This guide walks through common ways teams use Cross-Matter Reporting, along with best practices to help you get the most out of it. Whether you're building your first report or refining an existing one, these examples are designed to be adapted for your firm's own workflows and naming conventions.
For a full walkthrough of the Report Builder, see Introduction to Cross-Matter Reporting.
Use Cases
Tracking overdue tasks across a client portfolio
Create an Items (Workstreams) report scoped to a specific client’s matters. Include the Task Name, Matter Name, Due Date, and Status columns. In Review & Finalize, filter to Status ≠ “Complete” and sort by Due Date ascending. Share it with the team so everyone sees the same prioritized view.
Weekly standup board
Build a report that groups by Assignee and filters to tasks with a Status of “In Progress” or “Not Started”. Set access to All Users so the whole team can pull it up during standup without needing a shared link each time.
Matter pipeline overview
Use a Matters report to get a high-level view of all active matters, their owners, clients, and key dates. This is ideal for partner-level practice group reviews.
Seeing all your own tasks in one place
Filter any Items (Workstreams) report by Assignee = your name to get a personal task list that spans every matter you’re working on. This is useful for daily prioritization – you get a single view of everything on your plate without switching between matters. Sort by Due Date ascending to work through the most urgent items first.
Scoping a report to a single client
When preparing for a client status call, create or open a report scoped to that client’s matters only. Group by Matter Name so each engagement appears as its own section, and filter to tasks that are In Progress or Not Started. This gives you a ready-made talking document without any manual compilation.
Onboarding a new team member
When someone joins a matter mid-stream, pull an Items (Workstreams) report scoped to that matter, filtered to their name in the Assignee column. Share it directly with them so they have an immediate overview of what they own, what stage each task is at, and what is coming up – without needing a full walkthrough of every workstream.
Tracking handoffs to outside counsel or vendors
If your matters include tasks assigned to or dependent on external parties, use the Responsibility or Assignee column to filter for those tasks specifically. Sorting by Due Date gives you a clear picture of what is pending on their side, making it easier to follow up without opening each matter individually.
Supporting a monthly portfolio review
Reports always reflect live data, so a report you configure once works as a recurring tool. Build a report grouped by Matter Name, filtered to incomplete tasks, and share it with All Users ahead of your monthly review. The team arrives with the same up-to-date picture, and no one needs to manually pull status updates beforehand.
Best Practices
Normalizing status labels with Advanced Mapping
If your firm uses different workstream templates across practice groups, Status option labels may not match exactly. Use Advanced Mapping on the Status column to normalize them – for example, mapping “Awaiting response”, “With Lender Counsel For Review”, and “With Report Provider For Review” all to a single “Pending” label – so that filters and grouping work correctly across the full report.
Spotting tasks with no due date set
Incomplete data is easy to miss inside individual matters but becomes obvious at scale in a report. Filter by Due Date is empty to surface any tasks that have been created but not yet scheduled. This is a good report to run periodically as a data hygiene check, particularly after new matters are set up from a template.
Keep scope narrow while building, then widen it
When setting up a new report, start with a small scope – one or two matters – so the preview loads quickly and you can validate that your columns and mappings look right. Once you're happy with the structure, go back to Step 2 and expand the scope to your full intended range. This is much faster than troubleshooting a slow or cluttered report across hundreds of records.
Use "Just me" access until a report is ready to share
New reports default to private, and it's worth keeping them that way until the columns, filters, and grouping are finalized. Sharing a half-built report can cause confusion if colleagues start relying on it before it's complete. Flip access to Specific users or All users in Step 5 only once the report is in a stable, useful state.
Establish a naming convention for shared reports
As your reports library grows, names like "Tasks" or "Status Report" become hard to distinguish. A simple convention goes a long way – for example, leading with the client or practice group name, followed by the purpose: "AGG – Overdue Tasks" or "Funds – Monthly Review". This makes the library easier to scan and helps colleagues understand a report's scope before they open it.
These examples are a starting point. The most effective reports are usually ones built around a recurring need – a weekly check-in, a client call, a monthly review – so that the setup effort pays off every time they're used. If you're unsure where to begin, the overdue tasks and personal task list use cases are good first reports to try, since they're useful immediately and require no Advanced Mapping.
If you have questions or want to share a report configuration that's worked well for your team, reach out to your Lupl point of contact.