- Products
- Disbursements (incurred or anticipated)
- Other/arbitrary items
- Interest (on overdue bills)
The above are collectively referred to as
bill items. Once these items are assembled to form a bill, the WIP is transformed into a debit to the debtors
controlled account, increasing the balance owing on the
file.
Bills use a sequential numbering scheme. A bill number is simply the
file number followed by a full-stop (.) and a number indicating the sequence in which the bill was rendered (in relation to prior/subsequent bills), for example the first bill on file 12.8 would be 12.8.1
The billing
activity provides an interactive composer that automatically identifies the bill items that fall within the billing period. The contents of the bill can then be adjusted:
- The billing options can be changed to affect the items included in the bill.
- For each member's time, the amount billed can be written up or written off.
- For each fixed charge type, the amount billed can be written up or written off.
- Disbursements can be individually toggled on or off for inclusion.
- Interest can be automatically calculated according to the practice policy or charged manually.
- A discount can be applied to the timed component of the bill. Time-sensitive discounts are supported.
Bills may also include a
trust transfer if sufficient cleared funds are available on the file. This reduces the amount payable when the bill is printed.
Bills support a 2-step draft/finalise
workflow. Finalising will automatically trigger the print function unless the workflow explicitly contains a separate printing step.
Products
Initially, a bill will contain the union of the sets created by the products quoted/estimated and the products against which time/charges have been recorded. The individual charge policy for each product (combined with any costs specifically quoted) will be used to calculate a charge for the item. The time and fixed charges recorded against the product will be written up/down (on a pro-rata basis, preserving the proportional worth of each) to match the overall product charge as necessary.
Products can be excluded from a particular bill (i.e. deferred to a future bill) or written down to zero. Additionally, products not appearing on either the quote or the file may be added at the point of billing. Products for which no time/charges have been recorded will effectively write-up time for the file manager.
Discounts
ContactsLaw supports both percentage and fixed-amount discounts, which can either apply indefinitely or be subject to payment within a certain period of time. Discounts apply to products and arbitrary items only, not disbursements.
Once the bill has been finalised, a time-sensitive discount will appear to be in-effect until its expiry date. After this point in time, the debtor balance on the file in question will reflect the undiscounted amount. However, this figure is only a forecast and the general ledger remains unaffected until the discount position is finalised. This can be done in 3 ways:
- Receipting funds using the debtor receipt or trust transfer activities; the receipt allocation screen will assume an expired discount should be reversed unless told otherwise.
- Opening the original bill and choosing the 'Reverse discount' action.
- When a new bill is created on the file, a prompt appears to determine whether the discount still applies.
Trust transfer
If funds are being held on trust and the 'please pay' figure on the bill is greater than $0, the bill composer will offer the option of including a trust transfer with the bill. This is equivalent to manually posting a trust transfer after the bill is finalised, with the following exceptions:
- The annotation of the transaction will indicate that the trust transfer was included in a particular bill.
- You can control the receipt allocation logic used ("oldest bill first" or "this bill first").
Finalisation
The finalisation process posts billing journals (
transaction number prefix BJ) between the following accounts:
- Professional fees: Debit debtors, credit the member's professional fees sub-account.
- Fixed charges: Debit debtors, credit the general account pertaining to the given fixed charge type.
- Disbursements: Debit debtors, credit the disbursements controlled account.
- Interest: Debit debtors, credit the interest on overdue bills controlled account.
- Discounts: Credit debtors, debit the discounts controlled account.
These individual transactions usually appear in collapsed form, and cannot be deleted directly; to do so, the bill itself must be deleted.
Printed bills
- The report method produces an invoice according to best practices, with a range of itemisation options and advanced features such as electronic signatures. The format and layout of the report-style bill is not customisable, although much of its content is. It is suitable for most small and medium-sized law firms. With this method, bills can be seamlessly printed or previewed at the touch of a button.
- The document method produces an invoice based on a bill template, which can be fully customised to suit the specific needs of your practice. However, the process of creating a template is more complex, and it may be necessary to create several templates in order to support all types of invoice itemisation. Electronic signatures and seamless printing/previewing are not supported by this method. It is suitable for firms requiring finer control over the appearance and content of their bills, as well as those who wish to tailor bills to specific workgroups.
You can elect to generate the cover page using one method and the itemisation with another. Regardless of the method you select, you have the option of printing an accompanying trust statement, as well as being able to register the printed bill on the file, or send it via e-mail.
If you elect to register or send the bill (and
a
controlled document type for 'Bill' or 'Report' is present), ContactsLaw will perform the registration automatically and
enqueue tasks to
catalogue the document(s). (When used in conjunction with automatic cataloguing, the user experience is seamless) This is useful if you wish to permanently retain copies of printed bills.
Alternatives
ContactsLaw offers several alternative printable representations of the debtors ledger:
A debtor statement lists the outstanding balance for each of a particular client's files and shows the total amount payable.
A debtor breakdown lists the individual bills (grouped by file) which make up the outstanding balance, with a breakdown of the products, disbursements, interest and other items.
A compound bill combines the items on several bills (spanning multiple files/clients) into a single cover page, built from a document template. You can optionally include the itemisation sections for each individual bill.
Re-drafting bills
Only the most recent, unreceipted bill may be deleted; however, if a bill needs to be amended beyond this point, you can use the "re-draft" feature. Re-drafting a bill removes all rendering transactions and returns it to a draft state. If funds were previously allocated to the bill, they must be re-allocated when the bill is finalised once again. Users should be aware that re-drafting bills may have general and GST accounting implications.