A full ERP system designed by Orion Law Management Systems for accounting/legal/professional companies.

About Orion

Orion is your law firm’s complete solution to centralizing and automating your Financial Management, Firm Management, and Practice Management. This fully integrated system allows you to enter an entry once and automate the process of posting the entry to all applicable areas of the system.

Accounts Payable

The Accounts Payable application of Orion gives you everything you need to record, manage, and pay for your firms expenses. Within this application it is possible to setup recurring payables, trust accounts, and client advances. To make this product adaptable to any law firm, it will support an unlimited number of banks, and allows for full tracking of various types of 1099 forms.

  • Quick Checks - Orion’s on-demand checks feature requires only a few short seconds to generate checks. New payees can be created or existing payees can be recalled easily. Distribution can be postponed to a later time. Multiple check formats can be created for various vendor types.
  • Voucher Entry - This is a one-point entry feature that will handle all invoices, client advances, office expenses, and all retainer and trust disbursements
  • Check Printing - Check printing is done by simply selecting your bank, viewing all open vouchers, and selecting which invoices you wish to pay.
  • Vendor Inquiries - The drill down capability of Orion allows you to view the details and get additional information with a few simple mouse clicks. Additionally, you are able to view the status of any transaction charged to Client-Matters, including if and when they were billed.
  • Reconciliation - Orion will handle the reconciliation for an unlimited number of accounts, all you must do is, each month, enter the deposits and miscellaneous charges. Then simply compare your data to the bank statement and check off cleared entries.
  • 1099 Printing - As previously stated, Orion supports an unlimited number of 1099 form types, and will automatically collect all necessary information and generate the reports at your discretion.

Billing

To aid in your billing processes, Orion will provide you with features, such as: an easy to use Invoice Format designer, Cost and Fee Recovery, Electronic e-Billing, Invoice Imaging and Split Billing. Orion features of 120 standard reports to further aid you in your billing and collection processes. Invoices within the system can be generated quickly using and intuitive drag and drop invoice design tool. If you need to make changes before finalizing and printing your bills you can tag items and globally change values such as: date, client-matters, timekeeper, amount, and billing rate. All bills can have cover sheets or reminder statements attached to them; Orion can even create carbon or file copy bills.

Case Management

Case Management allows you to keep a record of all activities within a case (e-mails, documents, associated application files, notes, etc.). This program will allow you to keep up with all critical issues, deadlines, work product, and parties. To provide the ultimate flexibility, Case Management allows you to setup an unlimited number of customized case types.

Collections

The Collections application of Orion gives you everything you need to stay on top of your firm’s collections. Past due clients are updated on a daily basis allowing you to know who is past due at what time. Through this system you can view client information, make phone calls, or send follow-up letters. To setup the system you must specify a query that will show you past due clients. This query is then saved and used on a daily basis to show you your past due clients. Past-due letters are automatically sent using the automatic mail merge; and a journal will record your past contacts with a client.

Conflicts of Interest

The Trust Accounting capabilities of Orion are completely integrated with all other Orion applications. Since trust accounting is processed using the same standard screens, you are able to process trusts at the same time as other daily activities. This product is able to process seemingly unlimited numbers of trust transactions through several bank accounts. You are able to setup an unlimited number of Trust Bank Accounts for reconciliation. Additionally, each matter can have an unlimited number of trust bank accounts assigned to it. All balances and audit trails by matter are compiled and maintained by Orion, for each trust account. Trust Bank Account assignment is seamlessly integrated with Orion’s A/R Entry, Voucher Entry, Bank Reconciliation and various inquiries and reports. Finally, this product is able to generate your daily deposit, client matter ledger, and trust/retainer balance reports for a single account or all your trust accounts.

Contact Managment

This Contact Management application will completely manage and maintain your contact lists. All contacts are assigned a contact type, and can be associated with other contacts, cases and events. You are able to setup multiple addresses for each contact, allowing you to cascade address changes to primary and associated related contacts. This product is designed to give you all your contact information in one screen. It does this by putting the contract list on the left side of the screen, the contact detail on the right, and the relationships in the sub-panel.

Document Assembly

Document Assembly allows you to merge information from the system into any document. Each department of your firm can be given different custom fields, all information from these fields can be placed into a document during assembly. All created documents are associated back to the case and/or contact person, allowing your entire staff to view it at any point in the future.

Document Management

Orion’s Document Management application allows you and your staff to quickly and safely located and work with all forms of documents. This web-based document management solution will give you seamless integration with your office productivity software. This gives you the ability to automate the acquisition of documents and e-mails created by your firm. Retained links between emails and attachments keep important documents associated and accessible. Some additional features of this product are:

  • Full history of document versions, allowing you to view prior versions of any documents
  • Full text and field-level searching for rapid document/information location
  • Check in/Check out ensures document integrity
  • Add comments to documents, view other’s comments
  • Document-level group access and hierarchical security settings
  • Progressive or batch loading of existing documents
  • Intuitive, non-intrusive user interface allows you to search results, recent documents, and messages. Document viewer allows your staff to view documents. The filing wizard will automate the organization of your documents within the system.
  • Document-centric messaging system
  • Assignable document review alert notes
  • Remote storage searching. Index a directory, then use the Records Explorer to locate your document
  • Powerful, yet simple administrative functions
  • Integration bridge to SQL, Access and other databases
  • Comprehensive plain-English Help system
  • Low cost of ownership and implementation

E-Mail Management

The E-mail Management application integrates with both Outlook and GroupWise. This product has the ability to relate incoming and outgoing e-mail with the proper contacts, case, and/or event - thereby providing you with a comprehensive, intelligent, and flexibly e-mail management system. Once e-mail is journalized, it is saved in your database and available to be viewed instantly, regardless of whether you deleted the e-mail from your e-mail application.

