You can view your total spend on a matter from the Apperio matters page. Here, the matter spend total is shown against the matter budget and is broken down against billed and unbilled (WIP).
Matter budgets in Apperio can either be set by your business or by your law firms. The spend on a matter can be tracked against the budget using the tracker bar. The bar transitions from green when the matter is below budget, to amber when approaching and red when the matter exceeds the budget.
Cumulative Totals
The charts and graphs in Apperio are used to represent the amount of spend. All charts show billed in green, the amount of WIP in blue and the total spend breakdown when you hover over and across the chart.
The cumulative total chart shows the transition of your spend across the months of your chosen date range. Hover over the graph to view the billed and unbilled spend breakdown. The red line represents the matter budget.
Navigate between tabs to view your spend as billed unbilled or fees and disbursements
Total by Date
The total by date chart shows the monthly spend across the chosen date range for your matter. Each bar is used to represent the spend across a month. Hover over the bar to view the spend breakdown, and navigate between tabs to view billed/unbilled or fees/disbursements totals.
Fees and Disbursements
The totals for fees and disbursements are displayed on the matters page. This is broken down across billed and unbilled spend, the total amount recorded and any adjustments made. A negative adjustment represents the amount of spend written down on a matter.
Navigate between the Fees and Disbursements tab to view the relative breakdown
Select View Ledger to view the individual time entries. This shows you exactly when all the work was done, the total work by each fee earner and details of all time narratives. You can also view the standardised role by fee earner.
The top of the header shows the total time, fees and adjusted amount for the matter. Click on each header field to order the list.
Navigate between Fees and Disbursement to view the time entry totals.
Fees by Role
Apperio maps each law firm's complex role hierarchy to a set of simple roles such as Associate, Senior Associate and Partner. On the fees by role chart, you can easily view the breakdown of fees and time worked on an hourly matter. One of the biggest levers in cost, quality and length of time to complete a matter is having the appropriate roles working on the right work. Apperio gives you visibility on the percentage of time worked on a matter by reach role. This allows you to compare the amount of work done by role, and further conversations with your law firms can take place for where you may get better value for your business.
Navigate between the Time and Fees tab to view the relative breakdown and hover over the bar to view the figures.
Rates by Role
Monitoring rates charged for fees worked on a matter is another method of managing costs for your business. The rates chart shows an aggregate of rates recorded for hourly matters across all standardised fee earner roles. All rates displayed in Apperio reflect the actual rate recorded by your law firms in their practice management system, before any write down has occurred.
All data for rates by role corresponds to the date range you have selected at the top of the page. There are two ways to view your rates; by spread or average. Navigate between tabs to view a breakdown of each and hover over the bar within the chart to view the figures.
The spread of rates shows the relative distribution across each fee earner role, and is broken down across the minimum, median and maximum rate issued by your law firm.
The average rate corresponds to the mean rate. This is the sum of rates by role for each time entry divided by the number of time entries at that rate. The average is not weighted by time and is not factored into the averaged time entry values.
Fee Detail
Towards the bottom of the matters page is a list of all fee earners and general overview of corresponding work recorded on the matter. Here, you can view the standard role each fee earner maps to in Apperio, their individual practice group and the date last worked. For hourly matters, you can view the rate charged by hour alongside the total time recorded. On the last column is a breakdown of fees charged by fee earner. All data represented here directly corresponds to the time entries recorded on law firms practice management systems, before any write down.
Click on a fee earner name to view their individual time entries on the ledger. You’ll be presented with a full list of all the entries corresponding to the fee earner. The column header details the total time worked, overall fees charged and the amount adjusted on your matter. If an adjustment has been made by your law firm, this can either be a write up or down and is represented by a positive or negative value respectively. The total write down is presented as a negative figure on the column header of the table.
Navigate between the fees and disbursements tab to view the relative time entry breakdown.
