News Release

New RTG Bills Offers Matter Discounts

Santa Monica, California; December 1, 1999 -- RTG has announced a new release of RTG Bills, its low-cost time and billing program for Windows. Among the new features in this release are matter discounts, summarized expenses on the bills, and the ability to print historical bills.

"When you agree to charge a client a discounted hourly rate, the bill should show the client the full value of your time. Then the bill should show the discount subtracted from the total fees. RTG Bills will now handle this situation," according to Robert Hallem, president of RTG. "Internally, though, RTG Bills tracks the time at the discounted rate. You don't want the discount to appear as a write-off on reports, when it is actually part of your fee agreement with the client."

"Sometimes firms want their bills to summarize charges for faxes and photocopies, instead of showing the individual charges during the month," Hallem added. "Now RTG Bills provides the option of showing such a summary. The prebills show the full detail as well as the summarized amounts."

"Occasionally a client requests a copy of an old bill. Rather than searching for a copy in your paper files, RTG Bills can now print old bills upon request. Previously, the program could only print the most recent bill for each matter. With disk storage now abundant on most computers, there is no longer a technical obstacle to keeping a firm's historical bills online," according to Hallem.

Other enhancements in the new release include the ability to charge taxes, a pop-up calendar for entering dates, and matter lookups by abbreviation.

RTG Timer, used by attorneys for fee and expense entry, also contains several new features. The Quick Switch feature makes switching among several tasks simpler. RTG Timer shows the nine most-recently-modified transactions and clicking on any one of them opens it for further timing or other changes.

In addition, RTG Timer provides new buttons for creating a fee or expense transaction quickly. Integration with RTG Bills is also improved. RTG Timer can now write transactions directly into the RTG Bills database when they are released. Previously RTG Bills had to read the RTG Timer transactions in a separate step.

RTG Bills is designed for small law firms and sole practitioners. It combines the ease-of-use of Windows with the power and reliability of a relational database. RTG Timer, included with RTG Bills, uses a computerized "stopwatch" so that attorneys can time their work as they perform it. Fees and expenses entered into RTG Timer are read by RTG Bills. RTG Timer can communicate with RTG Bills over a network, or it can be used independently on a notebook computer or a home PC.

Existing RTG Bills users can obtain an upgrade to the new version at no charge on RTG's World Wide Web site at www.rtgsoftware.com or by mail for $15. New users can purchase the program for $50, which includes one license for RTG Timer. RTG Bills and RTG Timer are compatible with Windows 98 and Windows 95, and with any network which supports Windows PCs. RTG offers free demonstration versions of RTG Bills and RTG Timer on its Web site so that potential buyers can evaluate the programs before they purchase them.

RTG Data Systems was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. RTG publishes software for the legal profession.

RTG Bills, RTG Timer, and RTG Names are trademarks of RTG Data Systems. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

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RTG Data Systems
Web site: http://www.rtgsoftware.com
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