December 14th, 2023

What’s New

• In Report Builder, we've added 'Matter Start Date' filter on the All Matters template. This provides much easier visibility into the start date of selected Matters. 
• On the Attorney Dashboard, we added the invoice number to the pop-up notification as a secondary verification when approving an Invoice. This will ensure you are taking action on the correct invoice.

Bug Fixes

• We identified & resolved an issue whereby some invoices were not visible to approvers in the Attorney Dashboard.
• For MS Outlook users, the Brightflag add-on experienced some difficulty for users with SSO configured. This has now been resolved.
• We identified and resolved a number of small bugs across our platform.

November 23rd, 2023

What’s New

• Introducing Quick Search, a new search bar at the top of your screen lets you quickly search for matters, invoices, and timekeepers. To learn more about this new feature, click here.
• We've added two new data columns to the User Management page: Back-up Approver and Approval Limit. The addition of these columns will help admins get the data they need to assist with auditing and general user management responsibilities.  

Bug Fixes

• In some unique scenarios, the auto-rejection email failed to send an email to the AP Accounts email address, which has now been resolved.
• We identified and resolved a number of small bugs across our platform.

November 13th, 2023

What’s New

• We've introduced a new Quick Invoice Approval feature, allowing non-admin users to select multiple pending invoices for approval in a few simple clicks, helping to streamline the approval process.
• In Report Builder, we've added the following columns to reports:
  • Auto-Proccessed added to the Invoice Report - this field will help you to identify invoices that have been automatically approved or rejected based on your automatic invoice processing rules.
  • "Matter create date" and "Matter Group' have been added to the invoice report.
• In Workspace, you can now select the relevant Workroom Template before creating the Workroom

Bug Fixes

• We identified and resolved an issue where the law firm office names were not displaying correctly.
• In some rare situations, invoices had errors going through the batch API.
• Some report fields displayed errors, which were identified and resolved with minimum impact.

October 11th, 2023

What’s New

• We've updated some of the wording for the Column Titles in the Matter Spend vs Budget report to describe better what the data represents:
  • 'Budget Amount' is changed to 'Budget in Period'
  • 'Actual Amount' is changed to 'Spend in Period'
• For the new Accruals report, we've added 'Allocations' data to this report, giving you more detailed information to analyze law firm accruals.
• We've also updated the Date and time format in a number of locations across Brightflag, to ensure the format is consistent to the settings on your web browser.

Bug Fixes

• In some rare situations, errors were shown incorrectly on some approved timekeeper rates.
• Across our platform, we identified a number of small, less impactful bugs which will improve user experience.

September 13th, 2023

What’s New

• We've updated matter budgets to include two new options for periodic budgets: Life-of-Matter and Phased. This gives you more granularity and better visibility over where your spend is allocated. You also have the ability to run a Matter budget vs. spend budget report on these budget styles. See here.
• There are additional and updated flags available regarding the updates to budgets, including matter budgets and vendor-specific budgets.
• The Accruals Review page now includes Prior Periods Unbilled

Bug Fixes

• Updated how invoices process auto-rejection flags and their criteria to increase performance.
• Identified a situation where the URL to complete the diversity survey was not opening for some users.
• Resolved an issue where the API was not returning vendor office details when prompted.
• Minor display updates to dropdown options in the report scheduler.

August 23rd, 2023

What’s New

• We've made some enhancements to the default currency for law firms submitting LEDES 98B invoices. Where law firms have defined their default currency on their home page, any LEDES 98B invoices they upload will automatically apply this default currency. This will help reduce friction between law firms and clients for 98B invoices.

Bug Fixes

• In some situations, matter budgets did not display the end-month. 
• We identified some rare situations where scheduled reports had issues when accruals settings were changed.
• Some minor bugs were resolved in the report builder.

August 2nd, 2023

What’s New

• We've added new data columns to the Timekeeper report in Brightflag's Report Builder to include Timekeeper ID and Matter Name.

Bug Fixes

• In some situations, timekeeper roles displayed an incorrect error when viewing the current rate on the invoice review screen.
• When law firms upload Timekeeper rates, we resolved a bug to ensure timekeeper rates are uploaded to Brightflag correctly.
• We identified and resolved an issue where some new law firm users being added to Brightflag, did not receive the welcome email.

July 04th, 2023

What’s New

• On the Matter Summary page, we've added the ability to see the Budget/Matter spend when there is no budget set, providing quick and easy insights into how your Budget or Matter is performing.

Bug Fixes

• We've identified and resolved some small issues across our platform that optimizes the resolution of your screen when viewing Brightflag.
• In the Report Builder, we resolved a small number of bugs impacting how some users viewed their report data on the screen.
• For LEDES invoice upload, we resolved some small bugs that improved the quality of invoice submissions for law firms.

June 21st, 2023

What’s New

• On the Matter Summary page, we've added a new data point; Matter Spend. This is particularly useful for matters with no budget set, and includes both pending & approved invoices. 
• For law firms Bulk Updating Timekeeper Rates, a new pending rate for an existing timekeeper will only be submitted when a value changes other than the Timekeeper ID.

