Who can use this feature?
🔑 Only Administrators can configure the budget
In this article:
Before you start, it's important to set your financial year in the Settings / Company Information / Financial Settings. This step is crucial for accurate Spend Reporting and other financial calculations.
Set the budget for each legal service provider
To track your forecasted and actual spend against your budget, you must first know your budget. Go to Settings>Legal service providers>Budgets
You can specify your budget for each service provider by month.
To simplify things, copy and paste the figures from an existing spreadsheet (ensure the service provider names are in the same order). If your budget is an annual figure broken evenly over 12 months, type the figure directly into the total column, and we will automatically populate the monthly figures for you.
Setting matter budget
LawVu manages forecasts via the Scope Management feature, which you can enable within the matter type. Enable scope management from the ellipses. Only the matter manager can adjust and set the budget.
If you are the organization administrator, you can assign the matter to yourself before assigning it to the attorney working on it.
To ensure you provide a forecast for all matters sent to outside counsel, please ensure that scope management is set to On or Optional.
The Scoping fields you add will help you negotiate effectively and limit the options available when you send a matter to outside counsel. They will also remind your service provider to provide a forecast at the start of the matter and update it whenever the actual spend exceeds the latest forecast.
You can read this article to learn more about which LawVu fields you can add to your scoping form. While you can add custom fields, only data captured in LawVu fields ties directly to the reports in the Reports section.
For example, you can add Fee value, Cost Center and PO Code fields. Remember that all fields are completely customizable, so you can configure different scope forms for different matter types. Accurate scoping is the starting point for successful estimating, work assignment, and relationship management with outside counsel.
To adjust the budget, simply update the Scope Management's Fee value.
Whenever either party adjusts the fee value on scope management, the other party has to accept any changes. This will enable proactive budget management.
Please note: Service providers are not required to update the forecast if the fee arrangement is an estimate.
Check these articles to learn more:
Actual Spend
Service providers upload their invoices on each billing date and submit them to you as a batch. LawVu rejects invoices exceeding the agreed-upon fee and prompts the service provider to update the forecast and explain the increase.
Import historic invoices
If you've kept past invoices in various systems or Excel files, we can bring them into LawVu, giving you an accurate view of your spending history.
In simple terms, this process includes extracting data from prior systems or Excel files, arranging it by Legal Service Provider, validating it using a template, and then importing the invoices in stages after review.
By importing your historical invoices, you'll gain insights into trends and past data. This enables you to assess and strategize for external expenditures, as well as generate reports for your business.
Keep in mind that substantial data imports might require more time, although typically, this process is completed in approximately 2 weeks.
To initiate the historic invoice import, please get in touch with your Customer Success Manager or Customer Support.
Spend Reporting
In LawVu you can set budgets on individual matters and per Legal Service Providers. There are two ways to view budgets in LawVu:
Track spend per matter
From the Matter invoice tab, you will find a view of the matter budget lifecycle.
Spend Reporting
This is the overall spend-to-budget for all matters and Legal Service Providers
You can monitor how forecasted and actual spend are tracked against your budget at any time in the Reporting / Spend section.
Obtain an overview of overall spend categorized by fiscal or calendar year, or even a month-to-month breakdown of total fees while gaining insights into the distribution among all Legal Service Providers, access points, users, and permissions.
Within this interface, you'll discover an array of insightful graphs that provide valuable information, such as spend breakdowns by matter type, legal service provider, or department.
Also, you'll find an overview that contrasts monthly spending against the budget, alongside a comparison of monthly budget allocation versus actual spend per legal service provider.
For more detail, click the Ellipses icon on each graph to Export the data, Spotlight or Get insights. Easily sort, filter, view the data as a table or graph and drill down reports so you can find the insights you need.
Discover the power of reports in our Standard Reporting article.