Tag Archives: RB9

Lesson #84

Reports – Gross Profit function

Gross profit is the difference between the invoice amount and resource costs. This static report lists the gross profit (in amount and percentage) for each job or invoice. You can customize the information shown in the report and create summary reports that only show each firm’s total amounts for the selected time period.

The default report shows the gross profit for all of today’s scheduled jobs — broken down by the firm that ordered the services on the invoice (Sold To firm). Each firm’s listing includes their address and phone number to help you identify them correctly.

Every job listed under a firm includes:

• Job number, date, and case
• Invoice number, date, and total amount
• Resource pay
• Resulting gross profit in dollars and by percentage

It also lists any voided or credited amount and the associated deduction to resource pay. At the end of the report are grand totals for invoice amount, voided and credit memo amounts, resource pay, and gross profit in dollars and by percentage.

Find gross profit for different variables

You can view the same information for:

• A different date range
• Invoices billed during the date range
• Invoices posted during the date range
• Firms that ordered the billed jobs, instead of the billed services (Ordering Firm)
• Firms responsible for paying invoices (This is useful to see the gross profit for a carrier/corporation that has multiple firms booking jobs.)
• A single Sold To Firm, Ordering Firm, or Bill To Firm
• A Sold To, Ordering, or Bill To Firm’s parent company
• A particular case
• A selected number of your top clients
• One or more of your company’s business units

The report’s footer will display which search criteria you used to generate the particular report with the exception of blank search fields, ALL list selections, or if generating a report for a single firm. If you select two or more items in the Business Units list, the report will display that as “(multiple values selected).”

View a detailed or summary report

You can also choose a summary version that gives each client one line in the report that lists the firm name, address, and phone number — plus the total amounts for invoice billings, voids/credit memos, resource pay, and gross profit in dollars and percentages.

You can search for a word or phrase in the onscreen report. RB9 will highlight all instances of your searched word/phrase in the report and list them in a scroll box along with the page number where they occur. Export the report in a variety of formats to save, share, and/or edit in another application, or print it.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: View gross profit by invoice. Customizable report can also display summary information for each client.

RB concepts in this lesson

Bill To Firm: The firm responsible for paying the invoice for a job. This firm could be the same as the Ordering Firm, but also could be a third-party firm — such as an insurance agency.

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Firm: Business you provide services to— usually law firms.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition, but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources, such as realtime, videoconferencing, or read & sign. More >

Ordering Firm: Firm that is responsible for a job with your company.

Parent Firm: Headquarters of a multi-branch corporation.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service — such as reporters, videographers, interpreters, scopists, proofreaders, account executives, other agencies that cover jobs for you, or a conference room.

Sold To Firm: Firm that ordered the services on the invoice. Usually the firm that ordered a job.

Lesson #83

Reports – Business Analysis function

View your business’s posted income by groups of related service items for a specific time period in an interactive report that lets you see total amounts at a glance. Drill down to see individual service items — plus quarterly and monthly breakdowns of posted totals. Compare the current month-, quarter- and year-to-date totals — such as sales amount and gross profit — to previous periods.

The default report lists the main categories of services with amounts posted today for any of its service items to any Sold To clients in any state and under any of your company’s business units. The default view is yearly total amounts for:

• Number of units billed
• Rush charges
• All charges
• Related resource pay
• Voids/Credits
• Gross profit

Because it is interactive you can drill down to monthly totals and individual service items.

View profitability for different periods/segments

You can change the report to:

• View longer/different time periods.
• Include quarterly breakdowns.
• Switch to totals by Bill To clients (such as insurance companies who are paying for litigation services their lawyers order from you), parent firms (i.e. headquarters), or a single firm.
• See income for one state, e.g., if you pay local business taxes based on the total revenue generated within your own state, view posted income for your state.
• Analyze business for a particular case.
• View income for one or more of your company’s business units.

Like other interactive reports in RB9 you can quickly switch between detailed and summary views of the report. The initial results in the report are displayed as yearly totals by Service Group (main categories of services).

You can “expand” the view to see the monthly — and quarterly if desired — subtotals and toggle between summary and monthly (and quarterly) views for individual years/quarters. You can also expand and collapse the Service Groups to see breakdowns by category subgroups and individual service items — or toggle individual Service Groups between the collapsed/summary view and the breakdown-by-service-item view. Category totals and subtotals appear on gray backgrounds with bold headers to differentiate them from individual line items.

You can export the report in Excel format to save, share, use in other applications, or print.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: Get an instant snapshot of your business broken down by Service Group for today or any time period. Compare the current month-, quarter- and year-to-date totals to previous periods. 

RB concepts in this lesson

Bill To: Client responsible for paying the invoice for a job. Could be the same as the Sold To client, but also could be a third-party firm — such as an insurance agency.

