Features and plans

Docavra is one system for every firm, from a sole practitioner to a firm of many offices. A small firm should not wade through screens built for a large one, so some parts are switched on only when the firm needs them. Settings, Firm, Features shows where the firm stands with each one. A part that is off is shown nowhere else: its menus, buttons and settings do not appear.

At the top, Plan shows the firm's plan and its seats. Below, the features are grouped (Firm and people, Clients and intake, Practice, Documents and mail, Time and work, Money). Search features finds one by name, and Show narrows the list to On, Off or Not available.

Three kinds of feature

• Included. Everything a practice needs to run and everything the law asks of it: matters, parties, intake, conflicts, KYC and reports to the FIC, deadlines and the court diary, documents, time, billing, the client account and its reconciliation, VAT and fiscalisation, data protection requests, the audit trail and export. These are in every plan and cannot be switched off.
• Switched on by the firm. Parts that make the screens heavier than a small firm's work needs, or that it may not use: several offices, departments, ethical walls, bill, document and timesheet approval, leave, rate cards, dunning, custom roles, custom fields, origination and referrals, website forms, the client portal, payments in the portal, online payments, text messages, electronic signature, document scanning, document tools, ledger dimensions, single sign-on and conveyancing, among others. Where the firm's plan includes one (each row says how the plans compare), a firm administrator switches it on or off here.
• Add-ons. Parts Docavra sells apart from the plan: a custom domain, the firm's own text message provider, its own email provider and dedicated storage. A firm that does not have one sees Paid add-on beside it and buys it under Settings, Firm, Subscription, Add-ons.

Each row also says what a feature needs. A feature that needs another reads Needs that feature, or Waits for it while the one it needs is off. A feature Docavra has withheld from the firm reads Withheld: ask support why.

Switching a feature on or off

Press the switch beside a feature, give a Reason and choose Switch on or Switch off. The reason, who switched it and when are shown under the feature and kept in the audit trail. Everyone's menus follow at once: a part that is off is not offered anywhere, whatever a person's role allows. Someone who does not hold the permission to switch features sees only a badge, such as On, Off or Included.

Switching a feature off never loses anything the firm has recorded. Where something still depends on it, Docavra refuses and says what is in the way:

• Several offices stays on while more than one office is open, and Secondments while a secondment runs.
• Departments stays on while a department has people or matters in it.
• Ethical walls stay on while a wall stands.
• Bill approval, Document approval and Timesheet approval stay on while something waits for a decision; document approval also while an approval route is kept.
• Several currencies stays on while a bill in another currency is owed or a bank account in another currency is in use.
• Intake pipelines stay on while a pipeline besides the default holds open enquiries or an assignment rule is on.
• Leave, Rate cards, Dunning, Retainers, Calendar sync and Mailbox connection stay on while a request waits, a card values work, a run is prepared, money is earmarked or a funds request is owed, or a calendar or mailbox is connected.
• A feature another one needs stays on until that one is switched off; Secondments, for instance, needs Several offices.

What the firm works with while a feature is off

• Document tools off. Document tags are not offered (Settings, Documents, Document tags is hidden) and the Documents workspace does not act on several documents at once: moving, tagging, categorising, marking or deleting them together.
• Ledger dimensions off. Posting dimensions, Financial statement layouts under Settings, Accounting and the Budgets tab under Ledger are not offered.
• Payments in the portal off. Clients cannot pay their bills from the portal; everything else in the portal stays.
• People directory off. People is the firm's user administration, for whoever manages users. Everyone else keeps their own page and still picks colleagues in a form.
• Bill approval off. The person posting a bill is its approval: a draft pre-bill posts as it stands, and a write-off applies at once.
• Intake pipelines off. Every enquiry starts on the firm's one default pipeline and its stages carry no due time.
• Several currencies off. The firm works in cedis; another currency is refused wherever one is chosen, and no exchange rates are fetched.
• Reports by office and department off. Reports go by firm, person and period.
• Email filing off. Mail forwarded to a matter's address is not kept.
• Calendar sync, matter budgets, time targets, task workflows and retainers off. Their scheduled work (pushing the diary, budget alerts, reminders for days with no time, laying out workflows, scheduled statements) does not run.
• A feature such as text messages, online payments or document scanning off. What was recorded with it stays readable; nothing new is made with it. Without SMS only sign-in codes go by text, and other texts are kept as not sent with the reason. Without Online payments bills and reminder letters carry no pay link. Without Document scanning scanned pages are not read for their words.

Plans and seats

The Plan section shows the firm's plan and how many of its seats are taken; the plan's price, renewal and invoices are under Settings, Firm, Subscription. Every person who may sign in to the console takes a seat, including someone invited who has not yet accepted. People who have left the firm, deactivated accounts and clients using the portal never do.

When every seat is taken, inviting someone new or reactivating an account is refused until a seat is free or the firm buys more. Nobody already signed in loses their place.

Until the firm chooses a plan, it has every feature and no cap on seats.