Time Matters

User since 1998; the merge processing features are the best out there, true relational database

Avantages :

As a long time computer user with 10 gig of forms and a general rural practice that covers most areas of law for small firms, the merge into templates is foundational to our practice. The calendar, separate matter and contact database with many to many relationships makes it possible to relate and connect important things. Customization of field names, visual record forms is superb. As a solo, we have huge contact database that allows for searches and organization. The sort select tabs allow you to organize by practice area. While having pre set codes and categories, you have the freedom to tailor the system to work the way you want. The customer support is beyond incredible, and they will take the time to get it right with you -- even escalating to a 2d level engineer if needed. The ability to go contact by contact, matter by matter, and then inside find the related data is huge. It also has a teaching and training history and materials that stand far above competitors. I have looked at other programs and find them to be "newbies" without the depth and sophistication of TM, that we rely on. I cannot forsee a transition out of TM to any other program that would work as well as it does TM has become my primary resource of my personal and business life, capturing and storing information that is accessible.

Inconvénients :

There is a learning curve. The sql database and search is slow compared to google. The integration with outlook will crash sometimes, requiring exiting both programs. We also have intermittent document merge crashes in Word Perfect that fix themselves after exiting both programs. Sometimes the conflict search is a bit slow. These are minor compared to everything else that works well.

Easy enough to keep track of billing, but is this a solution we need?

Commentaires : If you really want an elaborate, automated system with detailed records to keep time, this program has got you covered. Maybe I'm old school or not, but the rest of us can just enter our time at the end of the day without any applications.

Avantages :

Being able to set up a list of tasks for the day and start them and stop them as I worked on them. The phone app also made it easy to get time into the system when my computer was otherwise busy.

Inconvénients :

This is micromanagement on an unnecessary level - just keep time! Having to fix things after the fact because you fat fingered something is flat out annoying. It tracks metrics on all users, but what is the point of all the data? If you have time to read all that, you should be billing hours.

Horrible Tech Support and Customer Service!

Commentaires : My experience with Time Matters, both for technical support, and in terms of my rep. (every client of the software is supposed to lodge issues with their specific rep.), has been horrible. Tech support could never solve the software's sync problems, and did not follow-up with me when they said they would, even when my ticket was escalated. Also, when I reached out to my rep. for help (as I must, per Time Matters rules), she never got back with me. I reached out by email, twice, to her, with no response. Then I wrote to corporate at PC Law/Time Matters, of the abject failures listed above, and they never got back with me either.

Avantages :

The program is basic and doesn't require too much sophistication.

Inconvénients :

The supposed auto-sync via the cloud, to other devices, is useless, with tons of missed records, errors, and more problems.

Pricing has jumped to Cloud based, without being in the Cloud

Commentaires : It was great when everyone worked in the office, but doesn't work for us today with people working remotely and wanting access to information everywhere. We customized things but over the years the automatic document generation would break. Every time adobe reader updates, you have to call tech support to fix the Time Matters save function for pdf documents on every workstation! The recently upped the price of the annual maintenance plan to similar to cloud service providers, but there is very limited cloud access, so the quadrupling of the price without a corresponding increase in functionality has led us to leave Time Matters. If we are paying for cloud access we should be receiving it.

Avantages :

I liked the customizability of this software.

Inconvénients :

This is a premise based software. If you have an active maintenance plan you can access a bit of information through a browser or app, but this is limited to the client name and document names under that client. You can email a document to someone, but cannot view the document. We experienced constant problems accessing even this limited amount of information away from the office, as the software seems to crash a fair amount and you have to call tech support to get it back online.

It used to be the way to go....not so much anymore

Commentaires : I am a formerly small firm, now solo. I have run the enterprise version on my own Windows SQL Server for the past 15-20 years. Setting the program up on the server took a little doing, as did several upgrades over the years, but I assume that has gotten easier now (maybe not though). The problem is I work a lot out of the office, and now that I don't have a dedicated staff member to enter in all my information (case, calendar, clients etc....) it has gotten out of date. Setting up the sync feature with my laptop never quite worked right, and as other reviewers point out there is no mobility. Frankly, I don't have time to spend monkeying around with the software. I need the software to assist me function, not the other way around. So, I am moving on to one of the cloud based services. I'd say Time Matters days are numbered.

Avantages :

Your data remains on your own server(s) and you can isolate it from the Internet thereby increasing security. However, that is also one of the flaws, as working remotely becomes an issue.

Inconvénients :

Lack of remote access, mobility, etc... It can be a complicated program to master.