Tag Archives: MR9

Lesson #79

Payables – Reward Points Summary function

Reward your best customers with points like airlines and credit cards do, based on the business generated by their calls to you. Use this function to monitor and manage your reward points program.

Before setting up reward points in MR9, check what your local laws and regulations allow and what you must provide participants with, such as terms and conditions and any legal agreements you must obtain before you enroll a client in your reward program. Some states do not allow these programs for court reporting firms, and OMTI makes no guarantees or assurances about these programs.

Set up your points system first

Contacts don’t earn points until you turn on the reward points system in MR9 and set up points in contacts’ MR9 listings. When you turn on the points system, you also set:

• Whether points are earned on all invoices or original invoices only.
• Default for how many dollars billed on an invoice equal a point.
• How invoice amounts are rounded up or down for determining points.
• What the conversion rate is for points earned to redeemable dollar amounts.

You also designate which services are “pointable,” i.e. which ones earn points. For example, you probably would want to give clients points for originals and copies, but not for delivery expenses.

When designating who receives points for a contact’s bookings, you can choose the contact themselves and/or other contacts at the same firm. You can also override your default point conversion settings, if for example you have an important client you want to give double points to.

Snapshot of contact/firm reward point activity

Once you have your reward points system in place, use this function to manage your program. You can look up:

• A single contact
• All of the contacts at a single firm who have earned points
• All of a firm’s contacts, including those with zero points

The Reward Points Summary displays a snapshot of point activity, listing each contact’s:

• Firm
• City
• State
• Current points
• Pending points
• Total points earned
• Points spent

Total amounts in each points category are displayed at the bottom of the summary.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order).

From the summary, you can access any contact’s Reward Points History, where you can see at a glance what activities they have done and how their points history has been affected.

If your state does not allow reward programs, you can still use the points system to track your clients’ order history and see who your best customers are by which contact’s calls generate the most revenue instead of by firm only.

You can export the summary as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Manage points

From the Reward Points Summary, you can adjust, transfer, and redeem points for any contact listed. And if a contact is no longer participating in your points program, you can move their points history to another contact.

Adjust points

If you want to correct an error in the amount of points earned by a contact or to give bonus points, such as for welcoming a new client or other marketing purpose, you can adjust their total points amount up or down.

Transfer points

You can transfer earned points from one contact to another contact in the same firm, for example if a lawyer wants to give some or all of their points to their secretary or everybody in a firm wants to pool their points.

Redeem points

When a contact earns enough points and wants to redeem them, you document that here by noting the type of redemption chosen, the number of points redeemed, and making any notes about the transaction.

Move points

In addition to transferring points from one person at a firm to another, you can also move a contact’s entire points history to another contact. The contact does not have to be at the same firm. A use for this feature would be if a contact moves to a different firm, you can transfer their points to the new listing you make for the contact in their new firm so they don’t lose their points. MR9 will make automatic notes log entries in both contact listings recording who points were moved to/from, when and by which staff member.

Let clients access points online

If you have MR Connect, your clients can view and manage their reward points online. They can:

• Check how many points they have available currently and in the future.
• Look up their previous point history.
• Redeem any amount of points up to their currently available points for rewards.
• Transfer points to other people in their firm.

TL;DR: Reward your best customers with points like airlines and credit cards do, based on the business generated by their calls to you. Monitor, adjust, transfer, and redeem points.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services. If you have MR Connect, you can allow contacts to request point redemptions online. (Also referred to as reward points.)

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms, but can also be other court reporting firms, vendors, insurance companies, corporate clients, and courts.

MR Connect: Online repository, orders, and access to your office for clients and others. More >

Lesson #76

Payables – Sales Tax function

If you provide taxable services to clients in states or other areas that charge a tax on receipts, enter the sales tax rate in the firms’ listings and flag which service items are taxable. MR9 automatically calculates sales tax on invoices. This report lists all invoices with sales tax charges generated for a specific period.

