Issue in Hidden Rates & Amounts in Security

The PCLaw Security for time recording was very open prior to release of Version 6. Anybody entering Time could see lawyers and rates and edit the rates as well on timesheets. It seems that a lot of customers raised concerns with this and hence the introduction of Time/fee enhancements.

With the raising of the bar on the security options on time recording and reporting, PCLaw Administrators have now the ability to restrict users from accessing selected lawyers, their rates, and also whether the rates and amounts are visible, open to editing or hidden. These enhancements are a good thing since some firms have policies of not allowing their attorneys to know their or other lawyers’ rates, edit the rates, etc.

In version 9 the loophole was that even if a user had no access to view rates on the timesheet, the user could still know the rate he/she is billing at by printing the report from the Time sheet window. The printed Time sheet report would show up the rates. This in essence rubbished the Advanced security settings on Time.

Move on to Version 10: This issue was fixed and if a user has hidden access to the rates/amounts, the report produced from the Time sheet window would not show up the rates/amounts. All security restrictions would be properly enforced in all areas of the program.

However, the problem with Version 10 is that if a higher user or Admin user logs on to PCLaw he/she will only see the hours entered by the low level/restricted user in the Matter Manager and Client Summary report (the amount will appear as 0.00). The Client Ledger and Client WIP reports will however reflect the correct values (Hrs X Rate). The integrity of the data is not compromised in any way since the values are still present – it’s only that the Matter Manager and Client Summary reports are not pulling the values - they are only pulling the hours.

To get round the above one has to run Reset Matter Balances under Verify Data Integrity. Once this is done the Matter Manager and Client Summary reports properly displays the values of time entered by the low level user.

It is not practical to run the Reset Matter Balances routine on a transaction basis and as the Matter Manager is the central dashboard for knowing client balances, this is a nuisance in PCLaw and creates needless additional work for ADMIN users in order to comply with company confidentiality policy.