Using RTG Timer Online: A Tutorial

Contents

Introduction
Why Use RTG Timer Online?
How To Start RTG Timer Online
The RTG Timer Menu
The Help System
Time a Fee Transaction
Enter an Expense Transaction
Use a Code Table
Enter Shorthand Codes
Check Spelling
Switch Between Transactions
Interrupt a Transaction
Create a Report
Release to RTG Bills Online
Delete Released Transactions
What To Do Next

Introduction

This document will lead you step-by-step through RTG Timer Online. Not every feature will be discussed, but you will enter a few transactions and release them to RTG Bills Online.

Clients, matters, timekeepers, and codes are always entered in RTG Bills Online, not RTG Timer Online. We will assume that someone has already used the RTG Bills Online tutorial, during which the information needed for this tutorial was entered.

As we proceed, we will suggest "fake" transactions for you to enter. When you are finished with this tutorial and you are ready to enter real data, you can delete the fake data.

Why Use RTG Timer Online?

Although you could use RTG Bills Online to enter fees and expenses, there are several reasons that you might want to use RTG Timer Online instead.

How To Start RTG Timer Online

Once you know your user name and password, you can sign in to RTG Timer Online by going to this Web page:

https://app.rtgsoftware.com/timer/signin.htm

Note that this is a secure Web site (https), which means that the data is encrypted as it travels over the Internet between your computer and the RTG server.

You may want to bookmark the Sign In page, or add it to your "favorites" in Microsoft terminology, so you can easily return here.

On the Sign In page, click the link to the Subscriber Agreement and read it, if you have not already done so. It should open in a separate window.

Enter your user name and password, then click the Sign In button. After a short delay, you will see either the Choose a Timekeeper page or the RTG Timer Menu.

You will see the Choose a Timekeeper page if you are permitted access to the data for more than one timekeeper. Click on the row that displays the timekeeper you want to work on now. You should see the RTG Timer Menu next.

During the trial period of RTG Timer Online, a message will tell you how many days are left in the trial period. Click OK to proceed.

The RTG Timer Menu

You should now see the RTG Timer Menu. The RTG Timer Menu contains links for many different functions. We will explore some of those functions in this tutorial. When you click on a link, it takes you to a new page. Generally, there will be a Done or Cancel button that takes you back to this menu.

When you are done using RTG Timer Online, you should sign out by clicking the Sign Out link or the Sign Out button. After a brief delay, you will see the Signed Out page.

You can also sign out by clicking the RTG logo in the upper-right corner of the RTG Timer Menu page.

For security, we recommend that you sign out when you are finished with RTG Timer Online. If you remain signed in, an unauthorized person could use your computer to access RTG Timer Online. Keep in mind that closing your browser, or a browser tab, does not sign you out.

You cannot stay signed in to RTG Timer Online indefinitely. If you don't sign out, you will be "timed out" after several hours of inactivity.

The Help System

The RTG Timer Help System is the primary documentation for the program. Whenever you have a question about RTG Timer Online, the help system should be the first place you look for the answer.

Nearly every page in RTG Timer Online has a Help button or a Help link. When you click the button or the link, a new browser window opens with help information for the current page. This is called context-sensitive help.

Near the top of the help window you will see four links: Close, Home, Back, and Search.

As you might expect, the Close link closes the help window. The Home link takes you to the Home Page of the help system, which has links to a Getting Started page, Frequently Asked Questions, and Special Topics for RTG Bills. Like a browser's Back button, the Back link goes to the previous page.

The Search link goes to the Search Help page, where you can enter words to search for in the help information. Click Go to begin the search. The search results page has links to the help pages that contain all of the words in your search. It also shows how many references there were for each search word. A reference is simply a page that contains the search word.

To exit the help system, just close its window or click the Close link.

Time a Fee Transaction

Click the New Fee link. You will see the Enter a New Fee Item page.

In the lower right portion of the page you will see a rectangle that contains a Start button. Click the Start button to start the stopwatch. After you press Start, the yellow box displays the elapsed time in hours, minutes, and seconds.

Notice that the timekeeper is already filled in. The timekeeper is either the one you chose on the Choose a Timekeeper page, or the only timekeeper you have permission to access.

For the Date, type 4/25/98.

Click the List button next to the Matter box. You will see the Select a Client page. You should see clients 1 and 2, which were entered into RTG Bills Online. If you don't see Client 1, click the Top button and it should appear.

Click on the row that displays client 1. You will see the Select A Matter page. Client 1 has two matters, which should appear in the list. Click on case number 2, Review corporate records.

You should see the Enter A New Fee Item page with the matter number 1-2 filled in.

In the Description box, type Draft letter to S. Smith.

The Type indicates the type of transaction. The type cannot be changed while the stopwatch is on. However, both Hourly Rate and Fixed Fee transactions can be timed.