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Parent Firm: Headquarters of a multi-branch corporation.

Service Groups: The most commonly used billable items for court reporters. These main categories are preset by the system and cannot be modified by the user.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients are called service items in RB and are categorized into Service Groups.

Sold To: Client ordering services.

Lesson #82

Generate reports on all areas of your business

Analyze your business’s productivity, profitability and other relevant data. In this module, you can:

• Get an instant snapshot of your sales and gross profit. Compare the current month-, quarter- and year-to-date totals to the previous period. Get total amounts for any period of time. 
• View gross profit by invoice. 
• View misc. sales charges totals & averages by client.
• Generate reports rating clients on original and copy orders. 
• Produce reports for insurance companies breaking down their invoices by client. 
• View invoices or jobs for a specific time period, broken out by resource, and provide resources with their own copies of these reports. 
• View how quickly resources turn around jobs on average for a specified period.
• Generate reports of all jobs with completed tracking steps within a specified period. 
• Analyze productivity by item, by step, by manager, or by resource.

Reports functions by name

• Business Analysis – RB9-only function
• Gross Profit – RB9-only function
• Misc. Sales – RB9-only function
• Client Rating Report – RB9-only function
• Insurance Billing – RB9-only function
• Resource Production – RB9-only function
• Original Page Production – RB9-only function
• Task Turnaround Analysis – RB9-only function
• Daily Tracking Summary – RB9-only function
• Tracking Productivity Analysis – RB9-only function

TL;DR: Analyze your business’s productivity, profitability, and other relevant data.

RB concepts in this lesson

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition, but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service.

Lesson #81

Payables – Reward Points Analysis function

If you reward your best customers with points based on the business generated by their calls to you, use this function to get a monthly, quarterly, and yearly breakdown of clients’ point activity.

This interactive report lists clients’ yearly, quarterly, and monthly points activity for a defined time span, including points earned, points redeemed, adjustments, and transfers.

Reward Points Analysis defaults to all activities in the current month to date, broken down by firm and contact. You can restrict the results to:

• One or more selected activities
• Different date range
• Single firm or contact at a firm and/or
• One or more redemption types (such as cash or gift cards).

The report defaults to displaying points activity by month and year. You can choose to have it break down activity by quarters too which can be helpful when viewing information over a longer date range.

The report displays a list of all contacts with points activity that fit your search criteria, grouped by firm, in year-to-date totals. Firms are listed in order of points earned in descending order. Contacts are listed similarly within each firm. Each contact’s point activities are subtotaled by type (earned, adjustment, transfer, redemption) in each year, month, and quarter (optionally), with grand totals of each type for the entire date range.

Like other interactive reports in RB9 you can quickly switch between detailed and summary views of the report. While the default view is to view points activity by contact, you can “collapse” the view to firm listings, which merges points activity in each activity type column for all contacts at a firm. You can also toggle individual firms between the collapsed/summary view and the breakdown-by-contact view.

Similarly the initial results in the report are displayed as yearly totals. You can “expand” the view to see the monthly (and quarterly, if desired) subtotals and toggle between summary and monthly (and quarterly) views for individual years/quarters.

The Reward Points Analysis report is uneditable. You can export it to save, use in other applications, or print out.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: View clients’ point activity by contact or firm in specified date ranges in summary or detailed form.

RB concepts in this lesson

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms, but can also be other court reporting firms, vendors, insurance companies, corporate clients, and courts.

Lesson #77

Payables – Reward Points History function

If you reward your best customers with points based on the business generated by their calls to you, use this function to see at a glance what points-related activities have been done by which contacts.

Reward Points History defaults to all activities (earned, transferred, redeemed, and adjustments) in all stages of completion that occurred today. It lists activities alphabetically by:

• Firm
• Contacts at the firm
• Date
• Type of activity
• Current activity status
• Points earned or used by the activity
• Number of the invoice that earned points
• Method of redemption
• Any related remarks

It includes a points grand total at the bottom of the grid.

You can change the date range, display history for a single firm or contact, view points related to one or more specific activities, and/or restrict the results to one or more activity statuses.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function RB9 will revert back to the default order).

Reward Points History is an overview only and uneditable. You can export the list of activities as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

NOTE: Contact point history is also available in each enrolled contact’s RB9 listing and in the Reward Points Summary.

Point history in contact listings is all of the contact’s activity in chronological order, most recent first.

Point history in Reward Points Summary is searchable (it is the Reward Points History function defaulting to today’s activities by the contact selected in Reward Points Summary).

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: Get an overview of clients’ reward points activity.

RB concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services. If you have RB Connect, you can allow contacts to request point redemptions online. (Also referred to as reward points.)

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms, but can also be other court reporting firms, vendors, insurance companies, corporate clients, and courts.

