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Making progress
Apr. 13th, 2006 08:55 amAt my job, I am not just the person who answers the phone and talks to the insane clients.
I am, essentially, everything but the lawyer.
In that capacity, I also handle AR - that is, client billing. Client billing is time consuming because it is full of little icky, picky details that must be tracked down and researched to be sure that the billing goes out all pretty and perfect to the clients.
Because, as mentioned above, I am everything but the lawyer, I have a lot of other stuff to do besides client billing. So in the 3.5 years I have worked here, I have dealt with billing as follows. Billing where clients have paid us R gets the highest priority. We have and are spending these people's money. They need regular, accurate updates on what we are doing with it. Big cases where the client is on an AR basis for some reason come next. THOSE bills need to get out ASAP so we can get paid. Next come small flat fee cases, where it's pretty self explanatory what we are doing and most people feel they already bought the service when they paid the $100 or $250 flat fee, so they really aren't worried about exactly what day we actually "took" the money from R. And lastly come the people who don't pay. These are usually wills or traffic ticket representation or office consultations for people on "legal plans." Their services are being paid for by a third party that we bill electronically. The client doesn't particularly care about billing issues as long as they get their wills or their lawyer shows up at traffic court. They don't care if the Boss tracks time he spent on the phone with them once.
For instance, Boss may have entered a single slip on a client "IOC for divorce via teleconference." This was a $125 charge at his hourly rate, but it was billed to a legal plan, which paid $15 for the service, so I need to go back to that client and enter the $15 payment and the $110 writeoff. Then I need to print this piece of meaningless paper to clear out the system, file the paper somewhere, and close the billing file.
In another case, client received a service that was billed at the plan rate of $200, but when the payment came in, I accidentally entered it as $2000, so the billing software shows us owing the client back $1800 fictional dollars.
You can see why these are low priority items for me to fix. They are just dumb. But, after 3.5 years of disregarding these items, you can see how they begin to become an issue.
At the moment, I have my new minion in the office. So I have been foisting "real work" off onto him, in the guise of training him, and I have been spending the last week trying to sort through the detritus in the billing.
I'm guessing there are about 45-65 of these stupid items to deal with. They take 5 to 15 minutes each, depending on whether they need any research to resolve.
Yesterday I cleared out about 15 of them! :) Gonna take a crack at the rest today.
It would be so wonderful to get them ALL cleared out before I go out on leave. Like a present to myself. :)
I am, essentially, everything but the lawyer.
In that capacity, I also handle AR - that is, client billing. Client billing is time consuming because it is full of little icky, picky details that must be tracked down and researched to be sure that the billing goes out all pretty and perfect to the clients.
Because, as mentioned above, I am everything but the lawyer, I have a lot of other stuff to do besides client billing. So in the 3.5 years I have worked here, I have dealt with billing as follows. Billing where clients have paid us R gets the highest priority. We have and are spending these people's money. They need regular, accurate updates on what we are doing with it. Big cases where the client is on an AR basis for some reason come next. THOSE bills need to get out ASAP so we can get paid. Next come small flat fee cases, where it's pretty self explanatory what we are doing and most people feel they already bought the service when they paid the $100 or $250 flat fee, so they really aren't worried about exactly what day we actually "took" the money from R. And lastly come the people who don't pay. These are usually wills or traffic ticket representation or office consultations for people on "legal plans." Their services are being paid for by a third party that we bill electronically. The client doesn't particularly care about billing issues as long as they get their wills or their lawyer shows up at traffic court. They don't care if the Boss tracks time he spent on the phone with them once.
For instance, Boss may have entered a single slip on a client "IOC for divorce via teleconference." This was a $125 charge at his hourly rate, but it was billed to a legal plan, which paid $15 for the service, so I need to go back to that client and enter the $15 payment and the $110 writeoff. Then I need to print this piece of meaningless paper to clear out the system, file the paper somewhere, and close the billing file.
In another case, client received a service that was billed at the plan rate of $200, but when the payment came in, I accidentally entered it as $2000, so the billing software shows us owing the client back $1800 fictional dollars.
You can see why these are low priority items for me to fix. They are just dumb. But, after 3.5 years of disregarding these items, you can see how they begin to become an issue.
At the moment, I have my new minion in the office. So I have been foisting "real work" off onto him, in the guise of training him, and I have been spending the last week trying to sort through the detritus in the billing.
I'm guessing there are about 45-65 of these stupid items to deal with. They take 5 to 15 minutes each, depending on whether they need any research to resolve.
Yesterday I cleared out about 15 of them! :) Gonna take a crack at the rest today.
It would be so wonderful to get them ALL cleared out before I go out on leave. Like a present to myself. :)
