Sage Timeslips vs TimeSolv: Law Firm Billing 2026

The choice is the bill, not the logo

Legal time and billing software records who worked, on which matter, for how long, and at which rate, then turns that record into an invoice the firm can collect. Sage Timeslips and TimeSolv both still do that job under those names. Neither product has been discontinued, renamed, or folded into the other. Sage still sells Timeslips as a desktop line and as a separate cloud subscription. TimeSolv is not a Sage product.

Annual invoicing: over $20 billion according to LawNext (2025), which reports that ProfitSolv was formed in 2020, acquired TimeSolv that year, and said it serves approximately 21,000 businesses. That parent also owns other practice systems. Timeslips remains on Sage's own pricing page. A search that puts both names in one query is comparing a Sage desktop billing engine, plus a thinner Sage cloud option, with a ProfitSolv cloud billing product that has a legal plan and a lighter professional plan.

TL;DR: Stay with the Timeslips desktop line if the firm wants slip-based billing, a large report library, and client-funds tools inside software it already knows, and if it will accept a starting annual license plus a quote for every added seat. Choose the Legal plan on TimeSolv if the firm wants a published per-user cloud price, trust tools with three-way reconciliation, LEDES billing, and a conflict check on the same plan. Use the Sage cloud subscription only when the firm truly does not need an accounting integration. Do not buy the lighter TimeSolv plan and assume the legal controls come with it.

Key Takeaways

• Both products are current. Timeslips is still sold by Sage in a desktop line and a cloud subscription. TimeSolv is owned by ProfitSolv, which acquired it in 2020, and it is not a Sage module.

• The desktop starting prices are public, and so is the cloud per-user rate on the Sage side. Added desktop licenses are not priced on the page, so a multi-user desktop total is Quote-based past the first license.

• The Legal plan on TimeSolv shows $58 per user per month and $44 per user per month on an annual display, next to a stated 25% first-year annual discount. The lighter plan's subscription rate is not printed on the pricing grid, so that rate is Quote-based.

• LEDES export, QuickBooks, and custom reports sit on the higher desktop plans, not the single-license starter. Trust accounting, LEDES, and conflict checks sit on the Legal plan, not the lighter TimeSolv plan.

• Client money is the sharpest split in what the vendors publish. Timeslips documents a Client Funds account that can pay time and expenses. The TimeSolv legal page documents trust accounting, automatic trust transfers, and three-way reconciliation.

• A four-user cloud comparison using only printed rates is $1,812 a year on the Sage cloud subscription and $2,112 a year on the annual Legal figure. That $300 gap is software cost, not collected fees, and it assumes the printed rates with no volume deal.

Who this is for

This comparison is for a managing partner or operations lead at a small or mid-size firm who already knows the shortlist is Timeslips versus TimeSolv and needs the plan-level answer. It fits firms that bill hourly, flat, or split work, hold client money, send bills to corporate or insurance clients, or push totals into QuickBooks or a similar ledger. It also fits a firm that is tired of reconstructing the day on Friday and wants the billing record to survive a handoff into the accounting file.

Red flags: You need a full matter-management system, with court rules and a document system of record, and you will not actually run the firm from a billing product. You have no trust account, no LEDES clients, and no accounting handoff, so a shared sheet still matches the work. You cannot name the person who reviews a bill before a client sees it.

How we evaluated these billing tools

This comparison weights public evidence. The sources are the vendors' own pricing and plan grids, Sage's help articles for retainers and LEDES setup, TimeSolv's legal pricing page, a Software Advice comparison updated September 29, 2026, and LawNext's report on ProfitSolv. Nothing below is a hands-on test, a private benchmark, or a score invented to crown a winner. A weight is the share of the decision that item should get when a partner is close to signing. A public figure is the number that makes the criterion checkable.

Price clarity gets a quarter of the weight because a firm this close to buying should not have to guess the first-year outlay. Client money gets the next fifth because a wrong trust transfer is a license problem, not a formatting annoyance. LEDES and task codes get 15% because a rejected electronic bill delays cash even when the time was captured perfectly. The accounting handoff gets 15% because the books, not the billing screen, are what the accountant closes. Deployment gets 15% because a desktop install and a browser login are different projects for a firm without an IT bench. Published review scores get 10% because they are a signal from other buyers, not a substitute for the plan grid.

