“Our firm recently began using Orion’s ePrebill Manager, and we couldn’t be happier. Within the first day our attorneys noted the time it saves them, the ease of use, and convenience it provides. We no longer face dealing with illegible handwriting, there is less time spent editing entries and our attorneys are able to see, in real-time, the effect write-downs and billing adjustments have on the final invoice. Orion’s ePrebill Manager has helped speed-up our billing process and modernize our operations"
Greg Miskulin
Executive Director
Dowling Aaron Inc.
Ready to improve the efficiency of managing prebills? Attorneys and administrators share the pursuit to improve law firm billing efficiency. Many firms hire more staff to solve the problem, and yet the process doesn’t get any faster or easier. Sound familiar?
Word processing software made editing a bill easier and more flexible. With the first legal time and billing systems, the prebill took on an added dimension, allowing firms to capture time and expenses within a single system. It allowed one to order, print, and distribute prebills while then permitting a billing administrator to take hand-written changes and enter those into the same system where the data was captured.
Unfortunately, the cycle of generating, distributing and reviewing prebills is still a highly manual, paper-based, slow and tedious process laden with duplicate efforts. For many law firms, prebills still exist as a stack of printed prebills sitting on someone’s desk and being passed around from person-to-person.
ePrebill Manager
Orion’s ePrebill Manager provides a structured electronic method of distributing prebills for review, editing, markup, one-click acceptance and approvals. It increases visibility into the status of prebill assignment and also reduces paper and printer costs of a paper-driven process. The ePrebill Manager speeds up the firm’s billing cycles and increases cash flow by getting bills out sooner. The ePrebill Manager is fully integrated with Orion’s desktop application and iOrion, Orion’s mobile solution.
Easily Identify Edits, Tracking the Financial Impact of Write-Downs
A paper-driven approach to prebill review provides little visibility into the financial impact of write- downs. This means neither the attorney nor the billing administrator can see how these adjustments will affect both the client and the working attorney’s billing realization rates. Paper-based prebilling also lacks a clear audit trail showing who made what changes, when and why. Without an audit trail, how can a lawyer justify an invoice when a client questions the charges, possibly weeks or months after the prebill was created? Lawyers and legal staff need an audit trail to provide key billing insights.
Orion’s ePrebill shows edits from all participants. Attorneys can view annotations by individual, then filter what’s displayed to only include prebills that were edited. Since Orion’s ePrebill tracks all edits as annotations, the original information is maintained so any change can be rolled-back or applied by the billing administrator with a single click. As adjustments to the value of a Fee, Cost or Expense are made, the attorney can assess the cumulative effect of these write-downs.
Effortlessly Identify Missing Images from Reimbursement Requests
Keeping paper-based copies of A/P vendor invoices and attorney/staff reimbursement requests is both inefficient and highly expensive due to storage costs. Law firms can use Orion to digitize invoices and receipts, linking them directly to associated costs, so they can be included along with the Client’s invoices. Through seamless integration with Orion’s Imaging Module, Orion’s Reimbursement Manager Module and iOrion allow attorneys and billing managers to identify
what receipts are missing. Additionally, when reviewing costs that seem unusual via Orion’s ePrebill Manager, attorneys can preview the invoice/receipt associated with those costs, accelerating a process which is often ineffective and cumbersome.
Online Edits Reduce Duplicate Data Entry & Transcription Errors
Distributing, reviewing and editing printed prebills is a highly manual, slow and tedious process. For many law firms, these prebills are marked-up by hand. Further, once a printed prebill is returned to the billing administrator or legal assistant, the recipients frequently struggle to read illegible handwriting, even when keying the attorney’s edits into the billing system.
Unlike many third-party solutions, Orion offers a tightly integrated, streamlined solution that offers both electronic workflow and seamless integration with Orion’s Prebill Manager, a tool designed to help the billing administrators effectively manage the prebill editing process. Attorneys’ annotations can be reviewed and applied (or not) at the click of a button, thus eliminating time-consuming edits and also reducing transcription errors.
Review Prebills On-The-Go
A paper-driven prebill process typically requires attorneys to review and hand-write edits when they’re away from the office. Orion understands the needs of modern attorneys, so Orion’s ePrebill Manager is available both via the desktop application and on a tablet. This allows attorneys to use mobile features that provide the same depth of functionality they’ve come to expect from the desktop via iOrion. The point of mobility isn’t just to provide access to do some things outside the office; it is to allow attorneys to be more productive while away from their desktops.
With iOrion, in addition to all of the tools they’ve come to appreciate using via their mobile devices, attorneys are now able to review and edit prebills on a tablet rather than printing stacks of paper and having to carry them around during the prebill process. Orion’s intuitive design simulates the appearance of a traditional prebill, smoothing the transition to the paperless prebill. Attorneys can work with the same information they already know but at a much higher level of productivity and collaboration.
Orion’s ePrebill Manager Features Include:
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Enhance Billing Cycles through Workflow Management – Routing & Distributing of Prebills Digitally
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Intuitive Design – Mirrors Traditional Prebills, Easing the Transition to Electronic Edits
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Highly Collaborative – ePrebills are Routed Electronically for Review and Editing
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Identify Bottlenecks – Increased Visibility into the Status of Prebill Assignments
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Reduction of Errors – Online Edits Remove Duplicate Data Entry and Transcription Errors
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Increased Cash Flow – Improved Real-Time Discernibility of Write- Downs and Adjustments
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Lower Overhead Costs – Decrease Paper Usage, Reduce Printing Costs and Lower Overall Administrative Costs