I am a first time poster and I appreciate everyone's feedback greatly. I have been using timeslips for aprox 1.5 years and I am just curious what others are doing in relation to some of the issues I am having with my lack of knowledge with the program and just trying to find ways to reinvent the wheel and make the firm more productive. Here are some of the issues I am having (This is the 2012 version)

1. Clients names are very similar to the companies they own (i.e. Jon Doe ; Jon Doe publishing) and around 5% of the time I am finding that we are putting billable time into the personal (which is generally billed 1x a year and I do not usually run a report to check how often this actually occurs) when it should be going to the corporation since it is billed much more frequently. I am curious what others are doing to prevent from not catching a timeslip for 12 months without having to do a personal run as often as a corporate run.

-the methods that I have used are reversing the name (i.e. Doe, Jon -1040; Jon Doe publishing-1120) which I am not finding to work very well. I also have a client ID associated with each one, but I do not think our employees are looking at them since they are very busy and I assume they feel they are doing it correct 100% of the time. I am open to all suggestions.

2. Friendly reminders: Do you generally just reprint the most recent bill and stamp friendly reminder on it or is there a better method? I generally would like to do an updated bill which will show any partial payments made from the last invoice, but I do not want to have any new time added to it.

3. Pre-bills: Generally a pre-bill is handed to me and I will look at the total time, add my time in and hand it back to have a final bill created. Once the final bill is created, they will hand me back the pre-bill and final bill for my approval. Once it is approved, a copy of the bill is made, stapled to the pre-bill and then filed away while the original is mailed to the client. I am more just curious if this is what "the norm" is, or if you have a better idea for efficiency? I have learned that during tax season this can become confusing when you are passing back and forth pre-bills, final bills, revisions of bills, etc, so I did not know if I should consider a different method for sorting all of these things out.

4. I am not the most computer savvy person, so I was curious if there are any videos in relation to importing/exporting client data i.e. exporting client e-mails to an excel spreadsheet, importing client addresses to the timeslips database, etc. When I try to do this I cannot seem to grasp how to do it without every hiccup in the world getting in the way.

5. Last question and I assume a hard one to answer, but again, more or less just trying to get ideas of what others are doing. How is everyone tracking the clients in relation to when the work comes in (W-2, K-1, etc.) to the time the bill is sent along with a copy of the return? Generally speaking this is how the firm does it:

1. client drops off/sends via mail the docs.

-We then log the date/time when dropped information off on a clipboard

2. We do not scan the documents, we only take those docs and attach them with the current file for the staff to start working on the return as a first come first serve basis.

3. Once the return is completed, it is reviewed and the client will receive an 8879 along with a copy of the return stamped draft.

4. If client is not a COD, we will e-mail the return and then I will receive a pre-bill with all the time and expenses associated with the client.

5. I then write up the total charge and a bill is created. At this point the file has gone back and forth through so many hands and the volume of clients makes it confusing for our staff to keep track of everything that is going on, so I was curious if anyone used a different and more practical method?

Sorry for the vague descriptions, I am more or less just trying to get ideas of what others are doing.

Thank-you again.