Verdict 10is here! Building on the highly successful and ground-breaking Verdict 9.0, Micro Craft proudly introduces Verdict 10 for Windows 98 through Windows XP. Verdict 10 is an intuitive, client-based time and billing system that offers unprecedented features and ease-of-use. It includes all of the features and power of Verdict 9 and adds even more -- many never before available on the market.

Verdict 10 is a completely interactive client-based system that puts all your clients, their accounts and their entries right at your fingertips. By using Verdict 10's Search Tree, you can easily pick a client from an alphabetized list and automatically see a list of all of his accounts. Pick an account and you see a list of all entrires for that account -- you instantly see the relationships between clients, accounts and entries. It's all superbly intuitive and provides a new level of speed and ease of use for operators and attorneys alike.

Groundbreaking performance!

Verdict 10 makes capturing time and producing accurate, professional-looking bills easier than ever before. For over twenty-five years, thousands of law firms have relied on Verdict software to capture all their billable time and help them manage their practice. And Verdict 10 is our most powerful time & billing system yet -- a full 32-bit Windows 98 to XP compatible program, offering ground-breaking performance and a state-of-the-art user interface.

Whether you are a sole practitioner or a 100-attorney firm, you'll enjoy instant access to all your clients, accounts and transactions with our unique Search Tree technology and instant, alphabetized search engines. And posting time to your accounts and retrieving past data has never been easier with all transactions kept on line -- even after you bill them! Our built-in spell checking, the ability to reprint a bill months later exactly like it was when you sent it out, and the ability to roll back a month to make corrections makes the billing process virtually fool proof -- even for first time operators. You can bill monthly, quarterly, or on demand, using any date range you desire. You can even bill an account twice in the same month.

If you’re new to Verdict or converting from another system, you’ll find that creating bills is easy. You enter the client and create his accounts. Next post services, expenses and payments. Then print the bills. There are view lists and search buttons right on screen to help you find the information you need. Verdict 10 is carefully designed to provide the power and flexibility you need, with a simple, straight forward approach that operators require. Most importantly, your bills get done and go out, and you'll have the reports you need to manage your practice.

Reprint a bill from any prior month

You can reprint any bill from any prior month! Just like it was when you sent it out. No fooling with backups to reprint an old bill. No undoing of billed entries to reprint a bill. Verdict 10 gives you two choices - New or Reprint. Choose Reprint. Then enter the original billing date of the bill and hit the Print button. Reprint from any month. This month, Three months ago. Any time. The bill does have to have been printed with Verdict 10 for this feature to work. Verdict 10 stores the previous balance and current balance for every bill that was ever printed with Verdict 10, so from now on, you will have this ability.

Spell Check your entries

Verdict 10 has a built in Spell checker. You can spell check as you go, or you can spell check everything at the end of the month. On the Entries screen, you can make a list of all unbilled entries for all accounts for any date range. Then go to Tasks and select Spell Check List. All of the descriptions will be checked. It's a standard spell checker that lets you add words to the dictionary and even Unadd words you added by mistake.

New powerful Tasks page for entries

The Tasks page does more than just let you spell check entries. Let's say you have printed all the bills and now need to edit some of the entries. Once you make your editing changes, go to the Tasks page and mark accounts for which there are editing changes To-Be-Billed. Verdict 10 stores that To-Be-Billed information. Then go to Bills. Choose the To-Be-Billed accounts list and just print bills for the To-Be-Billed accounts. You also have the ability to transfer a whole list of entries - even from different accounts - to another account. No more one-by-one transfers. Make a list of entries to transfer and transfer them all at once. You can delete a list of entries, too. All at once. No more deleting entries one by one.

Print two bills for the same account in the same month

In Verdict 10 you have the ability to print two bills in the same month for the same account. Print a bill for entries on the 15th of the month. Finalize the bill (mark it billed). Verdict automatically updates the account and calculates the new previous balance for the next bill even though you haven't closed out the month. You can then print another bill on the 31st. It shows the right previous balance from the 15th of the month and only new entries from the 16th to the 31st.

Transaction Codes translate automatically

Included in Verdict 10 is the automatic translation of transaction codes. You can type Transaction Codes directly into the description field in Verdict 10, and they automatically translate to text. No more popping up a Codes list. The Codes list is still there, but if you know the Transaction Code, type it into the field, and it translates right on the spot. Your cursor remains at the end of the translated text, so you can use another code and have it append at the end of the line. It's easy in Verdict 10. And you can use Transaction Codes for services, expenses and payments.

