Legal

Clarity 6 Legal Edition is a comprehensive planning, forecasting and financial reporting application for the legal vertical. When your product is people and your people are lawyers, maximizing their utilization is important. The need for easy collaboration during the budgeting cycle, real time aggregations, driver based budgeting, top down planning through global assumptions, and bottom up adjustments by regional offices are a few of the processes necessary to ensure the development of effective plans for law firms. Clarity 6 connects to Elite Enterprise and Elite 3E databases providing integrated out-of-the-box sharing of data.

Predefined Data Models
Clarity 6 Legal Edition ships with pre-defined planning data models. Developed over a period of four years and many legal vertical implementations, these models represent legal market best practices, speed the implementation process and can be easily extended further to meet each firm’s specific planning and reporting requirements. All models support multi-currency.

Metadata Integration
Thomson Elite account segments are automatically brought over to Clarity 6. Account segments are embedded within the Clarity 6 Legal Edition multi-dimensional model. New accounts added to Thomson are automatically sent through to Clarity 6. Locations, departments, practice areas and GL accounts are all brought over for you. One common budgeting problem is the movement of timekeepers in locations, departments and practice areas. With Clarity 6, timekeeper movement is applied in Elite and ripples through the Clarity 6 application. Metadata synchronization ensures accurate budget to variance reporting throughout the entire year.

Data Integration
Trial balance and timekeeper data including hours, billings, accounts receivable, work in progress and billing rate is delivered to Clarity 6. Administrators have full control over the frequency of trial balance updates from Thomson to Clarity. Updates can be scheduled or on-demand (initiated by the Administrator).

Integration with leading HR Systems
HR applications from ADP, Ceridian, Ultipro, Peoplesoft, Lawson, Oracle and Northwood are supported by Clarity 6. Pre-built HR application integration sends employee payroll and benefits information into Clarity 6.

Real Time Collaboration
The Clarity 6 architecture delivers real time consolidation out-of-the-box. Updates by the region to plan or forecast information are immediately available. Workflow tracks the budget submission process. Timekeeper movements throughout the year are tracked in Clarity 6. Enter planning milestones into the Clarity 6 calendar to communicate key dates to planning participants.

Administrative Templates
Administrative templates manage the following data structures:

• Departments
• Offices
• GL accounts
• Benefits maintenance mapping
• Linkages between GL accounts and timekeeper revenue and expenses
• Payroll and fee income calendarization
• Capital asset depreciation methods

Global and Driver Based Assumptions Zero Base or Prior Year Base
Planning variables such as rate per hour, rank, grad year, billable hours, merit increases, bonuses, taxes and benefits can be applied globally with automatic calculation of associated GL accounts across all departments and locations. All of the global assumptions can be overridden at the region/timekeeper level. Clarity 6 supports both zero based planning or the use of prior year actuals to seed the upcoming budget year.

Employee Worksheet Template
The employee worksheet provides a one-stop-interface for managing the activities associated with employees. The inclusion of both production and compensation on a single interface allows the budget contributor to have a 360 degree view of timekeeper profitability. Production can be managed through three matter details including new hours, new rates and new currencies. FTE is defined by month and by timekeeper.

Compensation assumptions can inherit global driver based assumptions, or you can override global compensation assumptions at the timekeeper level.

For existing employees you can also transfer, promote, define a leave of absence (paid or non paid), data correction with source data or split timekeepers between departments, ranks, offices and practice areas. Include new hires and terminations through the employee worksheet as well.

Salary and Benefits Template - Optional
In firms where salary information is centralized, this template offers compensation assumptions across all departments and practice areas.

Other Templates
General Expense and Capital templates are available to manage office expenses and capital expenditures (including depreciation methods by asset type).

Calculations
Clarity 6’s pre-built calculation engine calculates production hours by office, department and currency. The waterfall calculation includes steps to calculate base production followed by discounts for realization, collection, and accounts receivable. Cash flow calculations take into account the A/R collection window as well.

Clarity 6 includes standard financial and statistical calculations as well: fee income, billable hours, historical work in progress, benefits, base salary, variable compensation and payroll taxes by jurisdiction.

Reports
Clarity 6 delivers a series of out-of-the-box reports including timekeeper reports, profit and loss reports, and executive dashboards.

Partnership with Thomson Elite

Thomson Elite and Clarity Systems have formed a reseller partnership to provide comprehensive budgeting and forecasting capabilities to professional services firms as part of a full business intelligence solution. 

Click here to read more about Thomson Elite.