Know your estimates — and stay on top of them
21 July 2026 · Tom
Hi everyone — this release is all about estimates. There’s a new Estimation Dashboard for firm owners and practice leads to see how accurate the firm’s estimates really are, and a new widget that warns fee earners the moment a matter’s fees start creeping toward the estimate. Here’s what’s shipped.
The Estimation Dashboard — how accurate are your estimates?
A new Estimation Dashboard lets anyone with Company menu access review the firm’s estimation accuracy across matter type, fee earner, and team. For each, you see the average estimate, average collected (excluding credits), and the average uncollected billables left on closed matters. It answers a question the firm couldn’t see before: how accurate your estimates are, and what the inaccuracy is costing you in billable fees you never collected.
Filters — set the closed-date range and view by matter type, fee earner, or team.
Average billables collected — per group: the bar is what you collected (purple) plus uncollected billables (yellow); the line marks your average estimate.
Closed matters summary — the same story as a table: estimate, billables, collected, and the gaps between them.
- Find it under Company in the menu — built for firm owners and practice leads.
- Read the chart at a glance: the goal is an all-purple bar with the estimate line sitting right at the top. Yellow is billable work you didn’t collect; a line above the bar means you under-collected against your own estimate.
- Break the view down by matter type, fee earner, or team to see where estimation is tight and where it drifts.
This is a first cut, and we want your input
Tell us what else you’d want to see here and how you’d like to drill into the data — this page will grow on the back of your feedback. One known gap: Actionstep firms often map estimates using a custom field on their matters, and we don’t support that mapping yet. We’re working on it — so if your estimates look off, that’s likely why.
Coming soon
Matter Profitability — profit per matter, laddered up to matter type and client — is on its way, bringing a deeper profitability view to this part of the product.
Fees approaching estimate — a heads-up before you go over
A new widget on My Portfolio flags matters where your fees are approaching the estimate, for every file you’re responsible for. It surfaces a matter once fees hit 75% of estimate, with a separate tab for matters already over. If a matter’s fine — approaching but won’t exceed — snooze it for a set number of days or indefinitely, and review your snoozed list any time. It gives responsible fee earners the warning they need to either keep a file under estimate or get to the client in good time. When a file goes over without that conversation, it’s far more likely to end in discounts and credits.
- Available to all staff with Standard access, at the bottom right of My Portfolio.
- Matters appear at 75% of estimate; a separate tab lists those already over.
- Snooze a matter that’s fine — for a number of days, or indefinitely — and review snoozed matters whenever you like.
How “responsible” is decided
We read matter ownership from your PMS: the Responsible participant in Smokeball, and Assigned To in Actionstep. We know some Actionstep firms use a different participant type to mark ownership — so we’re building a way to remap that across your whole system, and hope to have it out soon.
Both of these came from conversations with you about estimates slipping and fees going uncollected. Keep telling us what you need — especially on the dashboard, where your input shapes what comes next. We are listening.
Tom