Clients and Accounts on one screen We made it much easier to work with clients and accounts by combining them on one screen with two tabs - one for clients and one for his accounts. Find the client, then click the Accounts tab. You will see all his accounts. Highlight the account you want to look at. At the bottom of the screen is information about the highlighted account. And new features have been added for account information.

Create Templates for accounts

Many law firms want to allocate costs between attorneys who work on a matter, but found it time consuming because they had to enter the initials of each attorney in the firm for allocation on every account. Not any more! Verdict 10 lets you create Templates for accounts. Create a Template. Enter the initials of every attorney in the firm for allocation. One time! Then use that template to create all your new accounts. You can create as many templates as you want in Verdict 10.

Bills - so many new choices

Verdict 10 gives you power over your bills. First, you have three sort orders for account lists and printing. You can sort in Account Number order and print in Account Number order. You can sort in Sort Name order and print in Sort Name order. Or you can sort in Sort Name order grouped by Sort Name and print Summary cover bills and bills for the clients all at the same time.

Powerful Bulit-in Lists

You can make custom lists of accounts if you desire. By default, Verdict creates many account lists for billing:

• Active Accounts - Monthly
  
• All Active Accounts
• All Active Non-Trust Accounts
• All Active Trust Accounts
• Billable Accounts - Monthly
• Billable Accounts - Quarterly
• Billable Accounts - Monthly - Non Trust
• Billable Accounts - Monthly - Trust
• Billed This Month
• Feb - May, Aug - Nov Quarterly Accounts
• Held for anything
• Jan - Apr, July - Oct Quarterly Accounts
• Mar - June, Sept - Dec Quarterly Accounts
• Not Held for Anything
• To-Be-Billed

You can create your own lists and, for example, stagger billing in the firm by creating a different account list for each attorney, with entry lists through different date ranges. The first attorney's billings could be from the 25th of the prior month to the 24th of the month. The second attorney's billing could be from the 27th of the prior month to the 26th of the month. And so forth. Then it's automatic to generate bills each month on a staggered basis. If you don't want to use lists, you can use Quick Print and insert as many accounts on the list, as you desire. Earlier versions of Verdict 8 only allowed one account in Quick Print. Verdict 10 allows you to enter as many accounts at once as you want.

Many of you have asked for a summary on the first page of the bill. In Verdict 10, choose the option to Print Client Summaries for clients for whom at least one account is printing. You will get page 1 with a summary, then page 2 and 3 or more with the itemized bill.

Some firms only want the footer on the last page of the bill. That's an option in Verdict 10. Other firms want to be able to print the bills once in the format chosen at account level for the bill and then print another set of bills using a different format. In Verdict 10 you can override the bill format and choose any other format when you print the bills.

Some law firms missed the feature in the dos version of Verdict which let you override the itemization on the bill with a narrative summary description. That's in Verdict 10, too. Just choose the option, then click the Summary tab and enter the narrative you want to use. The itemization stays in the system - you can always print a fully itemized bill - but you can send the client a bill with just a narrative paragraph summary description in place of the itemized services.

Ledes Bills

Verdict 10 handles Ledes bills, producing files in the ledes 98b format which can be submitted electronically to your Ledes service provider.

The Entries screens allow you to enter the ABA Task Code and Activity Code for each service and the Task Code for each expense. The Expense screen allows you to enter the Quantity (number of units) and $ amount for each unit, as required by the Ledes format.

Then on the Bills screen, you make a list of all accounts for which you need Ledes bills, choose the LEDES format and enter a summary description for each Ledes bill. You also enter the Start Date and Stop Date for the bill. In Verdict 10, if you enter a generic summary that can be used for all the Ledes bills, you can click Fill All Summaries and have Verdict automatically use the same description for each Ledes bill. If the Start Date and Stop Date are the same for each Ledes bill, you can click Fill Dates and have Verdict automatically fill in the dates for each Ledes bill. When you click the Print button to print Ledes bills, a separate file is generated for each bill and put in a subdirectory of your choice, i.e., C:\ledes.

Month End Close offers new control

You now have the ability to close out a month through a specific date. This give you much greater control. Entries posted for the new month will not be used to determine fee allocation; they will not be collected for the General Ledger ahead of time; and Time and Expense summaries will not collect time for the new month that hasn't been reviewed and edited yet.

