to explain her experience with the CTO:
That’s brilliant, we love that too. The only issue is being unable to part-allocate disbursements, but other than that it’s faultless. It simply does the job for you, in line with the account’s rules once a notice of charges has been sent to your client you can sweep the clients’ money paid on account to clear down unpaid bills and disbursements. It’s quick and easy and you don’t have to look anything up.
Another useful feature is being able to attach documents to postings on the purchase ledger, which Catherine found to help reduce paper usage,
Though it does take up computer space, we do have less paper to store and also means that should we be audited two years down the line, we can easily find the files we need without trawling through paper documents.
Enhanced User Experience
From an end-user point of view , FD is great. It’s easy to use, user-friendly, and looks nice, so with some training, you could pick it up and start using it the next day. For example, the client ledger is easy to understand, even for a client. Everything is colour-coded and laid out and matches with the case side.
Many time-saving features within Financial Director help a law firm’s cashier team operate more efficiently and effectively. Catherine and the team at Biscoes find the software easy to use, and save lots of time and effort with the seamless case management integration, integration with third-party suppliers, the CTO sweep, and auto allocation features.
If you’re looking for a legal accounts system that’s compliant with solicitors accounts rules and making tax digital, you can find out more and request a demonstration on our Legal Accounts page.
