How much time does chasing cost your firm?

Most firms know chasing clients for documents takes time. Few know how much. It's spread across the day in two-minute emails and five-minute calls, so it never shows up as one big job.

This guide shows how to measure chasing time in your own firm over two weeks, with nothing more than a tally sheet. It then turns the total into a cost and helps you pick what to change first. A worked example runs through each step.

What counts as chasing

Chasing is any time spent getting a client to send something you've already asked for. Before you start counting, agree what's in and what's out, so everyone's sheet means the same thing.

Count these:

• Reminder emails. Writing, finding the thread, checking what to list, and sending.
• Calls. Including voicemails, calls that don't connect and the note you write afterwards.
• Other messages. Texts or chat messages to clients from work phones or accounts.
• Checking what's missing. Going through folders, inboxes or a spreadsheet to work out what a client still owes you.
• Asking for replacements. Telling a client a file is the wrong one and what you need instead.
• Chasing inside the firm. "Has the Patel file come in yet?" counts, for both people.

Don't count reviewing documents once they arrive, or the work you do with them. That time is the job, not the chasing.

How to measure chasing time: a two-week tally sheet

Two weeks is long enough to smooth out a quiet day and short enough that people keep it up. You don't need software. A sheet of paper by each desk or a shared spreadsheet both work.

1. 1

   Pick two ordinary weeks

   Avoid a filing deadline week and anyone's holiday, unless you want to measure the busy season on purpose. If you do, measure a quiet fortnight too, so you can compare.

2. 2

   Give everyone who chases a sheet

   That's anyone who emails, calls or messages clients about missing documents, including partners and admin staff.

3. 3

   Write one line per chase

   Note the date, the client, the type of chase and the minutes it took. Round to the nearest minute, and write 1 for anything quicker.

4. 4

   Don't change anything yet

   Chase the way you always do. If people chase less because they're counting, the total will be too low.

5. 5

   Add it up each Friday

   Total the minutes by type and by person. Two weekly totals are easier to check than one at the end.

Here's a sheet you can copy into a spreadsheet or print.

CHASING TALLY SHEET
Name: [your name]          Weeks: [start date] to [end date]

Types: E = email   C = call   M = other message
       K = checking what's missing   R = asking for a replacement
       I = chasing inside the firm

Date     | Client            | Type | Minutes | Note
---------|-------------------|------|---------|------------------------
[date]   | [client name]     | E    | 4       | [what you asked for]
[date]   | [client name]     | C    | 7       | [voicemail, called back]
         |                   |      |         |

Week 1 total minutes: ____    Week 2 total minutes: ____

The note column matters more than it looks. When you read the sheets back, it tells you why the chase happened, and that's what you'll fix.

A worked example

Imagine a three-person firm keeps the tally for two ordinary weeks. At the end, the sheets add up like this.

That's 600 minutes, or 10 hours, over two weeks. None of it was a single long task. The longest single chase on any sheet was 15 minutes.

The note column showed two patterns. Most of the checking happened because nobody could see at a glance what each client still owed. And a third of the replacement requests were for bank statements covering the wrong months.

Turn it into a cost

The total in hours is the useful number. A cost puts it in terms your partners or managers already use.

Multiply the hours by an hourly rate. Pick one of these and say which you used:

• What the hour costs you. Pay plus a share of overheads, divided by hours worked. This shows what chasing costs to do.
• What you could bill for the hour. This shows the work you could be doing instead. It's usually the higher figure.

Use the rate for the people who actually do the chasing. If a partner does a share of it, cost that share at the partner's rate.

In the example, say the firm uses a cost of $60 an hour for the staff who chase:

Be careful with the last line. If you measured a quiet fortnight, the year will be higher. If you measured the busy season, it will be lower. Measuring one of each and averaging them gives a fairer picture.

What to change first

Start with the biggest line on the sheet, not the most annoying one. Then use the notes to find the cause.

• Lots of emails to the same clients. The first request probably wasn't clear enough. Send one list, with plain names, a due date and one place to send everything. Our document request email templates show how.
• Reminders sent whenever someone remembered. Decide the schedule before you send the request, so every client hears from you on the same days. See how to set a reminder schedule.
• A lot of time checking what's missing. Keep one record per client of what's been asked for and what's arrived, in one place the whole team can see.
• Many replacement requests. Describe each document more exactly: the account, the period and what a good copy looks like. See what to do when clients send the wrong documents.
• Calls after several unanswered emails. Call sooner. If a client hasn't replied to two reminders, a third email rarely does better than a short call.

Change one or two things, not everything. Then keep the tally for another two ordinary weeks and compare the totals. That tells you whether the change worked, and gives you a real number to report.

How to do this in GarnerDocs

GarnerDocs doesn't track your team's time, so keep the tally sheet. The Reports page shows what's happening with your requests, which helps you read the sheet and check whether a change worked.

• Five figures for any period. Requests sent, requests completed, documents received, average days to complete and the share completed on time. Each is compared with the previous period.
• Reminder effectiveness. Of the reminders sent in the period, the share followed by an upload to the same request within 48 hours. It's broken down by reminder step, with manual reminders shown separately.
• Slowest clients. Up to five clients with requests past their due date today, ranked by average days overdue. These are often the calls on your tally sheet.
• A weekly trend. Requests completed per week for the 12 weeks up to the end of the period, so you can see a before and after.
• By team member and Export CSV, on Pro. Each person's active and overdue requests, and every request sent in the period as a spreadsheet.

How Reports work