TimeSolv review score: 4.7/5 according to Software Advice (2026), from 647 reviews, compared with a Timeslips score of 3.9 from 261 reviews on a page updated September 29, 2026. On that comparison, ease of use is 4.6 against 3.7, value for money is 4.7 against 3.3, customer support is 4.8 against 3.2, functionality is 4.6 against 3.8, and the most common reviewer industry is legal at 71% for TimeSolv and 74% for Timeslips, according to Software Advice (2026). Those pairs are not a single score restated. Support, value, ease, and functionality are separate ratings, and the legal percentages describe who wrote the reviews.

The weights do not produce a combined trophy number. A firm with heavy LEDES work can rationally pick a lower review score if the required export is on the plan it can afford. A solo lawyer with no trust account and no accounting link can rationally pick the cheaper cloud subscription even though the review gap favors TimeSolv. The disqualifier is a missing control the firm actually uses, not a tenth of a point on a review site.

Prices printed on the vendor pages

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. None of these products has a stored price in our catalog, so every dollar figure below is a number printed on the vendor's own pricing page during this research. Where a page does not print a rate, the cell says Quote-based. Review sites list other starting prices. Those figures are not used here.

Starter annual start: $657/year according to Sage (2026), where the Standard plan is listed at $1,250 per year for a one-to-four license band, the Pro plan at $1,659 per year, the Elite plan at $1,851 per year, the annual Starter plan is also described as $55 per month billed annually, an Anywhere subscription is $46 for the first user each month and $35 for each added user each month, the desktop line includes 120+ report templates, and LEDES 98B export is listed from the Standard plan upward.

A zero in the Go column means that row's pricing grid does not include a Timeslips Go login. Go is the web and mobile companion for the desktop product, not a separate cloud product. The Anywhere rows are the cloud subscription, which does not use Go. Premium prices are starting prices. The page says added licenses cost less, but it does not print those seat prices, so any desktop total past the first license is Quote-based. Do not multiply $1,250 by four and treat the result as a quote.

Legal annual shown: $44/user/month according to TimeSolv (2026), which also displays $58 per user per month and states a 25% discount on the first year of an annual plan. The pricing page does not print a subscription dollar rate on the lighter Pro column, so that rate is Quote-based, and it says volume pricing for extra users is something to ask sales. The pricing page lists an intake and marketing add-on at $147 per month when billed annually for up to 3 users, or $177 month to month, and a website add-on at $149 per month billed annually or $159 month to month, and it offers a 10-day trial with no payment information required up front plus 25% off the first four months of a monthly plan, according to TimeSolv (2026). A separate payments add-on is described there without a subscription price, so that add-on is Quote-based. The page displays $44 beside the 25% first-year statement. It does not print a year-two annual rate, so the ongoing annual price after the promotion is Quote-based.

A four-user illustration using only those printed rates runs as follows. The Anywhere subscription costs $46 for the first user and $35 for each of the other three, which is $46 + $35 + $35 + $35 = $151 in a month and $151 × 12 = $1,812 across a year. The Legal plan's annual figure of $44 per user is $44 × 4 = $176 in a month and $176 × 12 = $2,112 across that year, which is $300 more than the Anywhere total. The same four users at the $58 monthly list price cost $58 × 4 = $232 in a month and $2,784 in a year, which is $972 more than Anywhere. None of those totals is the client bill. When approved lines reach QuickBooks Online, Intuit calculates Invoice.TotalAmt from the charges, allowances, and taxes and overwrites a total a sender tries to supply, and a taxable invoice is limited to 750 lines, according to Intuit (2026).

Read the $300 gap as software, not as savings from better capture. Four users on the annual Legal figure pay $25 more per month than four users on Anywhere. A single missed hour at a rate the firm already uses will dwarf that gap, which is why the plan contents in the next section matter more than the cloud price delta. The desktop starting prices cannot be dropped into this four-user table honestly, because Sage has not printed the second, third, and fourth license prices.

Plan limits that change the shortlist

The grids below separate what is listed from what is left blank. A blank is not proof that a capability is impossible. It is proof that the public plan page did not include it. For a partner about to sign, a blank on trust, LEDES, or QuickBooks is a question for the order form, not an assumption.

Two reading rules keep the matrix honest. First, the single-license desktop plan includes time capture, flat-fee arrangements, accounts receivable, payment integrations through AffiniPay products such as LawPay, and the 120+ templates. It does not list Go, electronic billing, QuickBooks, Sage 50cloud, custom reports, or scheduled backup. A firm that needs those controls is not a Starter buyer. Second, the lighter TimeSolv column lists time and expense tracking, split billing, batch invoicing, a client portal, QuickBooks, Xero, Outlook, Office 365, and LawPay. It does not check conflict search, LEDES, auto trust transfer, or trust accounting. A law firm that needs those controls is shopping the Legal column, even though that column's year-two price is Quote-based.

