FB Rice is Australia’s largest privately-owned patent attorney firm. They employ over 180 people in 6 offices around Australia and have seen considerable growth, particularly over the last few years. They are a long term Inprotech user for both case management and accounts and use iManage for document management.
To assist in the cash collection process the firm uses RedView Workplace’s eStatements module.
“A key part of our collections process is the client receiving a monthly statement, ensuring they are aware of the current financial position of their account” says Sarah Star, FB Rice’s Collections Manager. “Before we implemented eStatements the statement process was completely manual”.
FB Rice typically send out 1,000 or more client statements a month. The previous process meant that the statements were printed as a large batch with a manual review for exceptions. This involved looking at each document and removing it if an adjustment was necessary or it wasn’t to be sent to the client. Once this process was completed the documents were folded placed in envelopes, stamped and taken to the post office to be mailed. Overall, this was approximately 3 days of effort each month and approximately $1,000 a month in materials and postage.
The eStatements module automates this entire process and makes is paperless. Statements are reviewed online and once completed, delivered electronically via an automated process.
“The ability to electronically include copies of all invoices issued within each month from iManage is also a major plus” says Sarah, “as is the newly included capability that provides a separate statement of the clients’ prepayments. Both have been major time savers”.
Sarah explained “In the past when the accounts department received the monthly statement, if they didn’t have the invoice, usually because it was sent direct to our instructor with letter reporting the work, they would contact us for a copy. This could lead up to over a hundred so requests per month. This new feature alleviates such interruptions”.
“The prepayment statement is an extremely useful feature” says Sarah “Inprotech’s ability to handle prepaid funds is great but there is no statement or succinct report for the client to understand how their funds had been utilised. Reconciliations to produce this information was a timely process. Now all applicable clients receive the information automatically as a part of the monthly package”.
Overall the eStatements module has revolutionised the monthly statement process at FB Rice. Cashflow has improved, the process is efficient, information provided is more complete and delivered on a more timely basis, costs involved have been lowered significantly and a small part of the planet has been saved because the process is completely paperless!