Tag Archives: Setup

Lesson #118

Setup – Billing Rates function

Billing rates are the amounts you charge for services. These rates are organized into tables — so you can charge different clients different amounts for the same service items by applying different billing rate tables instead of having to enter rates each time you bill someone. You might charge different billing rates for the same service items based on negotiations with clients, networking rates with other agencies, or rates requested by an insurance company. Your multiple billing rate tables can contain the prices for all of your service items — so you can easily apply the correct prices when invoicing specific firms by selecting the appropriate table.

Set up Billing Rate Groups first

Before you start creating billing rate tables, set up Billing Rate Groups in the Lists function. Billing Rate Groups are groups of similar tables, so when billing you can search through a subset of your billing rate tables instead of the whole long list of tables each time you invoice a client. Set up basic categories/groups — such as Standard, Preferred, and for specific cases. You can also designate which Billing Rate Group is your default group that will appear when setting up new billing rate tables, new firms, new contacts, etc.

After setting up groups, use the Billing Rates function to add your billing rate tables within the groups. You can set up as many billing rate tables as you need in each group.

Add as many billing rates as you need

You can set up billing rate tables in 2 ways:

• From scratch
• From an existing table — copying and updating an existing table is a quicker way to create a new table because the existing table’s rates and details are duplicated in the new table for you to update.

Another way to save time is to set default billing rates, pay rates, and options for service items in the Service Item Master, then change them for specific situations by creating different rate tables with custom rates for the service items.  Every billing rate table you create in MR will automatically inherit all service items set up in the Service Item Master — including all default rates and options for each item as well. So if you set up defaults in the Service Item Master then you only have to update them as needed in individual rate tables.

Give each billing rate table you create a clearly specific name so your billing staff can easily understand when it should be used. Some examples would be Standard Rates, Preferred Rates, Medical-Technical, and Rates for [a specific law firm]. You can further segment your market by state and/or city if you charge different rates by location.

Add as many billing rates as you need

In each billing rate table you can customize the billing rate for each item. If there are service items that do not pertain to this billing rate, leave their billing rate at $0 and MR won’t bill for them when this billing rate table is used.

In addition to each service item’s billing rate you can also customize:

• The minimum invoice amount for the service item.
•  If the billing amount and pay amount for this service item will have the Expedite/Rush amount added to it.
• Whether the item is court taxable and/or sales taxable.
• If you offer discounts on this particular service item. The percentage of discount that a client will receive on the service item is entered in their Firms setup.
• If you use the Reward Points System and the service item should be included in the revenue calculation to accumulate points.
• If you pay commissions on the service item.
• If you want the service item name and billing amount to appear on invoices. (If you set a firm to always print details on invoices in their Firm setup, then their invoices will be fully itemized, displaying all service items and billing amounts overriding whatever is specified here.)
• If you have the MR Connect plug-in, you can allow clients to request the service item when submitting an online records request.
• If the service item needs your production department’s involvement, you can have it appear on Production Sheets which show them on a job-by-job basis who is ordering and what they’re ordering that needs to be produced.
• LEDES codes required by clients for e-billing.

In addition to customizing the billing rates you can also make adjustments to each Rush Type in the table if needed. All Rush Types are automatically inherited from the Rush Type Master. You can also include any relevant notes or comments in a rate table.

Manage billing rates

You can update any information in a billing rate table at any time except its Billing Rate Group. You can delete any billing rate table that hasn’t been used. If you can’t delete a table, you can de-activate it so it does not appear in lists. And you can update rates in multiple billing rate tables at once in the Service Item Master.

To find a billing rate table to copy, update, delete, or de-activate, you can search your entire set of billing rate tables or narrow your search to a specific Billing Rate Group, state, city, and/or billing rate table name. You can also choose to search all tables or only active tables. MR lists the results by Billing Rate Group and includes each table’s name, its state and/or city (if applicable), and its Active status.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR will revert back to the default order). Export your search results as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications. You can also sort and export the service item and rush type lists in each billing rate table.

Attach billing rates to entities

After setting up Billing Rate Groups and billing rate tables, attach entities to the rate tables. You connect billing rates to firms, contacts, and parties to a case/job. You can do this when you set them up or at any time afterwards. Contacts inherit billing rate tables from their firms but you can select different tables for contacts from their firm’s. Parties will default to the billing rate tables in their contact profile. You can override the default when adding parties to cases/jobs or when turning in jobs.

Apply billing rates

When creating an invoice in Turn In, MR will select the billing rate table connected to the designated Bill To contact. You can select a different rate table for this invoice and you can override any charge on individual invoices.

TL;DR: Set up multiple billing rate tables so you can automatically charge different amounts to different clients for the same service items based on prices you negotiate with clients.

MR concepts in this lesson

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

Bill To Contact: The contact responsible for paying the invoice for a job.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys.

Firm: Company you do business with. They schedule depositions with you, e.g., a law firm, or they are a third party that pays you, e.g., an insurance company.

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

Lesson #116

Setup – Service Item Master function

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. In-house they provide information to help you analyze your revenue streams.

You store and organize all the service items you bill to clients in the Service Item Master. Then during Turn In you select services from lists instead of entering items by hand. If you have MR Connect your clients also select services from lists, eliminating longhand requests from clients. Instead service item descriptions are consistent throughout your system.

Service Item Master set-up

There are 9 main categories in the Service Items Master List, called Service Groups, which represent the most commonly used billable items for court reporters. These main categories are preset by the system and cannot be modified by the user.

