Actionstep End of Year Product Round-Up 2022

Are you curious about what Actionstep has been up to over the past year? This year, we continued to refine Actionstep and its offerings, making you, your firm, and your client’s experience even better.

We delivered some exciting product updates under our key themes of Usability, Accounting, Billing and Trust (ABT), and Payments to finish off 2022. Read more about what we have been working on.

Special Spotlight: Actionstep Academy

A very exciting launch of 2022 is Actionstep Academy (ASA), a new, comprehensive, one-stop online resource to help customers of every experience level.

We deliberately launched this new feature in December to give our users the opportunity to explore and upskill in Actionstep Academy as the year winds down in the lead-up to the holiday breaks.

With tips and tricks, product updates, how-to videos, and more all in one convenient place, this extensive resource library is designed to help our customers get as much value as possible out of Actionstep and realize their business goals more quickly. When you sign up for Actionstep Academy, you’ll have access to over 20 courses and 100 videos in a variety of formats to support your preferred learning style.

What does Actionstep Academy help you with?

• Everyday Use: Videos and courses on the features and topics you use everyday
• Admin and Configuration: Beginner to advanced set-up and system customization
• Actionstep Features and Functions: Explainer videos and new product releases
• Best Practices and Thought Leadership: Hot topics and business guidance for law firms

Payments

In November we launched our native payments processing facility, Actionstep Payments, for our US customers. In 2023 you can expect to see Actionstep Payments launched across our other regions of Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

What is Actionstep Payments?

Actionstep Payments simplifies payments for your clients and your team, and is now available for US law firms!

If your law firm processes multiple payment transactions per week and/or you simply want to give your clients easier ways to pay your invoices, you must try Actionstep Payments.

Benefits:

• Automatically adds payment links to client invoices
• Accepts credit card, debit card, and ACH (electronic check) payments, retainers, or partial payments
• Deposits the funds directly into your nominated operating or trust accounts
• Spend less time processing payments because Actionstep Payments automatically syncs with your billing and accounting processes whether you use Actionstep accounting, QuickBooks, or Xero, reducing back-office double-entry

Usability (Front Office)

Usability is a key product theme for Actionstep, as we strive to enable law firm staff to work efficiently and intuitively. Below we detail key product updates that fit under this theme of usability.

Actionstep User Interface (UI) Refresh

We’ve taken some exciting steps to refresh the look and feel of Actionstep. This update not only ensures that Actionstep feels like the modern cloud application that it is, but also makes certain that the product adheres to accessibility requirements for our users.

Microsoft 365 Calendar Connection Update

In October, Microsoft moved to a new, more secure authentication method (how they verify accounts at sign-in) called Modern Authentication.

To support Microsoft’s Modern Authentication and avoid syncing issues for customers who have their Outlook Calendar connected to their Actionstep calendar, we updated our Outlook Calendar Connection. Our updated Outlook Connection utilized Microsoft’s latest Calendar API and allows you to authenticate your account directly with Microsoft for enhanced security.

Create New Contacts from Email

Effortlessly create new contacts from email with the Outlook Add-in.

When you open an email, and the email address is not recognized as one of your contacts in Actionstep, you now have the option to create a contact in Actionstep using the details from the email.

Fee Estimates and Alerts

Achieve more predictability and transparency in billing. The new fee estimates and alerts feature provides a visual representation of clients’ fees to keep you on track to meet your budgets and provide greater certainty around your fees. This allows you to quote effectively and manage your clients' expectations.

Global Recent Matters

Access recent matters anywhere. By including recent matters in the main navigation, you can get back to your last worked-on matter regardless of where they are currently in Actionstep. If you are using the new user interface, you can also see a new option beside the search bar at the top of Actionstep. Clicking here will show you the most recent matters that you have accessed.

Access to Invoice PDFs from a List View

Download PDFs of invoices through the browser function and preserve hyperlinks to payment pages.

The screens this update affects are the Bills list, Draft Bills and Bill Production, as well as the list of Bills on the matter. Note that the Create Bill and Edit Draft Bill screen contain a button "Print/Preview" which brings up the PDF in the browsers print preview screen. This functionality will not change.

Accounting, Billing, and Trust (ABT) (Back Office)

ABT is another key product theme for Actionstep. We are working to enable bookkeepers, billing managers, and accountants to unlock the power of Actionstep. Below we detail key product updates that fit under this theme of ABT.

Trust Requests and Trust Request Notifications

Trust Requests are currently available for pilot in our New Zealand market, with wider availability to come.

Our trust request feature allows you to create authorization requests for trust transactions, submit them to another user or administrator for approval, and process those approved requests into transactions. To make that user experience even better, we've introduced request logging, flexible permissions, and an activity feed.

You can also receive four different types of notifications related to trust requests – trust receipts, payments, transfers, and assigning tasks. This allows you to know exactly what needs to be done next in relation to your trust matters and to communicate effectively with all parties involved.

QuickBooks Online Integration Improvements

QuickBooks Online (QBO) users can see significant improvements in how Actionstep and QuickBooks Online integrate in terms of functionality, data population, and automation. You also have better visibility of case/matter details and activity across the legal and billing process

With our improved QuickBooks Online Integration, you can now:

• Map Actionstep accounts to Products and Services in QuickBooks Online
• Send more invoice and payment data to QuickBooks Online
• Edit or Delete invoices and payments in QuickBooks Online directly from Actionstep

Custom Time Entry List Views

New column options that can be configured in your custom time entry list views are now available. These column options allow you to break down the value of time entries based on whether it has a bill, no charge, or hide behavior.

This improvement should allow an admin to create a view that gives deeper insight into the value of the time recorded, which in turn improves reporting and the management of the business.

Update Fee and Time Record Rates in Bulk

Actionstep has several ways to set and manage your fee and time entry billing rates and now you can mass update your rates, helping you to adjust your fees quickly.

Benefits:

• We’ve made it easier to adjust existing time records when your firm increases its rates and to correct any rates used in bulk.
• You have the option to select multiple time entries and to adjust the rate applied to them.
• You can earn from investigation and create consistent client experiences.

Changes to Consolidated Billing

Allow consolidated bills to have multiple contacts. More than one contact can now be loaded to a consolidated bill, and we support consolidating bills based on primary and secondary contacts. Bills can only be consolidated if the primary and secondary contacts on the invoice match.

Benefits:

• Clients receive one bill for multiple invoices.
• Bundled charges: Consolidating all client invoices makes budgeting and bookkeeping easier to track.
• Fewer missed payments: Clients will only have a handful of invoices to keep track of instead of forgetting or glossing over bills that are almost due by mistake. This can help make late payments or missing payments a thing of the past.

Publish Client Invoices to Matter Documents

Easily share invoices with your clients or third parties, attach them to your emails, include them in document bundles, and push them into integrated document systems.

This update allows you to automatically save invoices directly to the relevant Matter. Once an invoice is finalized, it will be saved into a matter folder called "invoices" and you can then be able to provide external access to this folder, allowing you to share client invoices via the portal.

New Integrations

Our Technology Partners have been hard at work building new connectors on our API, including integrations around billing, contact syncing, communications, and estate planning.

Keep Up to Date

Throughout the month we push a lot of changes and updates.