Time59 Blog
Billing With A Spreadsheet
May 4, 2012 : by Chris
The spreadsheet is probably the most versatile program in the world of personal computing. For many people it's their go-to tool no matter what they are working on.
Lotus 123, released in January of 1983, was hailed as the first "killer app" of the PC era (which itself began in August of 1981 with the release of the first IBM PC). Lotus 123 was fast, efficient and pretty much bug-free. People bought PCs just to run Lotus 123.
Microsoft later introduced Excel for the new Windows platform and Lotus 123 did not successfully transition to Windows or Mac. These days, Excel is pretty much synonomous with the word spreadsheet. It continues to evolve and is still as relevant as ever.
So it only makes sense that a lot of solo lawyers use a spreadsheet to track time and invoice clients. It's simple, inexpensive and flexible. And if it's a little clunky, well... it's still simple, inexpensive and flexible.
Let's assume there are two major groups of solo lawyers who use spreadsheets to manage time and billing:
(1) Those that are perfectly content and will stick with their spreadsheets forever...
...and (2) those that would like something a little less clunky.
If you happen to be in group (2) you might want to consider Time59
Time59 is web-based time and billing software for solo lawyers. It's simple, inexpensive and flexible, and not at all clunky. All it does is time and billing. It's not going to require you to change the way you run other areas of your practice. It's simply going to be better than your spreadsheet for managing your billing.
To learn more about Time59, click here.