Lesson #79

Payables – Reward Points Summary function

Reward your best customers with points like airlines and credit cards do, based on the business generated by their calls to you. Use this function to monitor and manage your reward points program.

Before setting up reward points in RB9, check what your local laws and regulations allow and what you must provide participants with, such as terms and conditions and any legal agreements you must obtain before you enroll a client in your reward program. Some states do not allow these programs for court reporting firms, and OMTI makes no guarantees or assurances about these programs.

Set up your points system first

Contacts don’t earn points until you turn on the reward points system in RB9 and set up points in contacts’ RB9 listings. When you turn on the points system, you also set:

• Whether points are earned on all invoices or original invoices only.
• Default for how many dollars billed on an invoice equal a point.
• How invoice amounts are rounded up or down for determining points.
• What the conversion rate is for points earned to redeemable dollar amounts.

You also designate which services are “pointable,” i.e. which ones earn points. For example, you probably would want to give clients points for originals and copies, but not for delivery expenses.

When designating who receives points for a contact’s bookings, you can choose the contact themselves and/or other contacts at the same firm. You can also override your default point conversion settings, if for example you have an important client you want to give double points to.

Snapshot of contact/firm reward point activity

Once you have your reward points system in place, use this function to manage your program. You can look up:

• A single contact
• All of the contacts at a single firm who have earned points
• All of a firm’s contacts, including those with zero points

The Reward Points Summary displays a snapshot of point activity, listing each contact’s:

• Firm
• City
• State
• Current points
• Pending points
• Total points earned
• Points spent

Total amounts in each points category are displayed at the bottom of the summary.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB9 will revert back to the default order).

From the summary, you can access any contact’s Reward Points History, where you can see at a glance what activities they have done and how their points history has been affected.

If your state does not allow reward programs, you can still use the points system to track your clients’ order history and see who your best customers are by which contact’s calls generate the most revenue instead of by firm only.

You can export the summary as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

Manage points

From the Reward Points Summary, you can adjust, transfer, and redeem points for any contact listed. And if a contact is no longer participating in your points program, you can move their points history to another contact.

Adjust points

If you want to correct an error in the amount of points earned by a contact or to give bonus points, such as for welcoming a new client or other marketing purpose, you can adjust their total points amount up or down.

Transfer points

You can transfer earned points from one contact to another contact in the same firm, for example if a lawyer wants to give some or all of their points to their secretary or everybody in a firm wants to pool their points.

Redeem points

When a contact earns enough points and wants to redeem them, you document that here by noting the type of redemption chosen, the number of points redeemed, and making any notes about the transaction.

Move points

In addition to transferring points from one person at a firm to another, you can also move a contact’s entire points history to another contact. The contact does not have to be at the same firm. A use for this feature would be if a contact moves to a different firm, you can transfer their points to the new listing you make for the contact in their new firm so they don’t lose their points. RB9 will make automatic notes log entries in both contact listings recording who points were moved to/from, when and by which staff member.

Let clients access points online

If you have RB Connect, your clients can view and manage their reward points online. They can:

• Check how many points they have available currently and in the future.
• Look up their previous point history.
• Redeem any amount of points up to their currently available points for rewards.
• Transfer points to other people in their firm.

If you have RB Connect Mobile, they can do the same things on their smartphones or other mobile devices.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: Reward your best customers with points like airlines and credit cards do, based on the business generated by their calls to you. Monitor, adjust, transfer, and redeem points.

RB concepts in this lesson

Award Points: Used to encourage clients to book with your agency by rewarding them with points for different services. If you have RB Connect, you can allow contacts to request point redemptions online. (Also referred to as reward points.)

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with, such as attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms, but can also be other court reporting firms, vendors, insurance companies, corporate clients, and courts.

RB Connect: Online repository, calendar, and access to your office for clients and resources. More >

RB Connect Mobile: Clients and resources can access your RB Connect on their smartphones and tablets in an interface optimized for mobile devices. More >

Lesson #78

Payables – Liability Balance Log function

You can get an instant snapshot of what you currently owe resources on posted invoices and other transactions — or reestablish a starting balance of your resources payable as of a certain date — by using this audit function.

The default Liability Balance Log covers the current month to date and all of your business units. You can extend the date range to a longer historical period from today, and restrict the results to one or more of your company’s business units.

The log lists all dates transactions with resources payable were posted, beginning with the starting date you specified. Each date shows the day’s resources payable beginning balance, ending balance, and the amounts that increased or decreased the resources payable balance that day.

You can view the transactions for any date. All transactions for a selected day are grouped by type (Billings, Voids, etc.) and listed by invoice date within each group.

Export the report and individual dates’ details as Excel spreadsheets or CSV (comma-separated values) files to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: Audit the current month’s resources payable. Can also reestablish a starting balance as of a certain date.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters.

