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CostsMaster leads the way in providing the best legal costs drafting software products for costs lawyers and solicitors.

CostsMaster Draftsman is an intuitive software tool that lets you create accurately calculated, high quality costs budgets, breakdowns and bills of costs including electronic bills and CCMS online billing.

It can help you record work accurately and conveniently, with the ability to produce several different types of bills along with all the relevant schedules.

Work can be imported from a time recording system and then amended or excluded by the draftsman as appropriate.

Budgets can be monitored and the value of newly recorded work compared to the anticipated value of that work.

Full support for Precedent H phases, Electronic Bill phase, task & activities and LEDES J-Codes, with the ability to seamlessly swap between different systems.

The program has been written and extensively tested by experienced costs draftsmen. It allows you to record work with no more effort than would be required with pencil and paper, or to edit imported work with ease.

The software has been in use for many years and bills produced with it have been assessed in the SCCO and County Courts.

Key Features

Budgets

Produce budgets quickly with optional supporting documentation

Import Work

Import time and disbursements from time recording systems

Bills

Fast creation of electronic and column bills

Legal Aid

Create files for bulk upload to CCMS and VHCC case plans

Productivity

Increase productivity using the wide variety of tools available

Customisation

Personalise the way you work and how the bill is produced

Detailed Features

  • Import work from time recording systems via Excel or CSV files.
  • Easily map data to CostsMaster fields and save the mapping for future use
  • Quickly split bulk work into individual elements, add any missing work and exclude non-recoverable items
  • Import work from other CostsMaster files
  • Produce Precedent H budgets quickly in both Word & Excel with optional supporting documentation for the advocate at the hearing
  • Import opponents’ budget and produce a comparison
  • Manage Budgets simply and effectively and produce a report of how the current costs stack up against the budget
  • Produce both Costs Budget Discussion (precedent R) and Costs Budget Variation (Precedent T) documents.
  • Wide choice of bills in Precedent S electronic formats plus 3, 4, and 6 column formats
  • Fast creation of both Inter Partes and Legal Aid bills
  • Prepare bills by phase for budgeted cases
  • Get a fast indication of your likely recovery on assessment to assist in negotiations
  • Support for Court of Protection bills in both long and short forms, plus the electronic COP-E
  • Prepare breakdowns and Statements of Costs including Form N260
  • Produce Notices of Commencement of Detailed Assessment
  • Column bills are produced either with or without lines embedded. The line colour can be customised and there is an option for high quality lines which closely match that of printed paper.
  • Quickly produce a statement of fixed Costs (Precedent U) simply by selecting the various stages and factors that apply to your case.
  • Provide an explanation for any elements that require it.
  • Record disbursements and provide explanations for them also.
  • Support for CCMS for solicitors’ costs (with continued support for CLAIM1 & CLAIM1A for cases not migrated to CCMS)
  • Prepare standard and events-based case plans
  • Support for all PFLRS and CPGFS fixed fees and FAS.
  • Comprehensive facilities for recording enhancement
  • Schedules of inter partes costs at Legal Aid rates calculated automatically
  • Preview any document instantly
  • Display running totals for the bill or current part with options regarding the level of detail shown
  • With a few keystrokes, the rates used in a bill or budget can be changed and the bill recalculated in a matter of seconds.
  • A range of searches allow you to locate items that are blank or that have unassigned phases, estimated time or are excluded.
  • Create templates with frequently entered data to save you time when starting a new file.
  • Abbreviations can be defined for frequently used words and phrases which are immediately expanded to their full text – a huge time saver.
  • Record notes which can optionally appear as annotations in exported documents
  • Program functions can be accessed by mouse or by keyboard shortcut for speed when costing a file.
  • Safety features include timed auto saves and incremental backups to preserve data in the event of a system crash.
  • Use the History window to instantly revert to any point in the current session or any saved backup.
  • Save the contents of any grid to a CSV file for loading into Excel
  • Quickly locate items in grids using the comprehensive filter and sort options.
  • View attendances and disbursements from all parts in a single window
  • Extensive options determine the layout, content and wording of bills and other documents.
  • Choose which columns you want displayed in each grid (and the order in which they appear) whilst still being able to access lesser used fields via the edit window.
  • Claim attendances as time or a lump sum figure. Time can be entered interchangeably as minutes, units or hours and minutes and the program will automatically interpret the time you have recorded.
  • Claim VAT at different rates for each part
  • Easily aggregate work recorded against fee earners into a category or grade for the exported document. The draftsman has the flexibility to break down the work in any manner he wishes and to decide at any time how to present the work in the finished bill. All work can be reassigned to different fee earners at will.
  • Enhancement can be defined globally, for one or more defined periods, for all work done by a particular fee earner, for attendances on a particular party or for any other item you wish. Each attendance can be excluded as can all attendances on a particular party or all work by a particular fee earner. Separate enhancement can be defined for preparation items and procedural steps. Items which never attract enhancement are automatically excluded.
  • Costs of Assessment can be claimed and provision is made for fixed prescribed rate costs. The costs draftsman’s fee can be claimed as a percentage and is calculated automatically. The fee can be claimed as a disbursement, lump sum or pseudo-hourly rate profit cost, part by part or for the entire bill.
  • Operating System
    • Windows 7 onwards (including Windows Server)
  • Office Software for Bill Generation
    • Word 2007 onwards
    • Excel 2007 onwards (for Costs Budgets, Electronic Bills and Statements of Fixed Costs only)
      Note: 
      CostsMaster will create exported documents with any version of Office 365, but with online copies of Office 365 the ability to automatically view documents after export is dependent on Windows’ ability to launch the apps based on the relevant file extensions (.rtf, .xlsx). Should this not be possible to do automatically, it is always possible to view the files by launching the online application manually.
  • Display
    • 1024 x 768 Screen Resolution. Multiple Displays supported.
  • CPU
    • No special requirements. Any machine capable of running the supported operating systems should suffice. As with everything, the faster the machine, the better.
  • Memory
    • Minimum 512MB – 1GB Ram (1 – 2GB recommended) >
  • Hard Drive Space
    • 100 MB free space on your hard drive for the program

Happy Clients,
Great Reviews

Don’t just take our word for it, here are some testimonials from some of our valued customers.

More Reviews
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

It makes it so easy to prepare such a vast range of documents at the click of a button.

Melissa Aspin, John M Hayes
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

Almost certainly the most efficient drafting software currently available.

John Pickett, TM Costings
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

Made by Costs Lawyers for Costs Lawyers. Need I say more?

Anil Virji, Civil & Commercial