How sales tax works in MR9

You enter the appropriate total sales tax rate (state + locality) in every firm listing in MR9 that is located in an area/state that charges sales tax on receipts. Then you mark service items as taxable in MR9’s Service Items Master or in individual billing rate tables.

MR9 calculates the sales taxable amount by adding all of the service items on the invoice that are marked as “sales taxable.” Then MR9 multiples the sales taxable amount by the sales tax rate for the client.

Using this report

The default Sales Tax report lists all invoices generated today that include a sales tax amount. It includes each invoice’s:

• Number
• Date
• Amount
• Amount of sales tax charged
• Bill To Firm
• Order Part number
• Part order date
• Case
• Related business unit

You can generate reports for different dates or date ranges, and for specific business unit(s) in your company.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function MR9 will revert back to the default order). The report in MR9 is not editable but you can export it as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file to save, share, work with in other applications, and/or print.

TL;DR: View all invoices having sales tax charges generated for a specific period. Export the report as an Excel spreadsheet.

RB concepts in this lesson

Billing rate tables: Amounts that you charge for services are organized into tables, so you can charge different clients different amounts for the same service items by applying different billing rate tables. More >

Bill To Firm: The firm responsible for paying the invoice for a job.

Business Unit: One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.

Service Item Master: List of your company’s services. More >

Lesson #73

Payables – Override Sales Commission function

MR9 automatically calculates commissions for sales reps. You can override the calculated commissionable amount on a single posted invoice without changing your commission rates and/or change the person receiving the commission.

MR9 calculates commissions by multiplying the commissionable amount by the sales rep’s commission rate. The commissionable amount is calculated and stored for each invoice by adding all of the service items that are marked as “commissionable.” You determined whether a particular service item is commissionable or not when setting up MR9. However, you can override the calculated commissionable amount on any invoice using this function.

Find, view, update

You can look up posted invoices to update by invoice number or job number, a date or date range for the invoice or related job, a case, the assigned sales rep, and/or the specific business unit(s) in your company.

Search results include all of the search categories plus invoice amount, balance, and commissionable amount; Bill To and Sold To clients; and date voided.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

When you locate the invoice with a commissionable amount you want to override, you can view basic details about the invoice and related job, including a breakdown of the commissionable service items and the total commission for the sales rep.

You can update the total amount for the sales rep; or if the wrong person appears in Sales Rep, you can change or remove the name. Export the results to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

TL;DR: MR9 automatically calculates commissions for sales reps. You can correct commissions on individual invoices without changing your commission rates.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients are called service items in MR9. Service items are listed on your invoices to provide itemized details for your clients and third-party payers.

Lesson #72

Payables – Sales Commission Report function

The Sales Commission Report lists all invoices that include a commission, grouped and subtotaled by Sales Rep. A commission is automatically generated from invoices on orders initiated by a Sales Rep’s client.

The default report list all invoices posted today that include sales rep commissions. It includes commissions on both originals and copies — and doesn’t deduct expenses from commission calculations.

Customize report views

You can view reports:

• For different days or date ranges.
• By payment post date instead of invoice post date.
• For a single sales rep.
• For originals only if you do not pay commissions on copy sales.
• For copy sales only.
• Excluding custodial fees if you pay commissions based on NIBO (Net Income Before Overhead).
• For one or more of your company’s business units.

Depending on your search conditions, MR9 lists all of the relevant invoices as a report, grouped by Sales Rep, with each having their own page(s) and a grand total page of all commissionable amounts and commissions. The report’s footer will display which Date Type and date range you used to generate the report.

The report breaks out scheduling firm and contact, invoice number and date, whether a commission is for an original or copy, order part number and date, commissionable amount, commission, case name, and Sold To firm. In addition to the report subtotaling commissionable amount and commissions by resource, each resource’s total is further broken down into subtotals for ordering contacts and firms.

You can search for a word or phrase in the onscreen report. MR9 will highlight all instances of your searched word/phrase in the report and list them in a scroll box along with the page number where they occur.