Support follows the same split. Desktop Starter lists chat. Standard and above add scheduled calls. Both TimeSolv columns list phone, email, chat, a dedicated account manager, and live onboarding and migration. The Software Advice support gap, 4.8 against 3.2, matches the shape of those published support lists, but it is still a review rating, not a promise about your ticket.

Where the desktop line still fits

Best fit for Timeslips is an established firm that already thinks in slips, wants the billing database on its own network, and will use the report library every month. Standard is the first desktop tier that lists QuickBooks, electronic billing, custom reports, one Go login, and a one-to-four license band, at a starting price of $1,250 per year. Pro adds split billing, fee allocation, and a second Go login, at a starting price of $1,659 per year. Elite adds undo across multiple bills, bill reminders, a week view, and a third Go login, at a starting price of $1,851 per year. Anywhere, at $46 then $35, is the fit only for a solo or very small team that wants browser billing and has no need for the accounting or payment links the pricing page says that subscription is not aimed at.

Limitations are plan gates, not rumors. Starter will frustrate a firm that discovers, after signup, that LEDES and QuickBooks begin on Standard. Anywhere will frustrate a firm that assumed the cloud login inherited the desktop integrations. Added seats are a sales conversation. Firms that want three-way trust reconciliation written on the product page will not find that phrase in the retainer article. That article describes a different, still real, control.

Implementation is a local database project for the desktop line. The firm installs on a workstation, or on a server or peer network once the plan allows it, and keeps backups on the schedule the plan includes. Standard and above include scheduled backup. Starter does not list it. A trial is offered from the pricing page. No public page reviewed here states how many days that trial lasts, so the trial length is Quote-based in the sense that it is unpublished. Migration effort depends on the age of the current database. This guide does not invent a week count.

Sage's setup article for LEDES 1998B, last modified on 24 March 2026, lists 8 steps and begins with an Audit House Suite install, according to Sage (2026). The later steps create custom fields, enter task, activity, and expense codes, map the format, set up clients and timekeepers, enter slips, and generate the file. A checkmark for electronic billing on Standard is the license to start that work. It is not a finished LEDES file. Firms that also need ABA task codes carried into the bill should budget the code list as its own setup, on whichever product they pick.

Client money inside Timeslips is a funds account, not a sentence of marketing. Sage's retainer article says the firm records an opening payment as a payment to the account, reviews charges with a pre-bill worksheet, and applies funds as a payment from the account. Automatic application can be limited to time charges, expense charges, both, or nothing. That is enough for many retainers. It is not the same published control as a three-way reconciliation. A partner who must show that trust, operating, and the bank statement agree should ask Sage whether that report exists before treating Client Funds as a full trust system. The article does not say it does.

A practical desktop month looks like this. Timekeepers enter slips at the desk, or through Go if the plan includes a login for them. At month end someone runs the pre-bill worksheet, decides which client funds to apply, and generates bills. If the client requires an electronic bill, the LEDES steps above have to be finished first, including the Audit House install. If the books live in QuickBooks, that link is a Standard-and-above feature, and someone still confirms the ledger total. The product can email payment receipts on Standard and above once a payment is entered. None of that removes the person who approves the bill.

Where the cloud legal plan fits

Best fit for TimeSolv is a firm that wants the billing record in a browser, with a mobile app, and wants trust, LEDES, conflict search, and QuickBooks listed on one plan rather than unlocked by a higher tier. The Legal column is that plan. It lists matter budgets, matter custom fields, calendaring, document management, batch invoicing, split billing, a client portal, flexible rates, and recurring payments, plus the legal controls the Pro column does not check. The about page places the company with ProfitSolv Purchaser, Inc., which matches the pricing-page copyright line and the 2020 acquisition LawNext reported. The sibling products under that parent matter only if the firm later wants a broader practice system. They are not included in the Legal subscription price printed here.

Limitations are the unpublished pieces. The Pro subscription rate is Quote-based. Volume discounts are Quote-based. The year-two annual rate, after the stated first-year 25% discount, is Quote-based. The $44 figure should be written into a budget as the annual price shown for year one, not as a permanent rate. Intake and website tools are extra, at the $147 and $149 annual amounts above, and they are optional. A firm that only needs time and billing should not feel pushed into those add-ons. A firm that needs the conflict check cannot get it by staying on Pro to avoid an add-on. It is on the Legal plan itself.