General Ledger

The General Ledger in Orion is a sophisticated management system that is automatically updated by all of the other accounting modules.

  • End-of-Period - The checklist procedure of Orion allows you to qucikly review all entries that will affect the chart of accounts.
  • Journal Entries - Recurring entries can be easily setup, and all other entries are stamped for entry and edits by ID, date and time. Most entries to the Journal however are made automatically. For special instructions or information recording, all transactions can have memos attached to them.
  • Account Status - The account status gives you the ability to perform powerful inquiries inot your financial data. You can create comparisons between accounts or use the drill-down capabilities to view any details. All information can be exported to popular spreadsheet programs.
  • Financial Statements - With Orion you have an unlimited number of financial statement formats.

Marketing

Orion Marketing Management is your complete solution to pulling together disparate databases that have been used for seminars, holiday cards, firm announcements, etc. This application allows you to track whom you sent marketing materials to, and if that person took advantage of the item, service, or materials being marketed. This product will also allow you to store vital marketing information from individuals, such as: spouse name, favorite restaurants, annual sales volume, officers/board of director’s names, memberships, etc.) All tabs and fields within the systems are customizable, allowing you to track whatever information you desire. Document management integration gives you the ability to do mass mailings and email blasts customized to individual contacts.

Records Management

The Orion Records Management System will give you total control over the management of your legal files. All files are indexed in a database; retrievable by using the powerful search engine. To perform file record entry, you must simply search for an existing client matter and complete the fields (some defined by the system, and many more defined by you). All information you enter to a client matter is able be searched for, and multiple records can be stored for the same client using the “copy last” feature. This product features full Boolean logic, wildcard, and string searches.

Reporting System

The Orion Report Writer will give you consistent access to you data, in the format you need to make decisions. This product features of 100 standard reports, all with sorting, filtering, and detail options. The standard reports available will cover all aspects of your business (accounting, firm management, staff productivity, audit trails and financial statements). You are also given the option of creating report batches (a list of reports to run and complete automatically) to save time. All reports can be previewed and allow for printing of the entire report or only the sections you specify.

The Report Writer application in Orion also gives you many options in exporting your reports. If you want to further analyze information on a report, or graph it; use the report grid to automatically format it into rows and columns. This can the be exported to programs like Excel, Quattro Pro, and Lotus. If you need to make notes on a report you can simply export it to your word processor. Additionally, for any other application, this product can export your report in a standard CSV text file for export.

Time Management

Time Management is your complete software solution for managing time and clients. This application allows you to easily record time within the system, allowing Timekeepers to quickly review personal productivity information based on billed or non-billed time, budgets, and non-billable time.

This product allows you to easily enter and edit time, with look-up capability. This product allows you to enter an unlimited number of “stop the watch smart timers,” allowing you to work on multiple projects in a single day. All time entries can be sorted or filtered by Timekeeper, Client, Work Date, Entry Person or Entry Date. Additionally you can tag multiple transactions to make global changes to entries, in one step. Your Timekeepers can also easily review time entries in a calendar based format. You are able to display Original Values, Billed Values, Non-Billable Time, Write Up/Down Analysis, Budget Comparisons and much more.

Trust Accounting

The Trust Accounting capabilities of Orion are completely integrated with all other Orion applications. Since trust accounting is processed using the same standard screens, you are able to process trusts at the same time as other daily activities. This product is able to process seemingly unlimited numbers of trust transactions through several bank accounts. You are able to setup an unlimited number of Trust Bank Accounts for reconciliation. Additionally, each matter can have an unlimited number of trust bank accounts assigned to it. All balances and audit trails by matter are compiled and maintained by Orion, for each trust account. Trust Bank Account assignment is seamlessly integrated with Orion’s A/R Entry, Voucher Entry, Bank Reconciliation and various inquiries and reports. Finally, this product is able to generate your daily deposit, client matter ledger, and trust/retainer balance reports for a single account or all your trust accounts.

Product Overview

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User Reviews of Orion

★★★★★
★★★★★
Submitted on September 1st, 2014 by Anonymous

Basic practice management tools, poorly implemented, with abysmal UI. Looks like a Win 95 program that’s barely been updated. Have to open and scroll through lines in at least three new windows to make one time entry—just pitiful. No pull-downs, no type-ahead/predictive text. The DOS version of Juris (used @ 15 years ago) was more efficient. TimeMatters @ 7 years ago was vastly better. Making an entry in Orion often takes more time than the task being recorded. It’s also not at all clear if you’re seeing all the billing entries in a matter or only some of them in the Matter Status module. That appears to be a permissions issue, but there’s nothing to indicate that’s why one doesn’t see everything and/or what to do about it. Virtually no openly available help or support—everything has to be pre-arranged and no doubt carries significant cost. Seriously, can they not even put on a web page how to make one’s own case list, so one can do that non-billable task during off hours? This dev needs to step up or users need to step off.

The Good…

It’s barely adequate. So nothing, really.

The Bad…

UI