If you’ve used Lexis Nexis’s Time Matters 11, you probably would agree with these two statements: One, it really is extraordinarily customizable. Two, it’s billing integration and reporting capabilities leaves a lot to be desired. Running reports out of Time Matters is cumbersome and often fruitless. It’s partly for those reasons that about ten months ago I wrote a customized automated spreadsheet that creates the billing reports I need at the press of a button. Rich Strauch, my business coach, calls it my “Michael Angelo”. That’s not necessarily done with affection as his point is that my time is better invested elsewhere, and of course he’s right.
The spreadsheet itself is about 10 megabytes in size and contains multiple tables which allow us to migrate data from Time Matters to Infusionsoft and vice versa. It also automatically generates those reports that Time Matters won’t and it does it in a split second. Try running a productivity or profitability report in Time Matters. Go ahead, try it. Make sure you leave the computer on so you can see the results of the report tomorrow morning.
The lack of reporting is probably our primary frustration with Time Matters. The spreadsheet is helpful, but it’s also just one other thing that we have to maintain, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s for that reason that today I’ll be looking at upgrading Time Matters. I’ll let you know what I find out tomorrow.
