Team Search

At this time of year with the holidays looming, financial quarters closing and the weather changing, everyone seems to be rushing around with no time to relax. I get so busy that I often can’t even find my keys, let alone find that specific document that was sent to me in an email months ago.

That was all before Credenza! Now I can always find just what I am looking for using the Team Search feature. This handy tool provides you with the ability to instantly search in full-text across your team database; any item you have associated with your shared files can easily be searched. Whether you’re looking for a specific Outlook appointment, a task, contacts, notes, time entries… you name it, Credenza can help you locate it.

So what do you do if you’re looking for an email attachment but can’t remember the contents of the email to search by? Don’t worry! You can use the Team Search feature to look across the full content of all Web documents for your client files and documents attached to your email messages.

If you’re like me and often want to go a little more in-depth with your searches, there is always the advanced option which allows you to specify even more search criteria. With the advanced search, you can look for precise phrases or even exclude certain words from your search.

With Credenza and the Team Search feature, you never have to worry about losing something in your own email again – giving you more time to look for your missing keys.

As You Like It: Custom Fields

In our previous post, we talked about customizing Credenza during set up. Today, I’m going to show you several ways that you can tailor Credenza as you become more familiar with your software.

If you are anything like me, you are always looking for ways to further improve efficiencies, in this case with Credenza. Just when I thought that I had my Credenza Files set up to catalogue all the information I could dream of, a colleague showed me that there was more I could do. So now, I’m going to take my new knowledge and share it with you so you too can take your productivity to the next level!

Different professions often need to track different types of information. With Credenza, you can create custom fields by file type just by clicking on the ‘Custom’ tab right in the File itself. These custom fields help you store all the extra information you want; this customization gives you a great deal of flexibility when working in Outlook.

Here’s a mini how to for creating custom fields. Simply:

• Open the File you want to add custom fields to.
• Click on the ‘Custom’ tab.
• Click on ‘Edit Custom Fields’. This will launch a new window.
• Once the new window is open, click on the ‘New’ tab to reveal a drop down list.
• Select which type of field you would like (text, memo etc.)
• Name the new field.
• Save and close this window. 
• You will now be able to fill out the information you want to add in the main File view.

And remember, customize doesn’t always mean adding. You can simplify as well as supplement. It’s just as easy to hide columns in index list views to present less information.

If you are looking for more ways to customize your Credenza, I suggest you take a few minutes to check out our video tutorials, specifically "Customizing and Set Up" and "Managing Files": http://credenzasoft.com/tutorial.html.

Practice Management System or Chameleon?

One of Credenza’s notable traits is its chameleon-like qualities. There is vast potential for customization in this program; it isn’t a simple one-size-fits-all practice management solution. You can set it up many different ways so that it meets the needs of all types of professions. Basically, you can customize Credenza so that it works the way you want it to.

When you first set up Credenza, you are prompted to select your profession from a set list (legal, accounting, consulting, or other). Could it get any easier? Well, it does! When you select one of the pre-set professions, Credenza automatically offers you pre-populated lists with industry-specific terminology. Let’s say you select Legal: you will be offered terms such as Cases or Files. Credenza even makes suggestions for related case types and contact roles.

 

And don’t worry, if you don’t see the term you want to use, you can simply create your own. One thing I really like is that you always have the option to change or add terms – and changes are applied to all users, so consistency is not an issue.

Getting too crazy for you? Don’t feel like we are forcing your hand to customize. If you want to keep Credenza the exact same as when you installed it, feel free. One of the most intrinsic parts of this program is that it is ready to go right out of the box, without fuss, muss or intense adaptation.

I’ll leave you with the following thought. I like to think that Credenza gets absorbed by Outlook… you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. This program really does adapt to every environment. So, is Credenza a highly specialized and intuitive practice management system or is it a really cool reptile adapting to its environment?

Organize Your Inbox

In last week’s A File Centric Outlook post, I mentioned that there is a way to set Credenza to automatically move messages out of my inbox into subfolders. This helps me to keep my inbox tidy so that I am better able to stay on top of my email. Of course I could always drag messages out to folders that I've created once I've dealt with it, but why not let Credenza do it for me?

I know my first question when I heard about this was ‘does Credenza know what to name the folders or do I have to specify each folder name?’ The answer is very simple and will save you precious time. Credenza creates a folder for each of your client files, and when you’re ready, moves the emails out of the inbox to the appropriate folder, so you don’t have to do anything!

This really cool feature is very helpful, especially when used to manage not only your incoming but outgoing email as well.

I have my Inbox Control set to move emails from my inbox to their associated folder if the message isn’t marked for follow-up, if it has been in my inbox for five days and if a time entry has been created. Since I have three different criteria set, each one of them must be met before Credenza will move an email. With these controls, I know that messages won’t go unattended and I know exactly where to find them if I need to reference them at a later date.

As I mentioned above, one major plus that Credenza offers is the ability to sort emails from your outbox. I feel like sent items are often overlooked. If you are a lawyer, accountant, or any business professional, you know that it is just as important to keep track of your outgoing messages.