Bug Fixes

• In rare cases when invoices were auto-rejected, we resolved an issue where a green tick was displayed instead of a red one.
• We resolved an issue whereby some admin users had difficulty adding new users to the platform.
• Some law firm users incorrectly received an error when uploading a LEDES invoice when a space was in the file's header.

May 23rd, 2023

What’s New

• When Exporting Vendor Details on the Vendor Management page, the Excel download now includes two sheets; sheet 1 lists all law firms, and sheet 2 lists all vendor users.
  
• We've made several minor design changes across the platform.

Bug Fixes

• In some scenarios, the current timekeeper rate showed errors on the Timekeeper history page.
• We've updated the flag text for timekeeper flags to ensure it shows correctly.
• We've made some minor design changes on the invoice review page, to improve the user experience.
• Across the platform, we've identified and resolved a small number of bugs.

May 03rd, 2023

What’s New

• Bightflag AI: We've added a new flag, Repetitious Work Across Separate Invoices, that captures repeated individual narrative lines across invoices from the same matter and vendor. This new flag will help capture work already billed by the same vendor in a particular matter.
• We have added Dynamic URLs on the invoice search page, which lets you share search parameters with colleagues for easier collaboration.
• The Brightflag Dashboard: Today, we've released The Brightflag Dashboard to all client users, which is the first thing all client users will see when logging into Brightflag. Previously only available to Admin users, this dashboard includes invoices awaiting your review and a list of your open matters for all non-admin users.

Bug Fixes

• In some situations, updating vendor office information returned an error. This is now resolved.
• We've identified and resolved an issue; in some rare scenarios, users could not set the relevant PO when updating a LEDES invoice.
• We resolved an issue where some users received an error when attempting to upload multiple LEDES files in bulk.
• Across our platform, we've identified a number of small functional & visual bugs to help the overall user experience.

April 05th, 2023

What’s New

• We have added the ability to Export a List of all Law Firms to the Vendor Management page, enabling client users to download a list of all their law firms, making it easier to report on your vendors.
• As part of our continued enhancements to Report Builder, we have added a new column, Gross Less Tax, to Brightflags Report Builder, with provides greater insight into Gross Totals when taxes are excluded.
• We've launched a new Accruals Report Template, currently only in Beta for selected users. Keep an eye on this Release Notes page for more details on the general release.

Bug Fixes

• We identified and resolved an issue where the Timekeeper flag appeared incorrectly on some invoices.
• In rare instances, vendor users received an error incorrectly when attempting to upload LEDES invoices. This issue has been resolved.
• In some scenarios where accruals were submitted, they should have shown on the Matter Details page. This has been resolved.
• Across our platform, we've resolved some low-impact bugs and made general visual improvements.

March 14th, 2023

What’s New

• We've enhanced our invoice review capabilities by adding a new Invoice Review Flag, Matter Budget Fiscal Year Overrun. This gives clients greater control when an invoice is set to exceed a fiscal year budget and helps prevent further invoices from being processed when a fiscal year budget has already been exceeded.
• We've updated the Timekeeper Review page to default to today's date when the page is opened. This gives a more relevant view to show Timekeeper rates that are currently in effect and already approved.

Bug Fixes

• We resolved a minor issue on the law form portal where some vendors received a tax/vat error when uploading invoices.
• We identified and resolved a minor issue with an invoice flag not appearing correctly.
• We've identified & resolved a number of small bugs across the Brightflag platform.

February 20th, 2023

What’s New

• We have released the new Attorney Dashboard, making it quick and easy for non-admin users to quickly and easily see how work is progressing on Brightflag.
• Users can quickly: 
  • • View invoices awaiting their review.
    • View matters they are leading.
    • Invoices and matters can be exported from the Dashboard. 
• We further enhanced the new Timekeeper functionality, including:
  • Improved sorting functionality across all tabs and on the timekeeper history page.
  • Providing the ability to export on all tabs.
  • Providing the ability to approve and adjust timekeeper rates.

Bug Fixes

• We resolved a minor issue which was causing an error at budget submission.

February 6th, 2023

What’s New

• We added two new fields to the Timekeeper review page to make it easier to identify the vendor user that submitted the timekeeper request and the date the client user reviewed it:
  • Requested by
  • Reviewed date
• For bulk reviewing Timekeeper rates, we've added a new step in the bulk approval process to add a comment. This comment will apply to all rates bulk approved or rejected in this action.
• We've improved the user experience of the Report Builder:
  • Reports can now be sorted by:
    • Date Updated
    • Last Run
  • There is now validation of email addresses to ensure the correct format is entered before a report is run. 
• New flags have been introduced to detect budget overrun in a specific phase or quarter, and by a specific vendor:
  • Matter budget phased overrun (overall phase level)
  • Quarterly overrun 
    
    • Matter budget quarterly overrun 
    • Vendor budget quarterly overrun 
• We've made design changes across the platform by updating several pages to our modern interface, improving the overall user experience.
  • This includes a new UI on the Legal Entities and Departments pages, along with the ability to sort by headers.

Bug Fixes

• We've resolved a minor issue where options on the Legal Service Request form were not populating.
• We've resolved some minor bugs in the report builder to improve the overall user experience. 
• Vendors can now submit rate requests with effective dates when submitting Timekeeper Rates in the future.
• We've resolved an issue which caused credit notes imported from LEDES files to default to a zero value once approved.