Edward Gibbon once said: “I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes.”

In our prior posts we have looked at income projections from a couple of different perspectives.  This third post in our Cash Flow series starts to look at expenses in a bit more detail.

You can have billings (and fee collections) that exceed your wildest dreams, but if your expenses exceed your fee collections, you will be in financial trouble.

Accordingly, our tip this week is as follows:

#3 – Compare your Actual versus …

This is the second in a series of ten tips dealing with cash flow reports and cash flow management.

Gregory Nunn once said: “Never underestimate the value of cold cash.”

While our first cash flow management tip looked at comparing your actual billings as measured against your projected monthly billings, this week we are taking things one step further in terms of looking at how well you are doing in terms of collecting your billings as measured against your projected cash needs.

Accordingly, our second cash flow report that you should be generating from your accounting system is:

#2 – …

Following on our earlier Top 10 Financial Errors posts, this is the first in a series of 10 posts dealing with Cash Flow Reports and in particular, cash flow management.

Mark Ruffalo once said: Certainly, it’s very easy to fall in love with cash. If you’re going to make all your decisions based on cash, you’re going to have a pretty naffy career.

In my MBA days, I took a series of accounting courses. One of the courses was entitled ‘managerial accounting’ but it really was about how to manage cash. I still recall the professor walking in and saying: …

Our lives as lawyers are hectic enough even before we factor in busy family events. Accordingly our tip is to create a ‘family’ calendar where every family member can enter (and see) the entire spectrum of upcoming family events. Schedule movie nights! Put in Grandmother’s birthday party! The school play (where your daughter is on stage!). Also enter the evenings where you have business events to let everyone know Mom (or Dad) won’t be available until later (no need to put in confidential client info – just a notation that you have a business meeting is just fine).

If the …

If you spend any time on the web, you should be aware of the fact that you can be tracked by websites that you do not visit.  This can include analytic services, advertising networks and social platforms.  Few of these offer any reliable way of opting-out.  Accordingly, we are left with working with a voluntary op-out procedure that is honoured by third-party web tracking sites.

One of the ways to prevent this tracking *at least by third parties who agree to honour a user’s Do Not Track preference* is by installing a plug-in for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari.  …

It is an unfortunate fact of life that the most trusted of employees could be stealing money from their employer.

This is the second of two posts dealing with the management side of taking your office paperless. The first post from last week dealt with the first 5 things to consider from a management perspective.  This post looks at the remaining 5 things to be part of your paperless plan.

Here are the next 5 things to consider:

1. Research: Do a thorough investigation of the available tools to help you (document management systems, electronic faxing, scanners, data backup systems, security systems, document conversion companies, process consultants, storage formats, storage devices, remote access devices etc…). Knowledgeable consultants can help you out

…

Accordingly this post is the first of two based on that presentation dealing with the management side of taking your office paperless.

Real estate costs can be one of a law firm’s highest expenses. There’s no reason to pay rent to house hundreds of case files, especially closed files, that could be much more inexpensively stored off site or converted to electronic format. As soon as possible, set aside some time to determine which files can be destroyed, which can be moved off-site for less expensive storage or digitized, and then, if you haven’t already done so, implement a system to begin creating a paperless file for each new case as you open it. You might even be able to rent out …

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

The world’s premier legal Technology conference takes place this Thursday-Sat, March 29-31, 2012 in Chicago. www.techshow.com has the complete schedule, speakers and more. Can’t make it this year? No worries. You can be there virtually by following the Twitter stream from the conference. #ABATECHSHOW is the hash tag to follow in Tweetdeck or similar Twitter software. In fact, many attendees follow the stream while at Techshow (both of the authors do!).

Why would you do so? The twitter …