Gavel & Gown recently released an add-on to Outlook called “Credenza,” sometimes known as “Amicus Lite” or practice management software for people who don’t want to invest in practice management software. It is designed for up to 3 users (although that may be expanded a little) and costs $9.99 per user per month. So for 3 users, it would be $360 per year.
One of the central conceptual differences between Outlook and practice management software such as Amicus, Time Matters or Practice Master, is that Outlook is individual centric, whereas practice management software is matter-centric. In Outlook I see MY emails, calendar, tasks, etc. In practice management software all information is organized around the file or matter. I see all the emails, calendar items, tasks, etc. that are related to the matter, without regard to who has entered, sent or received them. This is obviously much more powerful than Outlook and you don’t have forward copies of emails, yell down the hall, etc. to find “missing” material.
Credenza is designed to overcome this problem by adding three modules to Outlook: Matters, Time sheets and Phone Messages. The Matters (or Files) module lets you link other pieces of Outlook to the Matter the way you would in a full-blown practice management system. Within the Matter you see tabs for Email, Time, Phone Messages, Appointments, Tasks, Notes, a Chron listing. You can even create a certain number of Custom Fields of various types (memo, number (but not currency), date, check box, drop-down lists). The options and structure of Credenza follow those of Amicus very closely, so a user wanting to upgrade to Amicus (as Gavel & Gown obviously hopes they will) would not have a major learning curve.
Links to your Outlook contact list, emails, etc. can be related to a given Matter. The functionality of Credenza is fairly limited. In particular, there are no links to billing and accounting packages (although you can export a list of time entries and then import it to a time & billing package) and no provisions for any document assembly (even simple things like fax cover sheets or retainer letters). However, many people use only a fraction of the functionality of Amicus, so this lack may not be perceived as a major issue.
Credenza adds two columns to the Outlook display: the name of the Matter with which a given email has been associated and whether or not a time entry has been made.
You can configure Credenza so that information from the various Outlook accounts are shared (with a current limit of 3 users) even if you are not using Exchange – which most firms with only 3 users would not be.
If you don’t what to invest significant time and money in a full-fledged practice management system,
and if you are willing to live with (or even prefer) an essentially “out of the box” implementation,
and if you have three or fewer users,
Credenza may be worth taking a look at.