We could enter the hours worked in the Hours Reported box, but for this transaction the stopwatch is timing the work so we don't need to. All we need to do is click the Stop button of the stopwatch. Do that now.

Notice that the elapsed time was converted to decimal hours and entered into both the Hours Reported and Hours To Bill boxes. The Hourly Rate was looked up in the RTG Bills database, based on the matter and timekeeper. The Amount Reported and Amount To Bill were calculated by RTG Bills.

You should leave the Status as it is, with Bill selected. If you were to select Hold instead, this transaction would not be released to RTG Bills Online until you changed the Status back to Bill. As we will see later, we can release all transactions through a specified date to RTG Bills Online. If you aren't finished with a transaction, perhaps because you need to revise the description or change the Hours To Bill, you can set the Status to Hold and that transaction will not be released, regardless of the date.

We are ready to save this transaction. Click Save. A message confirms that the transaction was saved. Click OK.

Enter an Expense Transaction

Now we will enter an expense transaction. We will assume the date is the same, 4/25/98. Notice that if you have several transactions to enter for the same date, you only need to type the date once.

Let's move on to the matter number. Type 0-0 and press Tab. Sometimes you may want to enter a fee or an expense for a matter which has not been entered into RTG Bills Online yet. In that case, you can use matter number 0-0. Later on, after the matter has been entered into RTG Bills Online, you can go back and put in the matter number. RTG Timer Online has a report, Invalid Matter Numbers, that shows just these transactions.

Click in the Matter box, type 2.1, and press Tab. We intentionally put a period instead of a hyphen between the client number (2) and the case number (1), to illustrate the fact that RTG Timer Online will accept either one.

For the Description, type Messenger service.

For the Type, click the downward-pointing arrow and choose Expense. Notice that the page changes and the stopwatch disappears. You cannot time an expense.

In the Amount Reported box, type 85.59 and press Tab. The amount is copied to the Amount To Bill box.

We are ready to save this transaction. We are done entering fees and expenses for the moment, so click Save & Done. The transaction is saved and the RTG Timer Menu appears again.

Use a Code Table

We will demonstrate how easy it is to enter a photocopy charge, a unit cost transaction, using an activity code.

A code table contains codes. You can assign different code tables to different matters. It is more common, however, to use one code table for all matters. We will assume that RTG Bills Online was set up so that all matters will use code table 1 for activity codes.

Click the New Expense link. Type 4/25/98. Type 2-1 (or 2.1) for the matter number, unless it is already there.

Notice that there is an Activity box above the Description. Type copy in the box and press Tab. Several things will happen. The description Photocopies appears next to the activity code and also in the Description box. The transaction Type is set to Unit Cost. The Unit Cost box contains the per-page charge, 0.20, and the color of the box indicates that it cannot be changed.

Click in the Quantity Reported box, type 30, and press Tab. The dollar amounts are calculated automatically.

Because we have set the standard activity code table to 1 in RTG Bills Online, every transaction will show the Activity box. You can enter activity codes for both fees and expenses. However, you are never required to enter an activity code.

Click in the Activity box. The word COPY will be highlighted. Press the Delete key to delete the code. Press Tab. When the Activity box is empty, it no longer controls the transaction type. The Type is still set to Unit Cost, but now you can change it. Similarly, the Unit Cost is still set to 0.20, but you can change it.

The activity codes are meant as a convenience. They can supply a standard phrase for the description and a dollar amount for an expense, a unit cost, or a fixed fee. You can always leave the Activity box empty if you do not want to use a code. And if you do not like the codes at all, the Supervisor can change the Standard Code Table to zero in RTG Bills Online and the Activity box will disappear.

We want to put the activity code back in. Instead of typing it, click the List button next to the Activity box. A list of codes will appear below the Activity box. Click on COPY. We wanted to make the point that you can choose the code from a list. The list displays all the codes in code table 1.

Click Save to save this transaction. A message confirms that the transaction was saved. Click OK. We are ready to enter a new transaction. Click Cancel to return to the menu.

Enter Shorthand Codes

Choose Edit Codes from the menu. You will see the Select a Shorthand Code page.

As you enter the descriptions for fee and expense items, you may find that certain sentences or phrases are needed again and again. To save time, you can use shorthand codes. Each shorthand code can be two, three, four, or five characters. Whenever you type the code into a description, followed by a space or punctuation mark, the code is replaced by the full phrase.

Notice that the code TCW is defined to mean Telephone conference with. In a fee description, you could type TCW, a space, and the client's name.

We will add a new shorthand code. Click New. You will see the Add a New Shorthand Code page. Type dl and click Save. You will see the Edit a Shorthand Code page. The text *new code* should be highlighted in the With box. To replace it, type Draft letter to and click Save.