When I want to review my communications for a specific project, all I have to do is go the folder Credenza created and voila! A list of all my received and sent emails.

You can also access all emails pertaining to a specific File - along with phone call details, appointments, tasks, time and expenses - directly from the File. It really is that easy to stay organized and track information in Credenza!

A File Centric Outlook®

Some might say that I am slightly obsessed with order. Before I started using Credenza, my Outlook inbox looked like an overly-segmented organizational diagram. There was an endless list of folders with subfolder and sub-subfolders. Not to mention my list of custom rules that was a mile long.

When you look at how emails are sorted in Outlook, they are generally organized by date, sender, or subject – a more transactional approach. The one thing that always bothered me about this was how there was no way to centrally locate information – not just emails, but associated appointments or contacts. Sure, you can create rules so emails are automatically sent to particular folders as they come in, but that’s as far it goes.

Like many practices out there, I work and think in a file centric manner. If you’re new to our blog or don’t use Credenza yet, you’re probably thinking “if only Outlook were file centric”. Well, with Credenza it is, and it makes it super easy to associate emails to Files! Essentially, Credenza turns Outlook® into a file centric practice management tool. While with Outlook you can use rules to move emails to folders, with Credenza you can easily associate emails to Files - in addition to moving messages to folders named after a specific File (I’ll elaborate on this part in our next post). And it’s up to you whether you want to set future emails to or from the same email address to be automatically associated to the same File.

Since Credenza adds Files to Outlook, I can see all File related material (appointments, contacts, expenses, time entries…) in one place. Just open a File and it is all there.

With Credenza, information is not only organized by sender and recipient, but by project! Now that my emails are organized by File, I can’t imagine having to go back to Outlook’s basic sorting capabilities.

Attention Credenza Customers - A New Update Is Now Available

One of the perks of subscription based software is that any new features or updates are immediately available to you – and at no additional charge! When I came into work last Wednesday, I launched my Outlook and poof – there it was, waiting for me.

Last week’s update included some great new features, many of which came from suggestions submitted by fellow Credenza users. So, a big thank you for sharing your valuable feedback. In case you missed the “what’s included in the update”, here is a quick summary.

1. With Credenza you can generate bills for your fees and expenses. All it takes is a single click and you have a draft bill for your selected time entries. Once you are ready, you can convert the draft bill into an invoice. Now say you get to this point and notice that there is a missed time entry for an appointment that should have been included in the invoice. In the past, you would have had to create a second separate invoice to send to the client. But now, you can simply revert the invoice back to a draft bill, go in and make any necessary adjustments before sending out the invoice. Huge time saver, and much cleaner if I do say so myself!
2. Credenza comes with all types of reports that look at the various cross-sections of your business. My personal favorites were the Client Payment Distribution and the Time and Fee Listing reports. I run them at the end of every week so I can see how much work had been done and how much had been collected. You may have noticed my use of the past tense – favorites were… That’s because of the new Client Profitability report. This report is by far my new favorite! It not only gives me a complete overview of all work, it shows me how much revenue is being contributed by person- in a single report!
3. When creating a bill in Credenza, you will notice that there is a very handy section at the bottom of the screen that totals all fees, expenses and taxes. And now, just below this amount due there is a spot where you can specify what portion (if any) is to be withdrawn from a retainer or trust account. This definitely makes it much easier to use any money in trust or held as a retainer towards bills.
4. The last new feature in this update was a must have. Credenza now allows you to make partial payments from retainer or trust accounts. You either had to have enough money to cover the entire bill in retainer or trust, or you couldn’t use it. Amazing how such a small thing can make such a big difference.

All in all, this update provided some pretty useful features. Enjoy!

I Can’t Take Your Call – Please Leave A Message

How do you keep track of your phone messages? Does your assistant hand you pink message slips? Do you rely on Post-it notes all over your desk? Are they lost in a notebook somewhere?

With the number of phone calls and messages I receive every day, it gets very hard to keep track of who I need to get back to and what specifically a call was about. That is why I absolutely love how easy Credenza makes it to not only record the details of incoming and outgoing phone calls, but to track the details of voice messages as they are picked up.

And to further simplify life, Credenza also lets you take messages for other team members. Say somebody is out of the office, in a meeting, or just can’t get to the phone, you can take a message on their behalf - right from your Outlook. When you work in a team environment, there is a drop down box (right beside the callback required button) with all of your colleagues’ names. Just select the appropriate person and the message will appear in their list of required callbacks.

Every morning, I come in and go straight to my phone call list. Here I see a complete history of all of my incoming and outgoing communications. And because Credenza runs as a part of Outlook, I can see my phone call notes alongside my emails. I can also see all of my files and a record of all phone calls, even those recorded by my colleagues who are also working on a given file.

And for those days when I know I will out of the office without access to a computer, I simply print off a report showing me all the callbacks I need to place, and take it with me. That way, if I have any spare time, I can return a call or two!

Being able to track messages and record details of incoming and outgoing phone calls has had a very positive impact for me. I am confident in saying that calls are retuned in a timely fashion and I no longer find myself scrambling to gather information or trying to decipher just what that phone message said.