The role
Clifford Chance's Finance team is at the heart of its strategy. The department is involved in managing accounts, budgets and forecasts, providing trend and competitor analysis and other statistical support for partner presentations, as well as cash management, remuneration and internal audit, ultimately ensuring that the firm is compliant, efficient and profitable.
You will be assisting the London billing team in issuing bills by doing a multitude of tasks in order for a bill to successfully be issued and paid. We have a monthly target across London.
Our strength comes from our teamwork and working together as a highly talented and collaborative team.
Who you will work with
The billing function in London supports all partners in the London office and assists with the management of their work in progress with the purpose of drafting and issuing bills. You will predominantly be working with Partners, Managing Associates, Practice Assistants, Billing Advisors and Warsaw Billing Assistants and to a lesser extent the Client Centric Billers and eBilling Team and our Delhi Finance Team.
What you will be responsible for
The specific purpose of this role is to provide assistance and support to the partners and the billing team within the London Office. The role is extremely busy, and you will be required to adhere to firm policies and procedures. You need to be able to work independently as well as part of a team and be able to work to tight deadlines.
What you will do
Support and guidance to Partners.
As you will be assisting up to 15 partners you need to be able to prioritise your workload effectively and be able to interpret various instructions. You will find you have exceptionally busy periods, particularly the last week of each month, quarter ends and year end, when overtime will be expected in accordance with our overtime policy.
Operational Activities
- Partner/ Managing Associate Billing Meetings
- Ensuring new matters are set up in line with client agreements
- Conducting finance review and input stages in Intapp
- Ensuring bills are prepared in accordance with client agreements and the firms processes
- Amending, authorising, finalising and emailing bills
- Collating documentation to go with bills
- Monitoring and actioning requests received via email
- Day-to-day billing support of the Partners
- Updating information within GPMS/Intapp
- Interacting with Partners, Fee Earners and Practice Assistants
- Chase outstanding draft bills (to include outstanding timesheets)
- Producing periodic reports
- Ad-hoc queries
- Escalation of issues/problems
Tasks
- Amend attachments/breakdowns (transfers / time splits) as part of the billing process
- Prepare Matter Review Reports and Matching Excel Reports
- Prepare pre bill guides / draft invoices / breakdowns
- Amend pre bill / draft invoices / breakdowns
- Update matters from ebilling validation report
- Reviewing, updating the WIP tool to assist and support billing forecasts in achieving monthly billing targets
- Deliver bills (including CC Worldwide bills) and ebills in the correct format
- PDF of bills
- Collating and filing all bill papers in the relevant network drive
- Time/costs transfers and write offs in accordance with the Clifford Chance policy
- Cancel invoices, produce credit notes and reissue bills (same day) where applicable
- Collating and filing cancelled bill papers and applicable credit notes in the relevant network drive
- Follow up with Partners/Managing Associates for drafts / settled bills
- Viewing detail within matter financials
- Liaise with offshore team on specific billing tasks
- Deliver a collaborative and pro-active approach in working with the collections team throughout the billing and collections process
Reports
- Run WIP reports via the Partner Dashboards
- Run and review open draft reports for your partners
- Run and review matching anticipated report for your partners
- Run and review prebill time report for your partners
- Diarise to run specific prebill guides and/or matter review reports
Report matter financials
- Time and costs on clock (identify standard rate and contract rate)
- Outstanding invoices (where applicable to billing process)
Intapp/Matter Maintenance
- Update phases and tasks
- Add / Remove quoted fee detail
- Update rates, by either a rate set or applying project specific rates
- Update billing address, tax/zero rated, print formats, workflow person
- Matter discounts
- Update purchase order numbers, payable by info, client reference, cost number and any other info that is client specific
Escalation
- Providing timely and accurate feedback to the Billing Manager or Assistant Billing Manager
- Escalation of issues/problems/concerns to the Billing Manager or Assistant Billing Manager
- Assigning tasks to the Warsaw Billing Assistants (where applicable)
- Assisting with the identification of Client reporting requirements
- Various adhoc queries and problem solving.