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MyBilledTime™

How To BLACKBERRY VERSION

For many customers, using the MyBilledTime™app will be intuitive. But experience has shown that many first time users of this app will need some help to set up MyBilledTime™and to learn how to make a time entry using it. Setting up and using MyBilledTime™is easy, so let’s get started.

SELECTING YOUR PROFESSION.

MyBilledTime™is designed for use by legal and accounting professionals. The app contains lists of commonly used tasks, organized by billing categories.

1. Before using the app you must go to Settings and select “Select/Change profession.” There are only two choices, “accountant” and “attorney.’ Highlight the profession that applies to you and press the track pad or ball. Then it will ask if you want to synchronize categories and tasks.

2. Select “yes” and press the track pad or ball. A message will appear stating “synchronizing, please wait.” Upon completion of the synchronization, a message will appear stating “Synchronization successful.” This means that the relevant time entry categories and tasks for your profession have been successfully loaded on to your BlackBerry. After synchronizing, the back key will take you back to the Settings screen.

ENTERING CLIENT NAMES.

1. From the Settings screen, select “Manage clients”.

2. A Client screen will appear. Press the track ball or pad and a popup menu will appear. Select “Add” and a box will appear in which you enter the name of a client.

3. Enter the client name in the box the way it is used in your time and billing system and then press “Add”. If you bill more than one matter for a client, then add a description after the client name that describes the matter. For example, “Smith-General Representation” and “Smith-Litigation”.

4. Repeat this process for each client and matter that you intend to bill.

5. When you have finished adding client names, press the back key to return to the Settings screen. The app does not currently support an electronic method of entering client and matter names.

Client and matter names also can be removed in Settings using the Edit feature in Manage Clients.

INSERTING EMAIL ADDRESSES.

The MyBilledTime™app will send a formatted email with your time entry to the email addresses that you insert in the app.

1. To insert email addresses, go to “Change email addresses” in the Settings screen. A screen will appear with two boxes, one for “To” and one for “Cc”.

2. Type in each box the email addresses to which you want to send your time entries. When you finish, press “Update”, which will apply your email addresses and return you to the Settings screen.

3. We recommend that you include your email address in the “Cc” box, so that you can verify that your time entry was sent and so that you have a record in your Inbox of all of your time entries.

SETTING A TIME INTERVAL.

Time keeping professionals bill their time in various time intervals. MyBilledTime™supports six different time billing intervals.

1. To set a time interval, select “Set time interval” in the Settings screen.

2. Select one of the six intervals and then press the track pad or ball and a popup menu will appear. Choose “Select” and press the track ball or pad, which will apply the time interval that you selected and return you to the Settings screen.

SETTING ABBREVIATIONS.

To get the maximum benefit from the MyBilledTimeTM app, you should make extensive use of abbreviations. These are created in Settings.

1. In the Settings screen select “Manage abbreviations”. The Abbreviation screen will appear.

2. The first step is to select an “Abbreviation Code”. You can use any letter or symbol on the key board as your abbreviation code. The default abbreviation code is “@”. The code can be any single letter or symbol. It tells the app that the letters which follow are an abbreviation for a word or words, which the app will convert to the full word or series of words in the Description box on the Time Entry screen. We suggest using as an abbreviation code a letter that is not often used, such as "q" or "z" or a symbol such as an asterisk or @. For example "zmsj" is a shortcut for"motion for summary judgment".

3. Type in the abbreviation code, and scroll down the screen using the track ball or pad. A popup menu will appear which states, “Change abbreviation code?” Select “Yes.”

4. If this is your first abbreviation entry, then the screen will say “No abbreviations”. Press the track ball or pad and a popup menu will appear. Select “Add” and press the track ball or pad. Two boxes will appear. In the top box, immediately after your abbreviation code (no spaces), type in your abbreviation. For example, “msj”. Then in the second box, type in the meaning of the abbreviation. For example, “motion for summary judgment”, then select “Add” at the bottom of the screen. Later, when you enter your time on the Time Entry screen and type “zmsj,” the app will convert that abbreviation to “motion for summary judgment.”

5. After selecting Add and pressing the track ball or pad, you will return to the abbreviation screen. Press the track pad or ball again and a popup menu will appear that gives you the option to Add another abbreviation, Edit an abbreviation, Delete an abbreviation or return to the Settings screen by pressing “Done”. You can add as many abbreviations as you are likely to use for time entries.

6. By setting and using abbreviations you will substantially reduce the amount of time that it takes to create a time entry on the app. Any term or name that you use frequently when entering time is a good candidate for an abbreviation.

As you use the app, you will frequently return to the Abbreviation screen to add abbreviations for frequently used names and terms.

USING THE TIME ENTRY SCREEN

1. To select the date, scroll to the “Date” field. Using your track ball or pad, you can highlight and change any month, day or year to choose the date for which you will be entering your time. After you have selected the month, day and year for which you would like to enter your time, press the track pad or ball. This will set the date.

