Billable matters

All billable matters can be found in the Financial Management > Billable Matters folder. They can be viewed as follows: 

• The “Matters until the End of the Previous Invoicing Period” view is suitable when the invoicing period has been defined. It lists all matters having uninvoiced transactions and expenses with an entry date belonging to the previous invoicing period. The right bottom corner of the view displays the totals of transactions and expenses, making it easy to monitor the amount of uninvoiced work. 
• Alternatively, you can use the ”Matters Until Today” view which lists - regardless of the entry date - all matters having uninvoiced fees and expenses until the current day.
•  If there is no invoicing period defined, these two views offer an identical list. 
• The Billable Matters folder also provides a Budgeted Matters view which lists all billable matters and their budgeted hours, the actual hours, and a warning triangle if the budget has been exceeded.

You can filter matters in the view by choosing your desired options in the Owner filter, and clicking Search: 

• ”My Own” shows the billable matters where you are the owner or responsible for the matter. 
• ”My Business Unit” shows all billable matters of your own business unit, regardless the owner. o From the list you can filter out matters of a specific matter responsible or invoicing contact.
• ”Other Business Units” shows billable matters whose owner belongs to another business unit (if multiple).

Billable matters can be previewed separately and as a mass, which speeds up the invoicing. When you select one or multiple matters in the matter lists (Matters or Billable Matters folders) and Preview on the ribbon, a PDF file of the selected matters’ invoices is created, showing how the created invoices will look like.

If the ”Show dialog when printing multiple invoices” parameter is not selected, the window of the invoice printing parameters will not be shown, and the matter level printing parameters are applied. If there is no unbillable work on the selected matters, a zero-row invoice will be shown.

Creating preliminary invoices

Matters can be invoiced based on a predefined invoicing period, or occasionally until a selected date. The invoicing period is defined in the settings in your own business unit parameters to commonly apply to all users, but it can be changed or removed in the customer or matter parameters. If you want to create preliminary invoices both according to an invoicing period and occasionally, create them separately.

You can create preliminary invoices from matters as follows: 

1.  Choose all matters from the list that you want to create a preliminary invoice from.
2.  Choose Create Preliminary Invoice on the ribbon, and under that the following:
   • Until Selected date, when you want the preliminary invoice to include transactions and expenses only until a selected date.
     • Set an end date of the invoicing period as well as an entry date, for which you want to record the sales invoice(s) in bookkeeping. 
     • The preliminary invoice will include all billable fees and expenses, which have been registered by the end date of the invoicing period.
   • Periodical Invoice, when you want the end date of the invoicing period and the entry date to automatically be the last day of the previous month invoicing period. 
     • The preliminary invoice will include all billable transactions and expenses, which have been registered within the defined invoicing period. 
     • This requires for an invoicing period to be defined in the system on some level.

   • Selected phases, if phases have been defined for the order and you want to generate a preliminary invoice for only certain phases. Phase-specific actions are not allowed if preliminary invoices are generated in bulk. 

     

     • The software displays the open transactions and expenses for each phase, along with the budget (if applicable), and you can select the phases for which you want to generate a preliminary invoice.
     • The billing period for the preliminary invoice is the time interval between the first and last tasks and/or expenses, and the invoice posting date is the current date.
     • A preliminary invoice generated on a phase-by-phase basis cannot be merged with an existing preliminary invoice; instead, the old one must be deleted before creating a new one.
3. The system will directly open the preliminary invoice to a new window if you only chose one matter to operate on.

4.  If you chose multiple matters, the system opens a summary window, that confirms which preliminary invoices where created and which failed.

   

If the matter already has an existing preliminary invoice, it will be replaced by a new preliminary invoice and all entries will be moved from the old preliminary invoice to the new one. 

The created preliminary invoices can be found most conveniently from two folders: 

• All preliminary invoices can be viewed in the Financial Management > Preliminary Invoices folder. 
• If you have been added into a preliminary invoice review process, you can find the preliminary in voices which you need to approve in the Workplace > Preliminary Invoices folder.

You cannot create a preliminary invoice:

• if all the fees and expenses of a matter are already on a preliminary invoice
• if there are no invoiceable fees or expenses on the matter 
• if the matter is a sub-matter that is invoiced though the main matter 
• if there are missing identifications for matter parties, and in the system parameters invoicing has been prohibited in case of missing identifications.