You will see the Select a Shorthand Code page again. Notice that the new code DL has been added to the list. Although you entered the code in lower-case, RTG Timer Online always converts it to upper-case. Click Done to leave this page.

Check Spelling

RTG Timer can check either an individual transaction or all unreleased fees and expenses. We will demonstrate the procedure by checking a single transaction. To check many transactions at once, choose Check Spelling from the menu.

Click the Edit Fees link. You will see the Select a Fee Item page. Select Show Matter Number near the bottom of the page. The fee we entered earlier should be in the list. The date is 4/25/98 and the description is Draft letter to S. Smith. Click this item to select it.

You will see the Edit A Fee Item page. Click in the Description box and move the cursor to the end of the text. Type a space and then type oops.

Click the Check button to check the spelling of this description. The word oops isn't in the dictionary (most slang words aren't included), so you should see the Correct Spelling page. If your description has other errors, they might appear first.

On the Correct Spelling page, the Not found box contains the word that was not in the dictionary. If this word is correct, you can either skip it or add it to the dictionary. Click Skip to skip over the word or click Skip All to skip every occurrence of the word. Click Add to add the word to the dictionary.

Use Skip or Skip All when the spell checker questions something that you don't want to change, but you don't want to add it to the dictionary either. For example, arbitrary combinations of letters and numbers are treated as errors. So A5 will always be questioned, even though it may be correct in this description.

If you do need to change the word, look in the Replace with box. Often it will contain a suggested replacement for the unknown word. If it is the correct word, click Replace to fix the incorrect word or Replace All to fix every occurrence of the incorrect word.

If the suggested replacement is the wrong word, look in the Suggestions list for other possible replacements. When you click on a word in this list, it will appear in the Replace with box. Then click Replace or Replace All to fix the incorrect word.

If none of the suggested words are correct, or there are no suggestions, you can click Copy and the incorrect word will be copied into the Replace with box. Now you can edit the word without having to re-type it. This is most useful for correcting typos. You can also type the correct word directly into the Replace with box. In either case, click Replace or Replace All to fix the description.

Sometimes you may want to edit the description directly. We'll do that now. Click Edit and delete the word oops. Click Save. The spell checker will re-check the entire description for errors. If there are no other errors, you will see the message Spell check complete. Click OK. Back at the Edit a Fee Item page, click Save, then Done, to return to the RTG Timer Menu.

Spell Checker Hints

1. Help
If you forget how to use the Correct Spelling page, click Help when it appears and a complete description will be shown in the Help window.

2. Abbreviations
If you are in the habit of using many abbreviations in your descriptions, the spell checker will find many errors. To prevent that from happening, we suggest that you define your abbreviations as shorthand codes so they will be converted to the full word as you enter the text. For example, if you use clt to mean client, just define CLT as a shorthand code and it will be expanded to client as you type.

3. All caps
Do you type with the Caps Lock on? If you do, the spell checker won't work. It accepts any "word" consisting of all capital letters, so it will never find a misspelling.

Switch Between Transactions

Sometimes you may need to switch back and forth between two tasks during the day. RTG Timer Online makes it easy to switch quickly between transactions.

From the RTG Timer Menu, click Edit Fees. The Select a Fee Item page appears, showing the items you have been working on most recently. The most recent items always appear first.

Let's enter another hourly rate transaction. Click the New button. Click Start to turn the stopwatch on. Enter the date, 4/25/98, and the matter, 2-1. Leave the Activity blank. Type a Description: dl M. Jones. Note that the shorthand code dl, which we created earlier, is expanded to Draft letter to.

Suppose we want to switch between this task, drafting a letter to M. Jones, and the task we entered previously, drafting a letter to S. Smith. Click the Stop button to stop timing and the Save & Done button to return to the Select a Fee Item page.

The new fee item is on top of the list. Click the Draft letter to S. Smith row to switch to it. Click Start to start timing it. Notice that the stopwatch starts timing from zero again. Each time you stop the stopwatch, the time it has recorded is added to the Hours Reported and Hours To Bill. Now you are ready to work on the letter to S. Smith.

Let's switch back again. Click Stop to stop the stopwatch. Because this is not a new item, there is no Save & Done button. Click Save and you will go back to the Select a Fee Item page.

A new item has both a Save button and a Save & Done button. The Save button saves the item and lets you enter another new item immediately. The Save & Done button saves the item and returns to the Select a Fee Item page.

Click the row that shows Draft letter to M. Jones. We don't really need this transaction, so we will delete it now. Click Delete to delete this transaction and click Yes to confirm. Once again, you are back at the Select a Fee Item page. Click Done to return to the menu.