Within these main groups are subgroups that further organize your services so you do not have to scroll through your entire list of billable items to find a service to add to an invoice.  You can add/edit/remove subgroups that organize your miscellaneous services in the Service Item Subgroups function. After setting up your subgroups enter your company’s billable services with their details into these subgroups in the Service Item Master. You will use these items for setting billing rates.

Customize the defaults

The Service Item Master comes with a set of default service items already organized into subgroups. You can:

• Add/edit/merge/delete/de-activate service items in Misc. Charge subgroups.
• Edit the name of service items in the Attendance Service Group.
• Set default billing and pay information for all individual service items.
• If you have clients who require that invoices be submitted electronically, you can enter LEDES codes in your service items.

Once you have set up your service items with their defaults, you can set up multiple billing rate tables with custom rates for service items to cover different invoicing scenarios. The options that you set in each service item copy to the billing rates tables you create, saving time because you only have to update the defaults that need changing.

At any time, you can update service item rates and options. The default view in the Service Item Master lists all active service items within their service groups and subgroups to make it easy to locate an item. You can restrict the view to a single service group, a single subgroup, or service item name. You can also view all items, not only active items, that fit your search criteria.

You can:

• Add new service items
• Delete service items that are not needed.
• Merge service items into other service items.
• If you do not want to delete or merge an item you can de-activate it. (Deactivated service items do not appear as a choice when billing.)
• If you have multiple billing rate tables that need the same rate or option changed (including LEDES codes), you can update them all at once within Service Item Master with the Mass Update feature.

Information you can include in each service item:

• Service item Subgroup
• Service item name (the only required field). The name is important because it is how the service will appear in Turn-In, on invoices, and in MR Connect.
• Unit type, such as pages, miles, or hours. MR9 prints the unit type on detailed invoices next to the number of units so your clients have a better idea of what they are being billed for. You can set up your own unit types in Lists.
• Account number of the related revenue account. You can customize your accounts in Chart of Accounts.
• Whether the item is active (will appear as an option when billing) or not
• Default billing rate (amount you charge per unit for the service item) and minimum billing amount, if applicable
• If the billing rate increases when an order containing this service item is expedited
• If the service item is a taxable court cost or sales taxable
• If the service item is discountable (if you offer a negotiated discount on a firms’ invoices, what’s discountable is specified at the service item level, and the discount percentage the client will receive is entered in their Firms setup.)
• If you award clients points for ordering services, and the service item should be included in the revenue calculation to accumulate points
• If you have sales representatives and the service item should be included in the calculation of commissions
• If you want to include the service item name and/or amount when an invoice is printed with “no details”
• If you want to make the service item available for clients to request when they are scheduling online using MR Connect
• If you want to include the service item on production sheets
• If you want MR9 to calculate charges for this service item based on the number of pages in the transcript and pages to deduct like Original/Copy service items do
• UTBMS codes (if you want invoices to be LEDES compliant). If an insurance company requires different codes than the standard, you can update their billing rate tables only without modifying the service item master list.

The list of service items in the Service Item Master displays all of this information for each item listed, so you can see it upfront. You do not need to go into individual service items unless you want to edit/delete/merge/mass update rate tables. You can sort the list by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, MR 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.

TL;DR: Set up service items, including default billing and pay info. Group related service items so you can locate them quickly in their subgroups when billing, instead of scrolling through a long, undifferentiated list of all miscellaneous service items. If you have MR Connect, your clients will be able to select service items the same way.

MR9 concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services.

Firm: Companies you do business with.

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

Lesson #114

Setup – Chart of Accounts function

Although MR is not a general accounting system, it uses account numbers to keep track of sales, cash receipts, accounts receivable, payables, and other transactions in a basic double-entry bookkeeping system. You can set up MR’s accounts to match your general ledger or accounting software.

For example, if you use QuickBooks, you can use QuickBooks Integrator to import your MR data directly into your QuickBooks. But before you can import MR invoices and payments into QuickBooks, you must set up your MR business units’ accounts to match your QuickBooks setup.

If MR’s default set of accounts is not accurate to your in-house setup, you can add, edit, and delete accounts to match MR9 to your general ledger or accounting software.

Set up account types first

The first step in matching MR to your in-house setup would be to customize your account types in the Lists function. Basic accounting rules group all finance-related things into 5 fundamental types of accounts: Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, and Expenses. MR includes these and other account types, which you can edit/delete and add your own. Entries here appear in the Account Type drop-down in individual accounts in the Chart of Accounts function.

Set up your Chart of Accounts

Each account in Chart of Accounts is tied to an Account Type, and includes an account name and reference number (account number). MR uses these accounts for different financial activities in your company’s business units.

The default view in Chart of Accounts shows all accounts in the system in numerical order by account number. It also includes the account names, their account types, and whether the account is active or not. You can restrict the view to a single account type or multiple account types.

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

You can keep the default accounts set up by MR or customize the default Chart of Accounts by adding, editing, and deleting accounts. If an account is not used but you don’t want to delete it, you can make it inactive so it will not appear as a choice in account lists elsewhere in MR.

If you are going to process credit card fees in MR, you must set up two accounts in Chart of Accounts so MR will separate out those fees:

1. An Expense-type account for the fees
2. An Other Current Assets-type account for undeposited processing fee funds

Then you can assign those accounts to handle those fees in your business units.

Designate accounts to use

After you have set up your accounts, you designate which ones to use for different financial activities. Where you use accounts in MR

• When setting up business units, you can leave the default accounts set up by MR or select which accounts handle which types of transactions for each of your company’s business units.
• When setting up billable services (called service items in MR), you select an account to associate with each service item.

TL;DR: Use MR’s default accounts as is, or customize the Chart of Accounts to match your in-house system or QuickBooks.

MR 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.