Using the report

Besides looking up details about sales commissions, you can use the report to help you adjust commissions in the Override Sales Commission function, and in other ways:

Voided invoices and invoices for which you have issued credit memos or debit memos are listed at the end of each person’s commissions as adjustments so you can void, decrease, or increase the commissions if desired. (You also have the option when voiding or issuing a credit/debit memo on an invoice to not alter the commission, then that invoice will not appear in the Adjustment list.)

Export the report to save it, give to resources, edit in another application, or print.

TL;DR: View all invoices that include a commission grouped and subtotaled by Sales Rep. Invoices that may require an adjustment to the commission — such as voids — are listed separately for each person.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Date Type: Depending on the function you are using, you can choose to see results for different date categories — such as the date an invoice or client payment was posted.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Scheduling Contact: Contact who initiates orders with your company.

Scheduling Firm: Firm that initiates orders with your company.

Sold To Firm: Usually the Ordering Firm on a job.

Lesson #62

Receivables – Collection Forecast function

When a client promises to make a payment at a future date on an outstanding invoice, record it in their MR9 records. Then you can project increases in your cash flow based on the promised payment dates and amounts of outstanding invoices.

The Collection Forecast lists all of the clients with payment-promised dates and amounts for a specified period so you can forecast cash inflow to your business.

Customize your forecast

The promised date defaults to today but you can select any date range to view. You can also narrow results to clients tied to a single collector in charge of collecting their overdue payments — for example if you want to see only those accounts that are your responsibility. Based on the amounts and dates promised by clients for outstanding invoices, you can forecast cash inflow to your business.

Listings in the results display the firm name, the promised date and amount, and the collector. A total amount of all the listed amounts is included at the bottom.  You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

View & update individual collection activity

You can also monitor your collection progress with clients, document new attempts, and view graphs of clients’ account activity by clicking a hyperlinked firm in the Collection Forecast results to view the firm’s collection history and account overview.

TL;DR: Project changes in your cash flow based on the promised payment dates and amounts of outstanding invoices listed in this function.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Lesson #61

Receivables – Collection Follow-up function

After running the Aged A/R report to find clients who owe you money and contacting them, track your collections actions and your client’s responses in MR9. Use this function to pull up a list of past actions and reminders to keep collections tasks on track. You can go directly into individual firms from this function to get contact information, record their responses and promises, make notes, and set reminders for further follow up.

Instead of trying to remember who needs to be followed up with about an overdue invoice and when — or writing reminders in a separate calendar — use MR9’s collection tools including the Collection Follow-up function. Collection Follow-up lists all previous collections actions recorded in MR9 for all clients with overdue invoices within a specified date range.

You can see at a glance:

• Which firms with overdue invoices you have contacted/taken action on.
• What kind of action was taken and when.
• Who on your staff should be reminded to follow up with the client and when.
• Your designated collector on the account.
• Any notes about the action taken.

You can search Collection Follow-up by:

• Dates actions were taken
• Dates someone in your company was/will be reminded to take action by the internal notification system
• Types of action taken (such as call made or statement sent)
• Assigned collector

Listings in the results display the firm name followed by:

• Info from the search categories above
• Person responsible for following up
• Any notes made about the collection attempts

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

You can click any listed firm to view their collection history and other client information, such as their phone number. And you can:

• Record your current collections effort.
• Set a reminder date and time.
• Designate which staff to remind.
• Enter notes about the action/reminder.

At the designated time MR9 will send the staffer an automated message through Notifications and Messages with a link to the firm’s records — so they can quickly take action.

Periodically review Collection Follow-up to see what progress is being made with overdue clients and if anything is falling through the cracks.

TL;DR: Keep your collection efforts on track by contacting overdue clients as scheduled, tracking responses and promises, and setting reminders.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Lesson #60

Receivables – Collection Letters function

If you want to send collection letters to clients instead of or in addition to calling them, MR9 includes a set of customizable collection letters. You can print and mail them traditionally — or email them directly from within MR9.

