Multi Matter Profitability Report

Overview

The Multi Matter Profitability Report helps glean how profitable a specific matter or multiple matters are for your organization. This allows you to see the profitability of various practice areas or even your organization as a whole. The report compares income and expenses to provide a profit amount and gross profit percentage. The results are available for download in PDF and Excel formats. 

 

Accessing the Multi Matter Profitability Report

You will find the Multi-Matter Profitability report under Accounting reports.

Go to Reports at the top of the Actionstep screen, choose Accounting Reports. On the resulting screen, you will find the report under the Matter Finacial section. 

Report configuration Options

Before you generate the report there are a number of filters or settings you can apply to control what results the report will give you. We explain these filters below.

Enter Matter Id's	Specific Matter IDs can be entered to narrow results to just those matters. This field can also be left blank to display all results that adhere to the other report settings. If you want to enter in more than one matter id, make sure you use a comma between them. For example, 456, 783, 784.
Divisions	Actonstep can be configured to have more than one division within it and this report is designed to capture information across those divisions.  If you do not have more than one division, your company name will display here. If you do have more than one division, this option allows you to see matter profitability across multiple divisions. Click the plus icon beside the division to see any children divisions. To see child divisions, you must be in the parent division when you access this report.
Action Types / Steps	In this report "Action Types" are your matter types.  Specific matter types can be selected to display only matters of those types. The results can be further filtered by selecting a specific step. With a step or multiple steps selected, the report will only display results of matters that are currently on those steps.  If no matter types are selected then all matters regardless of the type will be included in the report.
Participant Types & Participant name	These two fields combine to allow you to filter the report on only particular matters where a nominated contact is a participant type on that matter.  You can search for more than one contact. Search and select one, then you are able to search and select another. EXAMPLE If you wanted to see all the matters where John Smith was the client you would set the participant type field to 'Client' and from the Participant name, search for and select 'John Smith'. If you wanted to see all the matters where Abdul Davidson was the Lawyer you would set the participant type field to 'Lawyer' and from the Participant name, search for and select 'Abdul Davidson'.
Include transactions fro the date range selected below	To and From dates can be selected to narrow the report results to only take into account transactions created within that date range. You could use these fields to ensure that you were looking at the profitability of matters in a given month, a year or any other period.
Show Matters with no Data	Can be selected to include matters in the report that do not currently contain transactions. NOTE If a matter does not have transactions within the designated date range it will be considered to have no data. If a matter is not displaying a profitability amount, the transactions may not have been created in the designated date range.
Status	Use this field to filter the matters this report will display matters of a certain status or all matters regardless of status.
Details displayed	Transaction details can be included or excluded from the report. Selecting Show detailed transaction data will add a Transaction Details table to the report. This table displays the specific accounts affected by the matters transactions.
Output	The format of the report can be chosen. PDF starts a download of a PDF file version of the report. Excel starts a download of an xlsx file.  See below for explanations of the results in the output.

Once you have set the filters and settings you want the report to have, click the 'Submit' button at the bottom. Your browser will create an Excel or PDF file for you to download or open.

Understanding the Output of the report

The report will generate as either an Excel file or a PDF available to be downloaded by your browser.

NOTE

The format of the report will be the same in either format, however, please note that if you choose the option to show Detailed transactions and export it as an Excel file, that the Detailed transactions will appear on another tab on the report. 

 

At the top will be the name of the report and the address of the firm generating the report.

After that will be a summary of the settings that were applied to this report when it was run. There will be more details about who ran the report and on what date in the footer of the page.

The summary page

On the summary page will be a list of all the matters that meet the filter criteria you have set. There are seven columns in the report and we explain what each will show below.

ID	This is the matter ID of the matter in the row.
Name	This is the name of the matter in the row.
Step	The step that the matter is currently on at the time that the report is run.
Status	The status of the matter is currently assigned at the time that the report is run.
Income	The amount of income that has been generated for the firm that has been linked to this matter.  Actionstep will come by this figure by looking at transactions posted to your income accounts that are linked to the matter within the date range you have specified when running the report.  This income will almost always be from bills that you have issued to your clients but it is possible that any firm deposit, general journal or any other accounting transaction that is coded to an income account and also the matter would change the amount displayed in this column.  TIP If you want to look into which transactions make up this amount, then you could run the Account Entries report using filters to filter by income accounts and the matter in question.
COS/Expense	The value of the cost of sale and expenses that have been entered for the firm that has been linked to this matter.  Actionstep will come by this figure by looking at transactions posted to your COst of sale accounts and expense accounts that are linked to the matter within the date range you have specified when running the report.  These costs and expenses will most often be from firm withdrawals or supplier invoices but it is possible that any general journal or any other accounting transaction that is coded to a cost of sale account or expense account and also the matter would change the amount displayed in this column.  TIP If you want to look into which transactions make up this amount, then you could run the Account Entries report using filters to filter by income accounts and the matter in question.
Profit	The amount in this column should be the amount in the income column less any amount in the COS/Expense column. It is expected that if COS/Expenses exceeds income then this amount will be negative. A negative amount will appear in brackets (for example, (500.00) is negative $500.
Gross Profit %	This column is an indicator of how profitable your matters are comparing the income to the cost.  The percentage is calculated with the by (Income - COS/Expense) / Income.

The detailed transaction data page

If you run the report to show the detailed transaction data you will get an extra page or tab on the report which will break down each matter further and show the Income, COS and Expense general ledger accounts that have been affected by transactions linked to the matter.

The usefulness of this will be dependant on how you have set your general ledger and how you code your transactions. Regardless of how your general ledger is set, this should give more insight into the type of income, cost of sale and expenses that have been engaged with each matter.

There are five columns that the page uses to break down the information. We will describe the information in each column below.

The information will be broken down into individual matters. Each mater will display have its ID and its name in brackets.

The columns are:

Acc	This is the account number of the general ledger account in that line. The account number is defined on your general ledger. See Accounts List.
Account Name	This is the account name of the general ledger account in that line. The account name is defined on your general ledger. See Accounts List.
Income	This column will show the income associated with that matter for that particular general ledger account.  If the account is not an income account it will show a zero dollar amount.  NOTE The income and COS/Expense columns are not a reflection of debits and credits for the general ledger account. You will only see the total of all the transactions for that matter in one of the columns.  For example, if you had transactions that debited and credited an income account for a matter (such as having a bill posted to the fees account that is later credited with a credit note), then you will only see the net result of those transactions as one amount.
COS/Expenses	This column will show the cost of sales and expenses associated with that matter for that particular general ledger account.  If the account is not a cost of sale or expense account it will show a zero dollar amount.  NOTE The income and COS/Expense columns are not a reflection of debits and credits for the general ledger account. You will only see the total of all the transactions for that matter in one of the columns.  For example, if you had transactions that debited and credited an income account for a matter (such as having a bill posted to the fees account that is later credited with a credit note), then you will only see the net result of those transactions as one amount.
Balance	The balance will show the balance for the matter. The balance will treat any amounts in the income column as positive and any amounts in the COS/Expense column as negative.  For each row, it will take the value of the balance in the row for the same matter above and increase or decrease the amount based on the amounts in the income and COS/Expense columns.