2. To select a client, then scroll to the “Select a client” field. When you have highlighted “Select a client” press the track pad or ball and a list of the clients who you entered in Settings will appear in alphabetical order. Scroll to the client for whom your time entry is being entered and press the track ball or pad. This will select the client and allow you to move on to the next data entry field.

3. To insert a billing task in the Description box, first select a Category and then a Task. The task then will be inserted into the Description box when you insert it there. MyBilledTime™includes more than 75 standard billing task descriptions, which are organized by category to help you navigate more quickly to the billing task that you need for your time entry. In addition, it allows you to add your own customized billing tasks. The only purpose of the Category field is to help you navigate more quickly to the task which you will be entering into the Description box.

4. To select a category, highlight and press “Select a category.” A list of categories will appear, including Custom, Discovery, General, and Trial/Hearing, for attorneys. You then must select one of those categories and press the track ball or pad. Your selection will determine which billing tasks appear when you activate the Task field. For example, if you select “General” from the list of Categories, and then press the Task bar, a list of tasks under the General category will appear that appear only for the "General" category. Each category has its own list of tasks. The categories simply guide you to the appropriate list of billing tasks needed to prepare your time entry. Category names, therefore, do not appear in the Description box, which is where your time entry is created to populate your formatted time entry email. As you use the app, you will quickly learn which categories contain which tasks, and will be able to navigate quickly to the task that you want to use in your time entry.

5. After selecting a category, scroll to the Task field and highlight “Select a task” and press the track ball or pad. A list of tasks will appear in alphabetical order. You can either scroll through the list of tasks and select the task that you want to use or press the first letter of the Task that you want to use and the app will jump to Tasks which begin with that letter, from which you can then scroll to the desired Task. Highlight the task that you want to use in your time entry and press the track ball or pad.

6. Next, scroll inside the Description box and press the track ball or pad. A popup menu will appear. Select “Insert task”, and the task that you selected will be insert in the Description box. For example, if you select "Conference with" as your task, those words will appear in the Description box when you select that task. Then press the space after the words “conference with” and your cursor will appear there in the Description box. If you are using a touch screen, a keyboard will appear, enabling you to type in text, such as an abbreviation or a person’s name. Otherwise, use the Blackberry keyboard to type in text.

If you type in an abbreviation, such as “zds”, as an abbreviation for “David Smith”, then when you move your cursor outside of the Description box the app will convert the abbreviation to “David Smith” for you.

After making that entry, you can add another entry in the same description by scrolling back to the task bar, and selecting another task. For example, after entering "Conference with David Smith", return to the task bar and select "telephone conference with". Then scroll your cursor to the place in the Description box where you want to insert the new task, in this example, after the word Smith. The app will insert a semicolon after "Smith" and insert the words, "telephone conference with". Then type in the name of the person with whom you had the telephone conference or use an abbreviation. You can continue making entries like this in the Description box and then enter the time you spent on all of the tasks (block billing), or you can detail bill, entering only one task per time entry, whichever you prefer.

The app will insert the next task in the Description box at the location of your cursor in the Description box. This enables you to insert a task in the middle of a block billed description, so that you are not limited to entering a new task only at the end of your task description.

ENTERING YOUR TIME.

The last step before sending your formatted time entry email to your secretary or data entry clerk, is to enter your time. Scroll to the Enter Time field which is indicated by “hours” and “minutes.” Press and scroll using the track ball or pad in hours to set hours and then minutes to set minutes. The minutes will be listed in the time intervals which you selected in Settings. After you have selected the hours and minutes you are reading to send your formatted time entry email.

EMAILING YOUR FORMATTED TIME ENTRY.

After you have inserted the billing date, client name, description and time, press Send in the bottom right hand corner. If you don’t want to use the time entry, you can clear it by pressing “Clear in the top left hand corner of the Time Entry screen. If you have not entered data into each required field (Date, Client, Description and Time) then the app will give you a message that your time entry is not complete and it will not create a draft email. If you have entered all of the required data, then when you press Send, the app will create a draft email with your time entry formatted for easy copying into your time and billing system.

After the draft email is created in your device’s email system, you can use the email software’s spell check feature to correct misspellings. You also can save the email as a draft to be sent at a later time, as you would with any email. This is helpful when you are out of cell phone or wifi range, e.g. on an airplane, and cannot send emails. After you are satisfied with your draft, you can send the time entry as a formatted email to your secretary or data entry clerk. The recipients of your time entry email are determined by you in Settings, where you insert the email addresses to which you want to send your formatted time entry emails.

OUR VISION.

Our goal is to provide attorneys and accountants with a quick and easy-to-use tool to capture and record time entries, using consistent task descriptions, to give them the flexibility to do so from any location and to enter their time in any time and billing system. Time entries that otherwise might have been lost because you were not sitting at your desk top computer when you performed a billing task can be captured with the MyBilledTime™app, increasing your profitability. Capturing even one task with MyBilledTime™that otherwise would have been lost will more than pay for this app.