RevCap accounting
A web app for legal revenue capture teams
Challenge
Find a way to help our law firm's Revenue Capture team respond to exception reports faster, empowering them to process more incoming reports and recover additional revenue.
User research insights
We observed the Revenue Capture team's current process and conducted several rounds of stakeholder and user interviews to identify the best ways to help them work faster through improved user experience.
The Revenue Capture team handles the firm's client exceptions and appeals tracking. An exception is when a client disputes or adjusts charges on a firm invoice, and sets a deadline for the firm to respond; an appeal is the attorney's response, providing reasoning and documentation to support the original invoice. Since missed deadlines can be costly, firm policy requires weekly follow-up emails to attorneys and their supervisors until an appeal is submitted.
When we met the revenue capture team was spending hours each day sending, tracking, and piecing together related email messages, all to complete a single exception's appeal. They were also manually drafting weekly reminder emails and fielding a high volume of replies, since this gave attorneys the impression that accounting and not firm policy was driving the escalation protocol.
Their workload often exceededed their available time, causing a portion of exception reports to go unappealed --and unpaid-- due to lack of resources.
Pain points
Email overload - Managing reports via email creates redundant work and contributes to missed deadlines.
Invoice mix-ups - Clients reject appeals without an invoice number -- an external identifier attorneys often lose track of.
Follow-up frustration - Sending personal follow-up emails confuses attorneys and diverts accounting from incoming reports.
User testing
Due to complex nomenclature, our team opted for high-fidelity prototype user testing. We met with stakeholders and users in a conference room, asking them to perform a short series of tasks across several screens.
User feedback and our observations led to changes to improve the app's usefulness, including fine-tuned dashboard columns, the addition of tiles to help users quickly prioritize tasks, and several button name changes for clarification.
Design
We matched the app color palette to the firm's own color scheme, using the firm's primary color for primary buttons and default states, as well as the outline of unfilled secondary buttons.
With so much data to be displayed at each step, we chunked information into cards and kept the layout consistent in order to minimize cognitive load. Reference information is always housed in the top card, attorney-entered information in the second card, and a reviewer's additions are entered in a third card under those two.
Card containers and selectors use slightly rounded corners and shadows for a raised effect, to produce a modern aesthetic and invoke confidence in speed and accuracy.
Alleviating pain points
Email overload
RevCap's dashboard gives the accounting team a central location to keep track of all new, pending and outgoing appeals. Instead of searching for all messages related to an appeal, they just check their dashboard to see what's ready for submission, or upload new reports. No more inbox madness!
Invoice mix-ups
RevCap ties an exception and its appeals to their invoice number from first entry, and keeps it prominent throughout the submission process so attorneys don't have to remember a number they never use, and the accounting team doesn't have to spend hours linking emails back to the correct invoice numbers before submitting appeals.
Follow-ups
RevCap automates both follow-up schedules and the messages themselves, saving more of the revenue capture team's time for their most important tasks. This also removes the personal aspect of individualized emails, reducing the likelihood of calls from confused attorneys hoping to negotiate deadlines.