Implementation is a cloud subscription with a 10-day trial and no payment information required to start. The pricing FAQ says the subscription is pay as you go and that a long-term contract is not required. Both plan columns include live onboarding and migration. The public pages reviewed here do not promise a day count for that migration, so any "you will be live in a week" claim should be treated as a sales statement until it is on the order. Data leaving another billing product should be sampled, not assumed. Client names, matters, rates, and open balances need a human check after the load. Trust balances in particular should be reconciled to the bank before anyone bills against them in the new system.

A practical Legal-plan month looks like this. Lawyers enter time on the desktop, the phone, or offline, then sync. New matters can be scanned for conflicts because that check is on the plan. Task codes and LEDES formats are available for the clients that require them. Batch invoicing produces the run. Automatic trust transfer can move earned fees under the safeguards the legal page describes, including three-way reconciliation. Clients can pay from the invoice by card or ACH. QuickBooks or Xero is listed, so the books can receive the result, but the listing is not a description of every field that syncs. Someone who knows the chart of accounts still has to confirm the deposit account and the income account. For a wider look at legal billing tools that connect to QuickBooks, the connection is only as good as the map the firm maintains.

The lighter Pro plan remains a coherent product for consultants and other professional firms that do not hold trust money and do not file LEDES bills. It is a weak default for a law firm. The missing checks are the controls regulators and corporate clients ask about. Choosing it because the Legal price feels high, while the Pro price is not even published, is a guess in both directions.

From a time entry to a reviewed invoice

The painful hour is not the subscription. It is the gap after time is approved and before the accounting file shows the same total. Both products can hold the time. Both can, on the plans named above, hand something to QuickBooks. Neither public page is a field-by-field map of that handoff. Firms that already struggle to move time from email into the billing record will feel the gap twice: once when the narrative is reconstructed, and again when the invoice in the ledger does not match the pre-bill.

A configurable workflow proposed by US Tech Automations can start when a billing coordinator drops the week's unbilled export, or when a scheduled pull of that export finishes. The action reads each row, matches the matter to a QuickBooks customer, and builds a draft invoice with one sales line per approved task code. The output is an unsent draft plus an exception list for unknown clients, rate mismatches, and any row that touches trust. A person approves the draft before it is emailed. Prerequisites are an export or API from the billing product, QuickBooks Online access, and a written map from matter to customer. The workflow does not itself decide that a trust balance may move.

A second configurable step can watch for a payment recorded against that draft and compare the open balance with the original total. US Tech Automations would queue a trust or retainer application for the person who already reconciles client funds, instead of posting the transfer because a payment arrived. Prerequisites are a reviewed chart-of-accounts map and a rule that operating money and client money never share an automatic step. The human review point is the same person who would have clicked the payment-from-account step in Timeslips or approved an auto trust transfer on the Legal plan. This is a proposed design, not a reported deployment and not a measured time saving.

The same handoff is often built in Zapier, Make, or n8n, or written by someone on staff. Those tools can keep run histories, retries, error branches, and audit evidence when the firm configures them. The buyer then owns observability, idempotency, escalation, access control, and maintenance, including what happens when a matter number changes or a duplicate export arrives. A proposed US Tech Automations design can hold the matter map, refuse trust rows, and stop for approval before anyone treats Invoice.TotalAmt as final. It still needs the same prerequisites: a stable export, API credentials kept to the billing and accounting admins, and a named reviewer. It is the wrong layer if the native link already posts a clean bill and a person already checks it. Firms comparing practice systems rather than billing engines can see a related pattern in Clio time entry handed to QuickBooks Online, where the hard part is also the review, not the timer.

Words that show up on the bill

Slip means a time or expense entry in Timeslips. The pricing page talks about creating slips, attaching files to slips, and using a day view to avoid double billing. If your current system calls the same thing a time entry, the migration map needs that translation.

Matter means the case or project under a client. TimeSolv's grid uses matter custom fields and matter budgets. A client can have many matters, and rates, trust rules, and task codes often sit on the matter rather than on the person.

LEDES is the family of electronic bill formats corporate and insurance clients require. On the desktop grid the named export includes LEDES 98B, Litigation Advisor, and Tymetrix, from Standard upward. The Legal plan lists LEDES without printing every variant on the pricing page, so the exact format list is a question for sales if a client is picky.

Client funds, in the Timeslips retainer article, means money the client paid in advance, held in a funds account and applied later to time, expenses, both, or neither. Trust accounting, on the TimeSolv legal page, means client money kept apart from operating money, with automatic transfer controls and three-way reconciliation described.

A task code is the label on the work, often an ABA code when the bill must be electronic. Codes are setup data. They are not created by sending the first invoice.