Lesson #76

Payables – Sales Tax function

If you provide taxable services to clients in states or other areas that charge a tax on receipts, enter the sales tax rate in the firms’ listings and flag which service items are taxable. RB9 automatically calculates sales tax on invoices. This report lists all invoices with sales tax charges generated for a specific period.

How sales tax works in RB9

You enter the appropriate total sales tax rate (state + locality) in every firm listing in RB9 that is located in an area/state that charges sales tax on receipts. Then you mark service items as taxable in RB9’s Service Items Master or in individual billing rate tables.

RB9 calculates the sales taxable amount by adding all of the service items on the invoice that are marked as “sales taxable.” Then RB9 multiples the sales taxable amount by the sales tax rate for the client.

Using this report

The default Sales Tax report lists all invoices generated today that include a sales tax amount. It includes each invoice’s:

• Number
• Date
• Amount
• Amount of sales tax charged
• Bill To Firm
• Job number
• Job date
• Case
• Related business unit

You can generate reports for different dates or date ranges, and for specific business unit(s) in your company.

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function RB9 will revert back to the default order). The report in RB9 is not editable but you can export it as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file to save, share, work with in other applications, and/or print.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: View all invoices having sales tax charges generated for a specific period. Export the report as an Excel spreadsheet.

RB concepts in this lesson

Billing rate tables: Amounts that you charge for services are organized into tables, so you can charge different clients different amounts for the same service items by applying different billing rate tables. More >

Bill To Firm: The firm responsible for paying the invoice for a job.

Business Unit: One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients.

Service Item Master: List of your company’s services. More >

Lesson #75

Payables – Total Payable Report function

The Total Payable Report lists all invoices with payables still due to resources, grouped and subtotaled by resource, with a grand total that represents your current resources payable liability.

Each invoice on the report includes:

• Invoice number
• Invoice date
• Invoice amount
• Resource pay amount
• Job number
• Job date
• Case
• Sold To Firm
• Resource’s reference number (e.g., the number on the invoice an affiliate gave you for services rendered)

Each resource with outstanding payables gets their own page(s) in the report, and the last page of the report shows the grand totals for outstanding invoice amounts and your current resources payable liability.

The default report shows all resources’ outstanding payables. You can generate the report for a single resource and/or specific business units in your company.

If you want to give resources a list of their outstanding pay, you can have RB generate a resource version of the report without the invoice amount column.

Print or export the report in a variety of formats (including PDF, Excel, and CSV) to save, share, or edit in another application.

TL;DR: View all invoices still due to resources, grouped and subtotaled by resource. The grand total shown on the last page is your current resources payable liability. You can also generate a version to give resources a list of their outstanding pay.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.

Reference No. (for resources): If a reporter or other resource (such as an agency which works for other agencies) bills you for work done, enter their invoice number as the reference number when turning in jobs so they will know which of their invoices are outstanding by the reference numbers on their Total Payables Report.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters.

Sold To Firm: Firm that is responsible for a job with your company.

Lesson #74

Payables – Additional Resource Production Report function

When you pay resources for miscellaneous services related to a job but not charged on the job’s posted invoices — for example parking at a deposition — you can track this additional pay using this function.

The default report lists all of today’s invoices that include additional pay. You can also generate reports for a different date or date range, a single resource, specific Resource Type(s), specific service item(s), and/or specific business unit(s).

The Additional Resource Production Report lists each invoice having additional pay, grouped and subtotaled by resource. Each resource has their own page(s) in the report, with a final page of grand total invoice and additional pay amounts. Invoices listed are broken down by invoice number and date, total invoice amount, the additional pay-related service item(s), how many units of each service item, pay amount, job number and date, case, and the Sold To firm.

The report’s footer will display which search criteria you used to generate the particular report with the exception of:

• Blank search fields
• ALL list selections
• If you generate a report for a single resource

If you select two or more items in a list, the report will display that as “(multiple values selected).”

You can search for a word or phrase in the onscreen report. RB9 will highlight all instances of your searched word/phrase in the report and list them in a scroll box along with the page number where they occur.

Print the report or export it to save, share, and/or edit in another application.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: This report lists each invoice (including the unit count) having additional pay, grouped and subtotaled by resource.

RB concepts in this lesson

Additional pay: Payment to resources for miscellaneous services not charged on posted invoices. For example, you pay a resource for parking at a deposition without billing the client but you want the payment tied to the job’s invoice.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition, but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as reporters.

Resource Type: Profession (such as Scopist, Proofreader, or Interpreter) and other categories of resources.

Service items: Regular charges that you bill to your clients are called service items in RB.

Sold To Firm: Firm that is responsible for a job with your company.