In the course of your generating reports, Legalmaster creates a number of temporary files.  Many of them are automatically deleted by the software, but others aren't.  At Legalmaster's main screen, click Options/Delete temporary files and follow the screens.  And at any MIRC menu click Options/Delete All Temporary Files. Unless you haven't done it for a few years, it takes a few seconds.  You'll save a lot of storage space and speed up some processes.
Whenever you merge a batch of financial transactions, Legalmaster makes a backup of the batch. Unless you clean house occasionally, these backups are kept forever.  On the transaction entry screen click Edit/Delete Backups.  The resulting screen lists every transaction backup file, the oldest at the top.  Highlight those you want to delete by clicking on the oldest and shift-clicking on the newest you wish to remove, thereby highlighting all those in between, and click Delete. This will not only save storage space, it will speed up the merging process.  This function is workstation-specific;  each person who enters financial transactions should do this periodically.
In response to a series of security features that Microsoft added to Windows in the last few years, Legalmaster automatically copies your help files into a folder named LMWHELP on your local drive C.  The file is named LMWHELP.CHM. If you wish you may create a shortcut to C:\LMWHELP\LMWHELP.CHM to put on your desktop.  Another Microsoft limitation requires that you unblock the help file by right clicking on it, selecting Properties, and checking UNBLOCK at the bottom of the General tab.
Print your pre-bills to screen, click on any transaction on any of the pre-bills, and you're immediately taken to the transaction alter screen with that entry already displayed.  You may then alter the transaction.
You may ask Legalmaster to subtotal your fees before and after your write-down on billing statements.  This allows you to draw your client's attention to the discount you're giving him.
Add fee or cost transactions to an existing invoice without unbilling the invoice.  As a result the invoice retains its original number and billing date. In Transactions/Fees, click List/Alter, display the unbilled transactions on the matter, check the boxes to the left of the unbilled fees which you want to add to the existing invoice, right-click on any one of the check boxes, and select the option to add them to an existing invoice.
Sometimes it may be more efficient to use your keyboard instead of your mouse. Take a glance at your Legalmaster Host (as opposed to Remote) Transaction Entry screen. Notice that in every button one letter of the text is underlined.  That tells you that if you hit that letter on your keyboard while holding down the Alt key, it's just as if you left clicked on the button with your mouse.
Keep your list of MIRC report formats clean.  1)  If you know for a fact that a particular report is to be run just one time, give it a name like x.  The next time you're in MIRC and you see a report named x, delete it.  2)  When you create a MIRC report, enter the date either as part of its name or in the annotation (comment) field below.  If a report is years old and you don't remember the last time you ran it, delete it.  3)  If your report list is long, call up a report and click on the range fields.  If the date range on the report is old, you probably don't need to keep it.  4)  If you want to hedge your bets, copy questionable MIRC's to another workstation ID and delete them from your own list.  If you ever need them, you can always copy them back.
If you're billing one matter, you can now perform the entire billing process from the account status screens.  You may run the billing generator from the WIP Summary screen.  You may print your statement, post it to history and even unpost an invoice from history from the A/R Ledger screen.
You do not have to unbill an entire invoice if you want to add, alter, or delete a fee or cost on that invoice.
If you inadvertently run the billing generator, just click Transactions/Alter billing/Do Search and delete the ones you didn't mean to bill.  You can make the list shorter if you specify the billing date before you search.
If you prefer the old Courier font on your Pre-bills, on the Pre-bill screen, just click Options and select it.  It's toward the bottom of the list of Options.
If you use Legalmaster's split case feature, be sure to check Dummies, Receptors, or both on Tables/System options/Pre-bills 2.  It's at the lower left of the window.
On your statements you may show the time spent on some entries while not showing it on others.
You can tell Legalmaster to include the billing cut-off date automatically anywhere in your statement header or the tail comment.
You may change the size of Legalmaster's five most commonly used screens;  viz, The Main Menu, the Client Entry screen, the Matter (Case) Entry screen, the Transaction entry screen, and the Remote Transaction entry screen.
Legalmaster has the ability to keep track of the value of your time while billing your client a lesser or a greater amount.  We refer to this concept as write-downs or write-ups.
Whenever you replace either your printer or your workstation, you must reset your Legalmaster default printer.
Many Legalmaster reports allow you to show what your accounts receivable (A/R) was on any date in the past.
If you don't remember if you posted last month's bills to history, you can find out in a few seconds.  1)  Click Transactions, 2)  Click Alter Billings, 3)  Enter as the ending date the date you last ran the billing generator or just accept the default date, 4)  Do not check History, but leave Current Period checked.  5) Click the Do Search button.  6)  The number displayed in the lower left is the number of bills that are still in Current Period.  If you posted successfully, that number is a zero. Not only does Legalmaster tell you how many bills are still in Current Period, it shows you their client-matter codes and invoice numbers.
Consider printing your audit trails to text files instead of printing them on paper.  You may view or print them anytime later.
You may get Legalmaster to report your WIP (unbilled fees or costs) at any date in the past.
Legalmaster offers you a variety of ways that you may show your balance forward on your statements and you may choose a different option for each of your clients.
How to refund an overpayment is one of the FAQ's on our website: http://legalmaster.com/lm03041.htm
How to refund an unused Retainer is one of the FAQ's on our website: http://legalmaster.com/lm03042.htm
Are you one of those people who has created so many MIRC reports that you no longer remember what they do?  1)  Call up MIRC.  You may do this in any of Legalmaster's MIRC's - Cases, Transactions, Revenue Allocation, Calendar, and Case Management.  2)  Highlight one of your reports.  3)  Double-click in the white rectangle at the bottom and type in a more complete description of the report.  In the future anytime you highlight that report, its full description will appear for you.