A pre-bill is the internal review copy. The Timeslips article names a pre-bill worksheet as the place to see monthly charges before client funds are applied. Sending that worksheet to the client by accident is a process error, not a software feature.

Three-way reconciliation means showing that the trust ledger, the client's balances, and the bank statement agree. Only the TimeSolv legal page, among the sources reviewed here, uses that phrase. Do not assume a Client Funds balance is the same report.

Mistakes that survive the first demo

Treating TimeSolv as a Sage product wastes the first sales call. The owner, the contract, and the support desk are ProfitSolv's. Sage's phone number on the Timeslips pricing page will not administer a TimeSolv subscription.

Buying Starter because $657 is the lowest desktop figure, then discovering that LEDES and QuickBooks start on the $1,250 Standard tier, is the most expensive cheap plan in this comparison. The single license is real. The missing exports are also real.

Assuming the Anywhere subscription inherited QuickBooks, LawPay, and the report designer is the cloud version of that mistake. The pricing block aims that subscription at firms that do not need those integrations. The $46 price is attractive only inside that boundary.

Picking the lighter TimeSolv column to avoid the Legal price, then learning that trust, LEDES, and conflicts are unchecked, pushes the firm into a second project. Ask for the Pro rate in writing. Until then it is Quote-based, and the missing checks are not.

Multiplying a desktop starting price by the number of timekeepers invents a quote Sage did not publish. The four-user math in this guide is limited to Anywhere and to the Legal per-user figures because those rates are printed per user.

Treating $44 as the forever price ignores the first-year language on the page. Put year one and year two on separate lines in the budget. Year two stays Quote-based until a renewal figure is written down.

Letting any automation move client money because an invoice was paid skips the review both products still expect a person to perform. The native auto-apply settings exist so the firm can choose time, expenses, both, or nothing. "Nothing" is a valid setting for a reason.

Questions partners ask first

Is Sage Timeslips discontinued?

No. Sage's pricing page still sells a desktop line with Starter, Standard, Pro, and Elite, plus a cloud Anywhere subscription with published monthly rates.

Is TimeSolv a Sage product?

No. TimeSolv is part of ProfitSolv, which LawNext reports was formed in 2020 and acquired TimeSolv that year. The products remain separate, and the search query pairs a Sage name with a ProfitSolv name.

Which plan includes LEDES billing?

On Timeslips, LEDES 98B export is listed from the Standard plan upward, and Sage's setup article says the work starts by installing Audit House Suite. On TimeSolv, LEDES is checked on the Legal plan and not on Pro.

Does the Sage cloud subscription include QuickBooks?

No. The Anywhere pricing block is written for firms that do not need accounting or payment integrations. QuickBooks is listed on the desktop line from the Standard plan upward.

Is $44 per user the price after the first year?

The legal pricing page does not say that. It shows $44 per user per month on an annual display next to $58 and a stated 25% first-year discount, and it leaves the later renewal rate unpublished.

Can either product replace the accounting file?

No. On the plans that list it, each product can hand billing data to QuickBooks or, for TimeSolv, also to Xero. The general ledger, the tax return, and the trust bank reconciliation still need the accounting system and a person who owns them.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: skip an extra layer when the native QuickBooks link on Timeslips Standard or on the TimeSolv Legal plan already posts the accounts the bookkeeper accepts and a partner already reads every bill. Skip it when the firm sends few enough invoices that a person can retype them without a queue of exceptions. Skip it while a migration is unfinished and the export still changes shape, because an automation will faithfully replay bad rows. A simpler tool wins in those three cases.

Which firm should sign which order

Choose the Timeslips desktop line when the firm wants slips, the 120+ report templates, client funds applied inside the billing database, and a network install it controls. Choose Standard or above if LEDES or QuickBooks is part of the work, and get the added-license price in writing before you budget four seats. Choose Anywhere only for a small team whose entire need is cloud time and billing without those integrations, at $46 for the first user and $35 for each added user. Choose the Legal plan on TimeSolv when the firm wants the published per-user cloud price, trust language that includes three-way reconciliation, LEDES, a conflict check, and QuickBooks on the same plan, and when it will confirm the year-two rate before relying on $44. Choose Pro only if those legal controls are truly unnecessary. Leave either product, and leave any overlay, if you cannot name the reviewer who stops a bill or a trust transfer.

The subscription decision and the handoff decision are separate. A firm can pick the right plan and still lose fees between the pre-bill and the ledger. See how US Tech Automations configures this if the remaining work is the export, the customer map, and the review stop, after the plan itself is chosen.