Hide Rates Overview

The new Hide Rates and Totals feature allows a firm to limit who is allowed to see the rates on billing entries as well as totals for billing entries and bills to prevent users from calculating their rate.

This is accomplished with 3 settings.

1. There is a sysadmin only system setting called “Hide Rates and Totals” that will turn on the feature for the site.
2. Then there is a new user permission “View Rates and Totals” which will allow that user to see rates and totals. This permission will always be defaulted to off for both normal users and admin.
3. Fields now have a new setting called “is Prohibited” this can be seen and set in the system settings > Item Manager. (Note this page is only accessible to users with the “Customize Centerbase” permission). Any field that is marked as prohibited will be hidden from users without “View Rates and Totals” when “Hide Rates and Totals” setting is on. This has no other effect on the system.

By default, we will be back filling all known rate and total fields to sites. And work is planned to have a system to make formula fields that use prohibited fields prohibited themselves. So, for now, each firm might need to add more fields to the starting list for custom formula fields. 

This being a setting that can be changed also allows firms to tweak the level of access to meet their needs.

At this stage the feature leans heavily on existing user permissions and record security and still has some limitations that I will go over at the end.

Pages Affected

Timesheet

For the Timesheet we are hiding several fields to prevent a user from seeing rates or totals of their entries. This is controled by the user permission “View Rates and Totals” so some users can see and other can not. Either way we still save the rate and total for the entries.

This page is hard coded to hide these fields so even if they were to remove rate from the prohibited fields it will not show here. This will change in the future to use the “is prohibited” field setting.

 

Timesheet without rates and totals:

Notes on what we removed:

Billing Entry Dialog

For the billing entry dialog, we will be hiding the rate and total fields. This too is hard coded, so it does not look at the “is prohibited” field yet.

There is no change to the expense tab on the dialog. Any user can set the rate and see the total of an expense.

Billing Entry Dialog without view rates and totals:

Notes on what was removed:

Dashboard

For the dashboard we have added permissions errors if a tile or chart either reports a prohibited field or uses a query that filters on a prohibited field. The reason for the query limitation is to prevent a user to making a query for something like ‘all my entries with a rate >500’ then >$400, etc. to find their rate.

Also, for the Beta MVP users without “View Rates and Totals” will not be able to access the widget library to add tiles and charts to their dashboard. This will be restored in the next wave.

Dashboard without view rates and totals:

Notes on what changed:

Data Tables

When going to any of our main record tables, prohibited fields users without “View Rates and Totals” will no longer be able to see columns for prohibited fields nor be able to set prohibited fields to be columns. This works even if the user is set to use the system default and default would normally include a prohibited field. Additionally, it will remove columns from the user’s default if a field is later marked prohibited.

Table without rates and totals

Column Settings without rates and totals

Table with notes on what changed

Column Settings with notes on what changed

Queries

For Queries we needed to do two things to prevent a user from looking for entries where rate is >200, then >250, etc. until they found their rate. First, we removed prohibited fields from the list of conditions a user can select. Second, we removed any preexisting queries from the list if any of their conditions used prohibited fields. This will help prevent a user determining their rate thought repeated queries.

Query list with hide rates and without

Query conditions without and without hide rates

User Settings

Minor update but we removed the user’s default rate from the user settings and made it no longer required when it is hidden.

Add-ins

We are still finishing the work on the add-ins but both old and new will hide the rate and total fields in the time entry dialogs for both word and outlook.

Mobile App

Users without “View Rates and totals” will not be able to login to the Mobile app. We have plans to update the mobile app in Q2.

Admin Tool

Users without “View Rates and totals” will not be able to login to the admin tool. We have no plans to ever allow that

Limitations and Requirements

Limitations

Currently, there have been no changes to many feature-specific meaning that those can’t be used without risking a user’s rate being revealed. These include:

• Pre-Bill approval
• Time Entry Approval
• Billable Events Dashboard
• Legacy Reporting
• Advanced Reporting
• Mobile App
• Form Layouts
• Formula Fields 
• Workflows (This should not be hindrance as prohibited fields are rarely on workflow forms.)

There are plans to make these compatible by the end of year through various means.

Other Required Settings

User Permissions

Users that are not being given “View Rates and Totals” need to also not have some other user permissions. The permissions and the reasons are list here:

1. Can Manage Billing
   1. This grants access to various locations that have rates and totals. Notably the matter ledger and matter dashboard.
2. Access Matter Metrics
   1. Matter Metrics includes WIP data 
3. Show Matter Dashboard
   1. This would show the WIP and Fees Received for the matter
4. Client Center
   1. No changes were made to the client center
5. Access General Accounting Functions
   1. Make Transfers to/From Trust
   2. Make Deposits
   3. Manage Billing Codes
      1. All of these could give access to payment information which contains bill totals
6. Access All Reports
   1. As we have no new checks on legacy reports this would grant them access to all reports many of which include rates and total information
7. Can Access Advanced Reports
   1. Advanced reports have not been updated yet and there could be reports that include rates or totals.

*Note on “Can create pre-bill previews” we already placed a double check on this so that those without view rates and totals (when hide rates and totals is on) can’t generate pre-bill previews.

Record Security

To prevent users from seeing rates and totals the users who will be making the following record types need to have their default security set to limit to users with view rates and totals permissions. Users without view rates and totals should not be allowed to create them.

• Payments
• Credits
• Bills
• Refunds
• Bank Deposits
• Trust Bank Transfers
• Trust Transactions

Other

In Reports >Tabs every tab that includes reports that have rates or totals needs to be either marked as not visible or have a list of user/groups to prevent users without view rates and totals from seeing the tabs or the reports on them.