With this Timeslips release, instead of just adding features, the fine folks at Sage went back and took a long, hard look at the “coding” that has been in place for close to ten years now.  They have removed lots of obsolete information and fixed over 300 legacy defects.  These are things the end user wouldn’t typically notice but will drastically improve speed, stability and performance.  

Also, on the “techie” side of things, Sage created a new billing and reporting engine that will significantly speed up the time it takes to print bills and reports. 

The more tangible improvements to Timeslips 2010 focus mostly on reporting.  The ability to print reports to Microsoft Excel was first introduced in Timeslips 2006, but that functionality has been significantly expanded with this release.  You were previously limited in which reports could be sent to Excel and the data was presented in columnar fashion.  You can now choose to send any report to excel in columns or “as displayed” so the end result looks just like the printed version.  This functionality greatly enhances the ability to analyze your Timeslips data from a variety of angles. 

Several new reports have been added.  The Clients Not Billed report displays which clients have not been billed by your firm since a specific date.  This will help to determine which clients can be made inactive or closed, which should improve speed and performance.  Sticking with the theme of closing clients, you can now choose which clients you want to purge, instead of having to purge all closed clients. 

The Client Default Rates report displays the default rate source and level for each client, as well as any Timekeeper- or Task-specific rate rules assigned to each client.  The Rate Listing reports, which were available in older versions, previously showed all twenty rates for each client, timekeeper or task.  You can now choose how many rates you want to display on the report.  The Rate Analysis report could previously only be sorted by either Client or Timekeeper, but can now be sorted by both. 

The History Bill, which has been available for quite some time, has finally been improved so that it includes a grand total at the end, not just subtotals for time and expense charges. 

Four new types of custom fields have been introduced: percentage, money, number and hours.  Each of these fields can be used in custom report calculations , a feature that was first introduced in 2009. 

The functionality of emailing bills has also been expanded, reflecting the move to a more paperless world.  You can now include data tokens, such as the client’s name, invoice number and amount, in both the subject and body of the email message that is sent with the bill. 

Timeslips 2010 takes one more step in simplifying the billing process by giving you the ability to disable Revision Stage, which has confused many people and caused many bills to be left in limbo. 

Timeslips 2010 will begin shipping at the end of June.  It is currently available for pre-order at a significant discount, either directly from TriStar or from Sage Software (our discounts are better!).