Billing Management

Bill Management

Billing Module Introduction

The billing module contains three main parts: Billing, Prebill, Payment record.

In this module, users can draft a bill automatically in the system, and pull the timesheet items or expenses items directly in matteroom.

Users can edit each part of the bill such as add the adjustment, tax rate and cap for the bill then export the bill as PDF / Word, submit for approval or mark as final.

For all the bills with final status, financial staff can add payment record for each bill and the finance data will be shown in billing information page for each matter.

Settings before creating a bill

Add Contact People for client.

To create a bill, we need to add a contact person, there’re two ways:

1) Every time to create a bill, it can add the contact person by hand. If the client doesn’t have a fix contact person, we advise this way.

2) If a client has a fix contact person, we advise to add the person for this client first. so the next time can be chosen in bill edit page

General Settings (For Financial Personnel)

Access the settings menu by clicking   in the top right corner.

Firm Information

Considering that different offices may need to show different information in billing such as letter head picture, firm address, phone number, etc. In this setting page, administrator can edit the law firm information for each office and link different bank account.

Add Bank Account

For Chinese template and English template bills, financial staff should add both Chinese Account and English Account in system. Additionally, we released Japanese templates.

Step 1: Click 【Bank Account Folder】

Step 2: Choose 【New account】.

Step 3: choose to create Operating Account or Trust Account

Step 4: Fill in the necessary field, then click【Create】.

Set Tax Rates

Administrator can set the tax rate which will be used in billing in advance.

Step 1: Click  to add a new tax rate.

Step 2: Give the type of the tax, choose a Country, and set the tax rate.

Bill Exchange Rate

Administrator can set the exchange rate. The exchange rate will apply to all the bills by default if the timekeeper’s rate or an expense item is different than the matter/invoice currency, however, you may set bill specific exchange rate when working on a bill.

History: To view the historical record of exchange rates between two currencies.

The steps to add a new exchange rate are as follows:

Step 1: Click the  to add a new exchange rate.

Step 2: Choose the convertible currencies and set the exchange rate, then choose the effective date.

Step 3: Click 【Confirm】to add the new exchange rate or append the historical exchange rate.

System Rule

MATTEROOM provides these rules, you can choose a rule based on the working habits of your law firm.

• Matter Related Settings

Here, you can add matter types based on different languages. If you no longer use a certain matter type, you can set it to be inactive.

• Billing-Related Settings

To accommodate different billing templates for different offices. Administrator can set a default template for each office.

We’ve five parts to be chosen:

• Adjustment/Discount percentage: check this option, and the billing template will default to include the percentage of adjustments/discounts to Fixed/Hourly Prof. Service fees and Disbursement respectively.
• Timesheet: legal fee hours breakdown.
• Original Fee: display the original Hourly Prof. Service Fee before the cap.
• Bank Info: to choose a default bank for this office.
• Expenses: the expenses details for the matter.
• Cover Letter: contains the basic information of law firm.

Enter the Billing Module

Click【Billing】in the navigation bar to enter the bill module:

In the new grid view of bill, you can customize the columns you want to display.

You can click the three dots next to the column name to set up filter. Once you have your own filter set which is different than the default tab criteria, you can save the view as a new view, remember to name your saved view.

In addition, you can use the search function to quickly find the bills of the corresponding matter/client.

we have different views as follows:

• All: All the invoices
• Recent Bills: Bills those have been created, edited, and viewed in recent 30 days.
• Bills Created by Me: Bills those created by me.
• Overdue: All the overdue bills.
• Requires My Review: Bills awaiting my approval.

Invoice Status / Payment Status:

• Saved: The bill has already been drafted and could be edited and voided.
• pending: The bill has been submitted and wait approval.
• Approved/Rejected: The bill has been approved/rejected from its approver.
• Sent: The bill has marked as sent to client.
• Unpaid: The bill has marked as final version, but the client has not paid
• Partially Paid: The bill has been partially paid by the client.
• Paid: The bill has been totally paid by the client.
• Voided: The bill has been voided.
• Written off: The bill has been written off.
• Final: The bill has marked as a final version which means it can be recorded a payment.
• Withdrawn: The user withdraws after submitting the bill for approval

Prebill

The matters on the listing page represent the disbursements, timesheets and flat fee under these matters that have not yet been billed.

You can quickly analyze how much the firm still has left to collect from clients in the top statistics bar.

If you have multiple currencies for different matters, you may select the currency, we will automatically convert it for you.

Click on the time range button, and select the period you want, the system will organize the data for you. You may click the  button to quickly create a draft bill for that matter. Or you can also select multiple matters at once, to create multiple bills by just one click.

Create a bill

You have multiple ways to create a bill:

1) click on Bills from the matter detail page, then system automatically populate matter and client information for you, such as client, bill to, address etc.

2) The Prebill: It helps you to track WIP (including timesheets and disbursements) for all matters that are available for you

3) create a new bill on the bill list page as below:

Step 1: Click the button【Create Bill】in the top right corner.

Step 2: Fill in the blanks of basic information.