In Verdict 8, you could not post costs and payments for a new month before you closed the month because those entries would be considered in fee allocation and also sent to the General Ledger. Entries posted for the new month were collected for the Time and Expense summary for that new month. Then at the end of the next month, the balance of the time for the new month would be appended to the already collected summary information.

Verdict 10 gives you control by allowing you to close out through a date you enter - the last day of the month. Only entries though the close-out date will be used for fee allocation, sent to the General Ledger and collected for summaries. This allows you to post costs and payments for the new month.

Roll back the month!

A wonderful feature in Verdict 10 is Roll Back. You can roll back to a prior month and correct mistakes for any month closed out with Verdict 10. When you use Roll Back, the month end Time and Expense and Billing Summaries are undone, the data sent to the General Ledger is reversed and the Fee Allocation is undone. This lets you correct mistakes and redo month end. This ability to roll back solves the following problems:

• You posted a $5000.00 expense as $50,000.00 and closed out the month. Now it's on month end summaries. And, if you have the General Ledger, sent to the General Ledger. Plus used in determining Fee Allocation if you allocate to costs.
  
• You marked one attorney's accounts billed but forgot to mark the other two attorneys' accounts billed. Then you closed the month. Billing Summaries are wrong.
• You marked the accounts billed using the wrong billing date - say, 2010 instead of 2001 - and closed out the month. Now interest won't be charged until 2010 and you don't have summaries for the current month. They are for 2010.
• With Verdict 8, you could reload a backup and fix everything. But what if, before you discovered the mistake, you posted two weeks worth of data? When you reload a backup, you cover up all the new entries you made since you closed out. Or what if you didn't make a backup?

Having Verdict 10 solves the problem. Roll back to last month. Make your corrections. Redo month end. Everything is fixed. You can roll back many months, one at a time, if desired. Any month closed out using Verdict 10 can be rolled back.

More Reports

There are more reports in Verdict 10, and revisions to existing reports:

• Revenue by Source of New Business. This report shows you total dollar value of services, total hours, total hypothetical charges, total service adjustments, total expense and total Payments for any date range. And for one attorney, if you desire.
• Posting Register by Account. You see services not grouped by day, but grouped by Account, so you see all services for an account for any date range. Then the next account and all services for it. You can print for one timekeeper if you desire.
• Timekeeper Productivity Report For each timekeeper, his total dollar value of services, total hours, total hypothetical charges, and total service adjustments on each attorney’s accounts for any date range you select. Two reports. Grouped by Responsible Atty. lists work by each timekeeper, with totals for the Responsible Atty. Grouped by Timekeeper lists timekeeper’s work for each responsible atty., with totals for the timekeeper.
• Current Balance Report. Ability to enter cut-off date, to only include entries through the cut-off date.
• Unbilled Entries Report. Ability to enter cut-off date, to only include entries through the cut-off date.
• Posting Registers of Billed Entries. Billed services, billed expenses, billed payments and billed adjustments. Same as posting registers now except only showing Billed entries.
• Posting Registers of Unbilled Entries. Unbilled services, unbilled expenses, unbilled payments and unbilled adjustments. Same as posting registers now except only showing Unbilled entries.
• Aged Account Report. Now shows outstanding unrecovered costs that have been billed for each account, with total outstanding billed unrecovered costs at bottom of report.
• Modified Accounts Lists. Option to modify accounts or entries lists to specify criteria, such as to only include active accounts (exclude inactive accounts).
• Month End Summaries. Include column for interest for month or time period.
• Category of Practice Summaries. For each category of practice, total services, total hours, total hypothetical charges, total service adjustments, total expenses and total payments for any date range your select. Three reports: Work done by entire firm, work done by timekeeper, or work done by responsible attorney.
• Ability to enter a second header line for all reports, to further describe the options you picked for the report.
• New Trust Report. Shows beginning balance, disbursements, receipts and current balance for each trust account, with totals for all trust accounts.

System Requirements

Verdict 10 requires a Windows computer - Windows 98/NT/2000/Me/XP. Bills can reports can be printed on any Windows-compatible laserjet or inkjet printer. You need a minimum of 128 megabytes of RAM. Highly recommended is a screen resolution of 800x600 or higher. Standalone (single-user) and Multiuser versions are available.