UK lawyers and accountants will be able to charge out even more of their expensive time with the UK launch of Sage Group Plc’s Timeslips for Windows. Timeslips is a time tracking and billing system aimed at any time-related, fee earning businesses, such as the legal profession, accountants and management consultants. The product was developed in the US by Timeslips Corp, the company bought by Sage in 1994 (CI No 2,485), and has now been modified for the UK to include sales tax and other UK specific features. Users simply select the customer they are working on, the type of work they are doing such as final audit, consultancy and so on and then start the clock. They can switch easily to different customers and turn the clock on and off as required. The system caters for up to 30,000 individual customers. It comes with a complete set of reports and its own billing system. Timed work can be automatically billed, or held from billing but simply stored as a record of time spent. Both the user interface and the reports can be customized. The product is not yet integrated with Sage’s accountancy software, but marketing director David Pinches says it will be fully integrated with Sterling by the end of the year, and with Sovere ign as soon as all modules are available under Windows. While the product can cope with up to 250 fee earners, Sage is targeting it particularly at the small business market, with one to 10 users. There are currently 150,000 users in the US, and Pinches says there are some 100,000 potential businesses in the UK, although Sage will be happy with 2,000 sales in the next nine months to a year. Timeslips runs under Windows 3.X and Windows95, and will run happily on an 80486 with 8Mb RAM. It comes in single user or networked multi-user versions, and there is also a remote package for use on a lap-top. Timeslips is available now through Sage dealers. It shouldn’t take most solicitors or accountants very long to recoup the outlay in extra time billed with prices starting from 300 British pounds, about $450, for a single-user version, to 3,000 pounds, about $4,500, for a large networked system.