• Bill Date: Default is today, which will be printed as Date in the bill.
• Bill to / Matter: After selecting a matter, client and other information will be automatically brought in.
• Payment Term: Options like None / 7 days / 30 days / 90 days, etc. Besides, users can set a specific date by choosing 【On Date Specified】, then set the date in 【Due Date】.
• Contact Person & Address: Person that linked with the client, which means the person who will receive the bill and the address will fetch the 【address】from contact person, but it can also be edited by user.
• Currency: If the currency is inconsistent with the Charging Default Currency of the corresponding office, system will be automatically converted according to the billing exchange rate in the settings.
• Service Period: By choosing this time range to control the automatically pulling timesheets and expenses.
• Accounts Receivable: Bank Account which will be shown as bank in the bill.
• Office: By switching offices will apply the office’s default tax rate to the entire bill.

Step 3: Choose the import options of timesheet and expenses.

Four options to be chosen:

Include Past Items Prior Than Service Period Start Date: To pull the out-of-range expenses/Timesheet in bill.

Include Non-Billable Items: To pull the expenses/Timesheet non-billable in bill.

If the switch next to the Timesheets or Disbursement is turned on without any options checked, only billable timesheets/disbursement incurred during the service period will be imported. If this switch is turned off, no timesheets/disbursement will be imported. By controlling this switch, you can generate bills that only include Timesheets or Disbursement.

Edit the bill.

Totally a bill includes four main parts:

1) Fixed Prof. Service Fee.

2) Hourly Prof. Services Fee (Timesheet items).

3) Disbursement (Expense items).

4) Adjustment.

Each part can add a new item, edit each field (Date, Owner, Description, Amount, Adjustment, Tax, etc ), or move the item to candidate list.

• Concrete operations:

Set Cap

• We can set a cap and apply to the whole billing or a certain block.
• After the cap is set, only when the amount exceeds the cap will using the cap amount as the real amount. Otherwise, will not take effect.
• You can set cap amount as fixed fee.
• The cap can be set including tax or choosing the specific tax.

The cap cannot be applied the same time with adjustment after-tax for the same section.

Batch Adjustment

To modify the items faster, there’re three types of batch adjustment:

Preview the Bill before saving.

Click  in the lower left corner of the bill edit page.

It has two methods to preview the bill: preview in the system or directly download PDF

Save the bill / Save as a new version.

After drafting the bill, it can be saved as draft with v1. The next time after re-editing, bill can be saved as a new version. System will keep each version of bill and users can preview the detail of each version of the bill by clicking the version number.

Submit the bill.

Two ways to submit the bill:

1) In the page of bill editing, click【submit for approval】button.

2) User can click【submit】on the bill details page.

Generate settings and export the bill as PDF/Word

Step 1: Enter the billing details page, click【Preview】

Step 2: Check the settings first, choose the language of the bill template then click【Refresh】

Step 3-1: Click the button【PDF】in the top right corner.

Step 3-2: Click the little triangle beside【PDF】, then click【Word】

 We only suggest adjusting the format in word, and don’t modify the amount. Otherwise, the system can’t reserve the accurate data of the final bill.

Operations on a bill

All the operations listed below can only do for the latest version of the bill.

Edit an existing bill.

Refresh the bill to add new items in the existing bill. If a user drafts a bill at the beginning of the month and before he gives the bill to the client. When new timesheet items and expenses produced, it needs to update the bill.

Step 1: Enter the edit page.

Step 2: The system will pop up a window to remind you that new items have been generated.

Step 3: After re-editing, click save to overwrite the original version or save as a new version.

Approval process for bill

With the status of “Pending” means the bill is waiting for approval, approve or reject.

To approve a bill, user should enter the detail page of the bill. It has three options:

1) approve, reject and Approve & Mark as Final.

2) financial staff can edit the bill firstly then directly save and approve the bill.

Send a bill to client and mark it as sent.

Users can send the bill directly from the system and attach the bill as a PDF.

Step 1: On the bill details page, then click【send】or click the little triangle beside【send】, then click【Send as Final】or【Mark as Sent】

Step 2: Fill in the blanks of the mail, check the checkbox of 【Attach the bill as a PDF】

Step 3: Click【Send】, to send a system mail to client.

Mark bill as Final

Only for those bills which have been marked as Final could add payment record. So, all the bills need to mark a final status after all edits and approval process.

View the invoice operation history.

To reserve all the versions of bill, users can view all the operation records for each version of the bill in 【Activities】. Besides, users can filter a certain version’s history record.

Add payment record

Record payments

There’re two ways to add payment record:

1) In the detail page of the bill, click【Receive Payments】then fill in the blanks, add Deposited/Received Amount, received date and other information, then click【Complete】.

2) Turn to page【Payment】, click【Receive Payments】. Users should first fill in the information of Payment Record and then users have 4 options:

• Save Payment Record & Assign Bills
• Convert to Claim Inquiry
• Save Payment Record Only
• Save Payment Record & New

When you select save payment record and assign bills, you need search the Invoices by Client / bill ID / Matter. All the relevant Invoices will list beneath the page.

Financial staff can add a payment for more than one bill, fill the total amount in【Payment Amount】and assign to different bills

• When you select convert to claim inquiry, the system will send a notification to Billing Mgmt contacts to claim the payment for bills. You may accept or reject their claim request, once approve, payment assignments will be placed in parked status automatically.
• Payment record can’t be deleted in the system but can be voided in the detail page of the payment record.