Collection letters are part of MR9’s collection toolbox, making collections easier and more productive. After running the Aged A/R report to find clients who owe you money, use collection letters are part of your efforts to contact them. MR9’s collection form letters automatically include client and invoice details from your MR database. MR9’s collection form letters are fully customizable — and you can create new ones to cover all of your collections’ situations in the Form Templates function.

You can access the Collection Letters function from MR9’s main menu or within the Aged A/R function — which gives you a head start by selecting all of a client’s outstanding invoices for you.

Target your letters

You generate collection letters for one client firm at a time — and you can choose to send letters to either the firm that is responsible for paying for the invoice(s) or the firm that ordered the service(s) the invoices(s) are billing.

After selecting the firm you can choose to generate letters regarding invoices for:

• A single contact
• All of the contacts at the firm
• All overdue invoices
• A particular date range
• A single order or a part of an order
• One, some, or all of your company’s business units

Search results listings include all of the search categories plus invoice number, amount, and current balance. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to edit, share, archive, or print.

Customize letters

When you are contacting a client regarding multiple overdue invoices, you can send one letter to the client that compiles information about all of the selected invoices — or multiple letters with each letter including information about a single invoice. Whether you are sending letters regarding one invoice or multiple invoices, you choose which collection letter template you want to use and whether you are sending the collection letter(s) via email or print.

Whether emailing or printing collection letters, you can review and edit the contents generated by MR9 before emailing/printing the letter.

When emailing collection letters you add your own Subject line — and you can add invoices or other files from your desktop as attachments if desired. MR9 records the email sent in the Email Log function in Tools so you can refer back to it later. (When emailing collection letters for multiple invoices, we do not recommend using the send one collection letter per invoice option because it will embed multiple collection letters in one email body.)

If email isn’t appropriate for collections, you can have MR9 compose collection letters in a print-friendly format —which you can review and edit in MR9’s word processing interface, then send via traditional methods.

Follow up letters

After sending a client a collection letter make an entry in the firm’s Collections Notes Log to keep a record of your actions and set a follow-up reminder date in Collections Follow-up to have MR9 remind you when you should check in with the client again.

TL;DR: Send clients collection letters via email or traditional mail with all relevant details automatically filled in.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Notes Logs: Un-editable internal-use only notes entered either by a user or automatically by MR9 appear in chronological logs.

Order: An order in MR9 is usually a request for all records related to a case or to serve a subpoena for an appearance at a legal proceeding.

Part: A part of an order is a separate record that is being sought that is included in the entire body of records for a case or patient. You can also think of it as the work order for that separate record.

Lesson #58

Receivables – Paid Invoices function

Quickly see which invoices were entered as paid today, or use search criteria to find all invoices paid within a specified period, grouped and sorted by the payment date or when the transaction was posted. You can also limit the results to those of one or several of your company’s business units.

In the results returned, you can see at a glance:

• invoice number
• Date
• Amount
• Payment date
• Payment amount
• Any balance remaining
• Firm billed
• Relevant contact at the firm billed
• Job number
• Job date
• Related case
• Your company’s assigned business unit

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list to edit, share, archive, or print.

You can drill down to see details about an individual invoice, such as the service items billed, related resource pay and sales commissions, and the breakdown of charges included in the payment. You can also download the related invoice PDF from the invoice repository or resend it to the client, and edit some invoice details.

TL;DR: Lists all invoices paid within the specified period, from first paid to latest paid.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.

Repository: Where you store files in RB for safekeeping and quick retrieval.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.

Lesson #57

Receivables – Client Account Activity function

This report lists each client’s posted monthly activities, grouped by business unit, plus a grand total outstanding balance. Monthly activities include:

• Invoices
• Payments
• Credit memos
• Debit memos
• Duplicate payments
• Refunds
• Voids
• Write-offs

Invoices in the list include the remaining balance due, number of witnesses deposed, number of pages billed with the invoice, and if applicable, the associated case number and case name. Payments and other receivable transactions include the check number or notes about the transaction, such as the reason, payment method, and transaction fees.