Interrupt a Transaction

Suppose that you are working on a task and the stopwatch is running when you receive a phone call from a different client. You want to switch quickly to timing the phone call, then return to the original task when it is finished. The Interrupt button on the Enter a New Fee Item page handles this situation.

Click New Fee on the menu. On the Enter a New Fee Item page, click Start to start the stopwatch. Type a description, such as This is the main task for today.

Imagine that the phone rings and you want to time the call. Click the Interrupt button and a message informs you that the item was saved and a new one will be created. Click OK.

Notice that you now have a new item on the page and the stopwatch is running. Type in a matter number, 1-1, and a description, tcw client. When the phone call is finished, click Stop to turn off the stopwatch and click Save to save this item.

The original item will return and a message will ask if you want to resume timing it. Click Yes to resume timing.

The Interrupt button works even when the stopwatch is not on. The only difference is that you won't be asked whether to resume timing when you return to the main task.

Click Stop to turn off the stopwatch and click Save to save the main task and return to the menu.

Create a Report

RTG Timer Online has several reports that allow you to review the fees and expenses that you have entered.

From the RTG Timer Menu, click Fees & Expenses by Matter. You will see the Select a Matter Range page. Click the All Matters option button if it is not already selected. Click Next.

You will see the Select a Date Range page. Click the All Dates option button. Click Next.

You should now see a complete list of the fees and expenses for the current timekeeper. The items are grouped by matter number and, within each matter, they are in order by date.

If you want a printed copy of the report, use your Web browser's ability to print the current page.

To leave the report page and return to the menu, click the Back link at the top or bottom of the report.

Release to RTG Bills

The items you have entered are now in the RTG Timer Online database for the selected timekeeper. They must be copied to the RTG Bills database so they can appear on the bills. When you release transactions in RTG Timer Online, they are copied into the RTG Bills Online database, or into a file that can be sent to RTG Bills on a PC.

A Supervisor setting determines what happens to the items you release. If you are a Supervisor, go to the Supervisor Menu and click Edit Users. At the Select a User page, click on a row to select a user.

On the Edit a User page, there is a checkbox, Release to RTG Bills Online. If your firm's subscription includes RTG Bills, you can check this box so that released items will be copied into the RTG Bills Online database. You can also check the box to Enable RTG Bills if you want this user to have permission to use RTG Bills Online.

When the Release to RTG Bills Online box is not checked, items released in RTG Timer Online are written to a file. RTG Bills on a Windows PC can download the contents of that file so the items can be billed.

If you are currently on the Edit a User page, click Cancel. On the Select a User page, click Done to return to the Supervisor Menu. Finally, click RTG Timer Menu.

Once you release transactions in RTG Timer Online, you cannot change them any more from within RTG Timer Online. In effect, you have transferred control of those transactions to RTG Bills Online (or RTG Bills on a PC).

On the RTG Timer Menu, click Release Items for Billing. You will see the Release Items for Billing page. Choose All Matters. The Cutoff Date will be the last day of the previous month. The buttons to the right of the box change this date, or you can type any date you wish in the box. The small button to the right of the box displays a calendar that allows you to choose a date by clicking on it. For now, however, leave the date as shown.

Click Release. After a pause, the Released Items page appears. It shows the number of items released. Click Continue to return to the Release Items for Billing page. Click Cancel to return to the menu.

You have now released the items and you cannot change them. To demonstrate this, click Edit Fees. You will see the Select a Fee Item page. Click the Top button. The list is empty.

Click the Show Released Items checkbox. After a pause, you should see the released items in the list. Click on any one of the items in the list.

You will see the View a Fee or Expense Item page. You cannot change any of the information you see. Click Done to leave this page. Normally, you would leave the Show Released Items checkbox unchecked to keep the released transactions from cluttering up the list. Click it now to remove the check. After a pause, the list should be empty again. Click Done to leave the Select a Fee Item page and return to the menu.

Delete Released Transactions

Released items will still appear on the Fees & Expenses by Matter report and most other reports. They will contribute to the totals on the Fee Summary by Date report.

Eventually you may want to delete released items that you no longer need. Once they are deleted, they won't appear on the reports. To illustrate the procedure, we will delete the items we just released.

Choose Delete Released Items from the menu. You will see the Delete Released Items page. Click Keep One Month. Click Delete. The Deleted Items page appears to show the number of deleted items. Click Done.

You can verify that the transactions were deleted. Click Edit Fees and check the Show Released Items box. All items that had a date more than one month ago have been deleted.

Click the Show Released Items checkbox to remove the check. Click Done to return to the menu.

What To Do Next

Click Sign Out to leave RTG Timer Online. If you are allowed access to RTG Bills Online, and you want to see the RTG Timer transactions in RTG Bills, go to the RTG Bills Online tutorial for further directions.

RTG Bills, RTG Timer, and Billing Made Easy are trademarks of RTG Data Systems.