Tracking Expenses and Time Tracking Basics for Personal Injury

AutoTime (Prosper only) is a powerful tool for personal injury firms. Since AutoTime tracks how much time you are spending on your matters, it gives your firm insight into your profitability.

For personal injury firms that represent plaintiffs, tracking every activity that you complete for a client is important, even though matters are contingent. You will have an accurate record of your firm's billable time for a client and matter expenses to present if you need to file a fee petition.

For personal injury defense firms, AutoTime allows you to catch more billable hours while spending less time manually tracking and entering time.

How to Utilize AutoTime for Personal Injury Attorneys (Prosper Only):

  • Smokeball tracks all Activity for items that are attached to the matter. Depending on the billing type set for the matter, AutoTime will create billable or non-billable entries for the matter using the tracked activities.

    Billing Type

    AutoTime

    Time Finder

    Manual Entry

    [Not Set]

    Billable

    Billable

    Billable

    Fixed Fee

    Non-Billable

    Non-Billable

    Billable

    Fixed Fee by Appearance

    Non-Billable

    Non-Billable

    Billable

    Time Based

    Billable

    Billable

    Billable

    Contingency (%)

    Non-Billable

    Non-Billable

    Non-Billable

    Contingency ($)

    Non-Billable

    Non-Billable

    Non-Billable

    Not Billable

    Non-Billable

    Non-Billable

    Non-Billable

Expense Tracking

Track expenses for every matter in the Time & Expenses tab.

  • Set up Activity Codes for common costs and expenses including medical records, police reports, witness fees, postage, filing fees, etc.
  • Even if your fee is contingent, you can create a fixed fee entry for whatever % of the settlement was agreed upon with each client. This is important to put on an invoice through Smokeball Billing, especially for Profitability Reports.

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Even if you choose to not utilize AutoTime, Smokeball is still automatically tracking activity for Prosper users. You can utilize the detailed description of all time spent on the matter if you need to file a Petition for Fees in court.

  • Activity can be exported to a CSV format, and you can view more than one month's activity at a time on the individual matter.

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  • Once the matter is closed and you have entered your firm’s portion of the settlement or billed and collected for time, you can go to the Matter Insights section for an in-depth look at profitability for the matter.

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Did You Know

  • See Billing for Personal Injury for more information on how to track settlement deposits, make trust payments, print checks, and provide invoices to the client that document your contingency fees and expenses.
  • You can Add an Activity for any activity not captured by Smokeball.
  • You can Print or Export Activity to provide a full list of all activity done for a client.

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