Generate custom activity reports

The default report is for the previous month, but you can set any date range to generate a report for. You can generate reports that show activities by the ordering parties or the parties responsible for paying the invoices (such as insurance companies). You can generate reports for all firms, a single firm, or to see all activity across one multi-branch firm, broken down by branch office. You can limit results to one or more of your company’s billing rate groups and/or business units.

From your search criteria, MR9 generates a static monthly report listing all applicable transactions in chronological order grouped alphabetically by client on separate pages for each of your business units, plus a final page that lists the grand total balance, total number of witnesses, and total pages billed. The report’s footer will display which search criteria you used to generate the particular report with the exception of blank search fields or ALL list selections. If you select two or more items in a list, the report will display that as “(multiple values selected).”

You can search for a word or phrase in the onscreen report. MR9 will highlight all instances of your searched word/phrase in the report and list them in a scroll box along with the page number where they occur. Print the report or export it in a variety of formats to save, share, or edit in another application.

TL;DR: Lists all activities for the month, plus all unpaid invoices for each client.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Billing Rate Groups: Umbrella structures that categorize your billing rates. Instead of one long list of billing rates, Billing Rate Groups create a series of shorter lists to search through.

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately

Lesson #56

Receivables – Send Statements function

MR9 can generate monthly statements that summarize clients’ overdue invoices. Send these monthly statements and/or open (overdue) invoices to clients either by email or regular mail.

Attorneys receive separate statements unless their firm is flagged to consolidate statements in which case the consolidated statements would be sent to “Accounts Payable” at the firm’s billing address.

Statements list overdue invoices including the date, number, balance due, related job number and date, witness, and case for each invoice. Overdue invoice listings are color coded on statements to make older invoices stand out.

Statements can include copies of the invoices that show any payments, credits, finance charges, and the invoice’s current balance. Invoices can be stamped PAST DUE in red to enforce your message. If you or your clients prefer, you can send only the current invoices instead of the statement. You can include insurance claim numbers on statements.

Before sending statements use System Preferences to create one or more email templates to attach PDF statements to. Customize subject lines and messages, include any text you wish in the templates, embed contextual MR9 data fields such as Bill To information and the total balance, add images, and style the text with fonts, text treatments, sizes, and colors. If you create more than one template, designate one as the default. You can select a different template, edit the email, and attach additional files from your desktop when you send a statement.

Generate list of overdue clients

Enter a client’s preferred method of receiving statements — email, print, or don’t send — in their MR9 firm listing. Then when generating statements in Send Statements you can search for only those clients whose sending method matches the method you are using to send statements. You can choose to search for only email, print, or don’t send clients, or any combination of the three options.

You can search for all open invoices over 30 days old or pick a different date range to include. You can search for all clients with open invoices, search for parent companies to send statements to, or narrow the results to a single firm or parent company.

You can restrict results to specific firm classes (if you rank or rate law firms), firms tied to a single case, and/or firms tied to one or more of your company’s business units.

The results returned list all of the firms that meet the specified search condition(s) along with their outstanding amounts. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR9 will revert back to the default order). Export the results list of clients with overdue invoices as an Excel or CSV file to archive, share, print, or use elsewhere.

Send statements

From the results returned you can select one, some, or all of the firms to send statements to. Then select the send method such as email statement, statement and invoices, or open invoices only. You have the same options for printing to send via regular mail. For “don’t send statement” clients you can use the print options to generate reports you can export or print for your records or to use otherwise.

If you email statements MR9 records the emails sent in the Email Log function in Tools so you can refer back to them later. MR9 also makes an entry in the client’s Notes Log that includes the receiver’s email address.

TL;DR: Monthly statements summarize each client’s overdue invoices. Email or print customized statements with or without invoices, or email/print the open invoices without a statement.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Notes Logs: Un-editable internal-use only notes entered either by a user or automatically by MR9 appear in chronological logs in the database record where they occurred. More >

Parent Firm: Headquarters of a multi-branch corporation.