Every Monday morning, partners get a one-page email digest of billable hours against target, unbilled work, invoices past 60 days and new matters by practice area, pulled from billing, accounting and the CRM into a live Google Sheets dashboard.
Typical results
7:30 AM
Digest in partners' inboxes every Monday
3 systems
Billing, accounting and CRM in one view
20%
Below target triggers a flag for that lawyer
Figures reflect typical results for this kind of automation.
The challenge
Partners want to know each Monday who billed what, how much work is unbilled and which invoices are overdue, but the numbers sit in three systems. The office manager spends hours exporting and pasting into spreadsheets, the figures arrive midweek, and a lawyer falling behind on billable hours is usually noticed only at month-end.
Before and after
Hours a week building partner reports
−89%Days until a lawyer under target is noticed
−77%Receivables past 60 days, share of total
−30%The automation
At 7:30 every Monday, the automation pulls last week's time entries from the billing system, receivables from the accounting software and new matters from the CRM. It calculates billable hours against target per lawyer, unbilled work in progress, invoices past 60 days and new matters by practice area. Partners get a one-page digest by email with a live Google Sheets dashboard behind it, and any lawyer more than 20% under target is flagged for a conversation.
How it works
- 01
Monday 7:30 data pull
Last week's time entries, open receivables and newly opened matters are pulled from the billing system, the accounting software and the CRM.
- 02
KPIs calculated per lawyer
Billable hours are compared with each lawyer's weekly target, and unbilled work in progress and invoices past 60 days are totaled.
- 03
Dashboard refreshed
A Google Sheets dashboard updates with the week's figures and trends, broken down by lawyer and practice area.
- 04
One-page digest emailed
Partners receive a single-page email summary with links into the dashboard for the detail behind each number.
- 05
Under-target lawyers flagged
Anyone more than 20% under target for the week is highlighted for the supervising partner to follow up.
Starts from
- Billing system time entries
- Accounting receivables
- New matters in the CRM
Delivers
- One-page partner digest
- Live Google Sheets dashboard
- Under-target lawyer flags
The impact
About 4 hours a week of manual reporting disappears, and partners start the week looking at the same numbers. A lawyer falling behind is visible within a week instead of a month, and receivables past 60 days typically fall from about 20% of the total to 14%.
Questions about this automation
Which systems does the digest pull from?
It reads time entries from the firm's billing system, receivables from its accounting software and new matters from the CRM, through their APIs or scheduled exports. Matter and lawyer IDs are matched across systems, so one row in the dashboard shows hours, billing and receivables for the same matter.
Can each partner see only their own practice area?
Yes. The email is filtered per recipient, so a practice group head receives the figures for that group while managing partners see the whole firm. The Google Sheets dashboard is shared with matching views and permissions, so the detail behind each number follows the same rules.
What if billing data is incomplete on Monday morning?
If time entries are missing for a lawyer or totals look far below normal, the digest notes it beside that lawyer instead of flagging them as under target. A multi-step build like this is usually rolled out in stages, starting with hours and adding receivables and new matters after.