Field note
What a matter ageing chart should actually show
Ageing is not a traffic light. It is a conversation about last chargeable hour, last client letter, and whether the file is waiting on the other side.
An ageing chart that only colours files red after ninety days tells a partnership almost nothing. A commercial file waiting on a surveyor is not the same object as a crime file waiting on unused material, and both are different again from a file on which nobody has recorded a chargeable hour because the fee-earner is in a three-week trial.
When Desktop Craftline draws matter ageing for a legal team, we ask three dates, not one: opened, last chargeable hour, and last recorded client communication if the firm keeps that field. The picture then has to say which date it is using. Mixing them on one axis is how meetings turn into arguments about colour.
Buckets should match how the firm already talks. If the practice manager thinks in 'this billing cycle', 'next cycle', and 'parked', those labels belong on the chart. Invented bands such as 'at risk' without a definition belong in a discarded draft.
Exclusions matter as much as the bars. Closed files that still show a WIP balance need their own view, or they pollute live ageing. Files opened in the last fortnight should be visible, but they should not dominate a six-month picture.
The caption we write under an ageing picture is a short paragraph: period, source export, what a blank last-hour field means in this firm, and whether names are coded. Partners are entitled to that sentence before they decide anything about staffing.