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Web portals for all my associates..!!

Just today, Accounts Department of my office (law firm), informed about a new web portal deployed by our associate foreign law firm (FL). We, as a patent law firm, often have liaisons with foreign law firms when clients want to file patents outside India. In return the foreign law firms provide us the work which is India specific. As such, there is a lot of invoices flowing between the two law firms. Now, there is no 1:1 relationship here. We liaise with lot of foreign law firms so as to cover as many jurisdictions as possible. Also, we liaise with two or three law firms from same jurisdiction so as reduce dependency upon one law firm. Understandably, the accounting is very important. After all in the end, what matters is the money.

With this background, this FL introduced this new web portal. Each of the law firms working with FA, referred to as associate from now on, will have a unique id for themselves. Associates will have to login to this web portal with their login credentials and upload invoices and other necessary details. Thereafter, concerned department of FL will process the invoice and release payment accordingly. Associates can also track their invoices and send reminders or other information accordingly. 

In my opinion such a web portal is a very great initiative. Such a web portal not only keeps a track of all invoices and payments from different associates but also monitor that timely invoicing and payment is done. This results in less reliance on emails and hard copies. 

But what makes this portal a winner is its ease of use. I always believed that when a user wants to work on any web portal, he should only take maximum three clicks to reach where he wants or complete what he wants. More than three clicks is a nightmare. Nobody has this much patience. And this portal is based on this same principle. 

Also, the web portal should have only required number of fields and should allow only very important data to be captured manually. Rest all should be automatic. This web portal requires manual entry for reference numbers and invoice in .pdf format. That's it. Thereafter, the data from the invoice is pulled automatically and filled in. All the user needs to do is recheck and confirm everything is correct. 

Such ease of use makes the web portal to be easily adapted and work can start smoothly.  I think such a web portal should not be restricted to law firms only. It should be adopted and adapted by other firms in appropriate departments.

P.S. The web portal of FL was developed in house. The portal has different module for FA to provide their invoices and for FL to process those invoices. 

These web portal are specific to invoicing or accounts and are generally called as 'invoicing portals'. As outlined above, such invoicing portals cater N:N relationships. Examples of such invoicing portals are European medicines agency portal, paybox, and Lexmark invoicing solutions.
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Comments

  1. Anonymous29 January 2016 at 11:50

    Hi there! I stumbled upon your article by chance. We have similar operations as you mentioned regarding working with many associates in different jurisdictions, and face similar interaction challenges including invoice related ones. Could you please share out this web portal you mentioned out so we could explore the useage of it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lavanya Jaddidi26 February 2016 at 23:59

      Hi..apologies.. i saw your comment just now...i will provide you the names of the web portal tomorrow.

      Delete

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