You may print any MIRC report to a PDF and simultaneously e-mail it.
Your Legalmaster spell checker has many options that you may turn on or off.  At either the Host or the Remote Transaction Data Entry Screens, click on Options/Spell Checker settings and have a ball.  These settings are station-specific.
You may easily determine what you're making per hour even on fixed fee or contingency matters. We have outlined the procedure in the FAQ section of our website at http://legalmaster.com/lm03021.htm.
You may make global changes to your transaction descriptions, but only if the transactions have not been billed.  If you already billed them, you may, of course, unbill them.
You may delete any employee as long as he or she has no current period fees.  The deleted person will still appear on reprinted bills and management reports.  They will just no longer appear on your employee drop-down list.  To determine if an employee has any current period fees, just go to Transactions/Fees/List alter, enter their name or code and click "do search."  If he has no fees, you may delete him.  If he does have fees, you must either delete the fees, assign them to someone else, or bill and post them to history.
All Legalmaster reports automatically resize the font to fit your paper.  If you want a larger font on a MIRC report you may 1)select landscape rather than portrait; 2) reduce your number of columns; 3) reduce the width of one or two columns; 4) place a field or two beneath another rather than next to it.
To unbill an entire invoice, just delete its billing transaction.  Click on Transactions/Alter billing, call up the matter in question, highlight the appropriate billing record and delete it.  As a result, all of the fees and costs associated with that invoice are returned to unbilled status in one fell swoop.  They are not deleted by this process;  they are merely restored to the condition they had prior to your billing them.
If you wish to unbill part of an invoice, then it is proper to call up the particular fees or costs in question and unbill them.  As a result, the remaining fees and costs on that invoice remain billed retaining their invoice number.
Legalmaster automatically makes a backup copy of every one of your financial transaction batches.  Consider them a form of insurance.  You may never need any of them, but on those rare occasions when you do, they are a phenomenal time saver.  This additional protection does not obviate the necessity of your making backups of your Legalmaster data.
Legalmaster's fee split feature lets you bill multiple clients shares of a single matter.
If you have money sitting in a retainer account for a matter and you wish to move all or part of it to another matter, all you have to do is enter two retainer transfers, one for each of the two matters.  1)  Be sure to check the box labeled unapplied on both transfers.  2)  Enter the amount as a positive number on the matter from which you're moving the money and as a negative number on the matter you're moving the money to.
We've created some popular MIRC report designs on our web site for you to use if you want.  All you have to do is copy them to your Legalmaster data folder and voila! they're ready to print. They're assigned the workstation ID (WSID) QQ, so be sure to add QQ to WSID Names (an Option at your home screen).
The advanced date feature of MIRC for Transactions lets you produce subtotals by calendar month, quarter, or year.
MIRC for Cases allows you to use a different date range on each column of your report.
You may send any MIRC report to Excel or any other spreadsheet.
MIRC for Cases and MIRC for Revenue Allocation allow you to create columns that are calculated (by adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing) from other columns on the report.
Your statement letterhead may include a fancy logo.  Just save it as a jpg file in your Legalmaster data folder and point to it on the letterhead tab of your Statement Characteristics Table.
You may change the appearance of your statements for each of your matters by assigning a different Statement Characteristics Table to each matter.
You may easily determine to which invoices you want a payment applied by clicking the list invoices button on the payment screen.
Revenue Allocation MIRC lets you allocate payments based upon the date the underlying fees were billed (billing date) or the date the underlying fees were performed (work date) or a combination of the two.
You may quickly find out which of your users hasn't merged his or her batch by clicking BATCH INFORMATION at the top of Legalmaster's main menu.
Click Help/About at Legalmaster's main screen.  You'll see an alphabetical list of many of Legalmaster's programs.  Scan through the dates;  the most recent date is when you last downloaded patches from our website.  If it's been more than six months, we urge you to download everything newer than or equal to that date.  Just go to our website, legalmaster.com, and click on the button labeled Download Host andf follow the instructions or call us.
You may bold text in your statement header or tail comment by typing *b before and after the section you want to bold.
You may make your drop-down lists shorter and easier to use by checking the Option to Hide Closed Cases on the Transaction Entry screen, the Matter Entry screen, and the Account Status screen.  In addition, if a client has no open matters, you may check the Inactive box at the bottom of that client's screen to prevent that client from appearing on drop-down lists.
To show only unbilled fee and cost transactions on a MIRC for Transaction report, merely range on invoice number, excluding from 1 to 99999999.
In a conflicts search or in MIRC for Transactions, you may ask to see all transactions whose description contains two words or phrases.  For example, you might ask to see every transaction that contains both 'Smith' and 'deposition.'
Legalmaster makes it easy for you to offer your clients a small discount if they pay promptly.  Just search for 'Discount Options' in Legalmaster Help.
Click 'File/View Statement E-mail Log' at Legalmaster's home screen to see to whom you've e-mailed statements.
Click 'File/Backup Operations' at Legalmaster's home screen to set up automatic backups of all your Legalmaster data.
On the Transactions List/Alter screen you may show transactions assigned to all clients whose codes begin with the same characters by following those characters with an asterisk, such as ABC*.
Prevent youself from accidentally entering a date in the future (or too far in the past) at Tables/System Options/Date Edits.
If you have a MIRC report you print often, save yourself time by adding it to the One-Click MIRCs option at the Main Menu.