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Billing format for client for Legal

welcome to the my case billing and invoicing tutorial today we will take a look at all of the time and billing features within my case the way we like to show you these features is by taking you through the life cycle of a case so we'll open a case together establish a billing structure work in that case and then invoice for the time and expenses associated with that case and then finally we'll show you how to accept payments and run some great reports as with everything in my case we're going to start out by adding a case in a contact into the system I'm gonna click on add case from the Home Dashboard we will first add all contacts that are associated with the matter by either searching for existing contacts in this search bar or by adding new contacts here let's add a new client Bob Benson an important piece when adding your client into the system is ensuring that you add a valid email address you can enable their client portals you can share items like invoices and even receive online payments if you have the my case payments platform setup your client will receive a welcome email where they can verify their information and then log in to their own secure account next we'll continue to the case details and give our case a name we'll call this the Benson sample case we can add a case number the practice area and any other preferred details and then we will continue to the billing section the first question is which contact will be the billing point of contact for this case we're presented with a list of all of the contacts that we added in the first screen and I'm going to choose our client Bob Benson next how will this case be billed here is a list of all of the different fee structures to choose from our Lea contingency flat fee a mix of flat fee and hourly or pro-bono we will choose a mix for today if you know the flat fee amount at this time you can enter it in or you can always specify that at a later time next we will continue to the staff link this is where we are going to choose who's working on this case and their associated billing rates right now it's drawing from the default billing rate that you can edit in your settings however you can always override this rate on a per case basis here lastly let's save and finish and you'll be taken directly to the case details page where you can start working on your case now that the case in contact relationships been established at this point if there are any firms that manage a trust account this is typically where you would accept money from your client and deposit it into the trust account so let's take a look at that process right now because there's a couple different options within my case first our request funds feature allows you to easily request an electronic retainer or trust deposit from your clients navigate to the billing tab from the billing dashboard choose request funds then select the contact that you would like to request funds from select the amount the due dates and if you are enrolled with in my case payments you can even select which bank account to have your clients payment immediately deposited into your client will then receive an email letting them know of the payment request they can click on the link in that email to simply log into their secure client portal and make that payment if you're not enrolled with in my case payments you can still send this electronic request to your client so that they know they have a balance outstanding secondly if you would like to represent an offline payment made into the trust simply click on the deposit into trust icon select the contacts name in this case we'll record a check deposit of $1,000 add any additional details like notes if the deposit is applied to an outstanding request the date of the payment and then select deposit funds from there if you ever need a cross-reference to clients balance simply open their contact details page to do so I will search for Bob Benson in the global search bar when I'm in a contact details page an important note is you'll see if their client portal is enabled right from here if you ever have a client who's having difficulty finding the initial activation email to set up their accounts you will have a hyperlink here where you can resend them that activation email if they have logged in and their password before you will see their last login date and time and they will have the ability to reset their own password if needed another great tip is to look into the contact activity tab this will show you when your client has logged in when they viewed certain items like invoices made payments and so on now let's continue to navigate to their billing sub section here is going to be the full list of all trust transactions that have occurred with this client I can export this full list into a PDF I can deposit more into the trust and I also have the ability to withdraw from the trust there's really two reasons that you would choose withdraw from trust the first would be that you paid for certain expenses right out of the trust for example let's say we spent $500 on court reporting expenses directly from the trust account in this case we would choose that was draw from trust function type in $500 we're not going to transfer to the operating account because we paid directly from the trust avid ate any notes that we want here we'll say court reporting expenses and then select withdraw this will be immediately reflected in his trust history now the other reason that you may withdraw from trusts would be to transfer funds to your operating account for fees that you've already earned and we're gonna take a look at that in just a minute because it's not typically done of this window what you would do is you'd create an invoice bill for that invoice and then you can apply trust funds at that point lastly any refunds made from the trust can be processed here if you have trust funds left over at the end of your case this is where you can represent refunding them to your client also under the billing subsection you will see your requested funds for this client and invoices that you've created for them now let's take a look at hourly time and expense tracking once you open a case and start working on it you're going to want to track all of the things that you do in expenses that occur during the duration of the case and we make this really easy to do there are multiple places throughout the system that you can track your time from the home dashboard click on add time entry the first that will ask you for is the case link so I'll search for my Benson sample case the attorney is me all log the activity is a phone call and we can add an optional description here on the very bottom there's a rate date duration there's an option to mark it off as non-billable in this case I'm gonna say it was a 30-minute phone call my case bills in six minute increments so I'll enter point five if you would like to edit your account to have two numbers after the decimal point you can also edit this in your firm's settings that same add time entry icon that lives in a few different locations throughout my case like the billing dashboard your case details page or a great shortcut is selecting the add item yellow toolbar on the top right corner you can be anywhere in the system at any time select add item and all of the same icons from the home dashboard will appear I'll select add time entry the same window will appear all out in the case billed for myself again and the activity will be an email add in the duration save and close the last place I'd like to showcase is our timer that is also located up on the top right once I start this timer I can move around anywhere in the system and the timer will continuously track my time let's say we hop in a meeting I can start the timer blink the case and description and once I'm done I can click stop and save or I can pause that first timer and start a new one if I get interrupted and have to take a call from another client once I'm ready to save a timer the case link and description and duration will already autofill for me so if I was in that meeting for a full hour you'd see that duration field have a 1 right here I can also track any expenses that accrue for a case the add expense icon lives right next to the add time entry icon throughout the system I will link it to the appropriate case the activities of course would be more expense related as opposed to activity related and I'll record a postage expense instead of a rate in a duration I'll have a cost and a quantity now that we've been working on this case for a while oftentimes you're gonna want to see the status or the progress and you can always access this information from the case details page so let's search for the case name up in the global search bar open up the case details page and navigate over to the time and billing sub section I will see a full overview of the cases billing from here I'll see my own invoice balances any trust balances and the cases billing information at the bottom there are also subsections for all of your cases time entries expenses invoices and payment activity for example if I click into my time entries I will be able to search by date range and I can make any necessary edits from here let's say we're ready to invoice this case I will navigate to the billing tab again and then I'll select add invoice now I am brought to my from open balances section which will give me a full list of all of the cases in the system that have flat fees time entries or expenses that are uninvent for invoices that have yet to be paid this is a great opportunity to create a batch bill simply select the cases that you would like to create invoices for at once and then the batch billing window will appear on the right you can setup all of the parameters for your invoices and they will all be created for you at once to learn more about batch billing see the related video on the bottom of this page for today's exam well we will just create an invoice for a Benson sample case that way you understand each feature in your invoice editor screen once the invoice editor screen opens up I can make any edits or adjustments you get before sending the invoice to my client you will see the invoice number at the top right and the invoice date both of which can be edited the due date is important to leverage or aged receivables report so if you want to see overdue Balances it's important to use a due date you could also set up a default payment term in your settings that way the due date will be pre-populated on each invoice you can filter by date range which will filter out all of my flat fees time entries and expenses by date if you bill once a month this would be a really useful feature now you can see my time entries my expense entry you'll see everything is super editable so if I forgot to add on a flat fee for a consultation I could do so straight from here I can edit any of this information as I see fit so if I needed to change the duration of a time entry I can go ahead and make that change if I wanted to remove something or delete it I'll click on that red X I will then be asked if I simply want to remove that time entry from the invoice or if I want to permanently delete it from my case altogether if I just remove it it will just go right back into that open balances section and I could pick it up on another invoice in the future as I scroll down you'll notice there is an adjustment section where you can enter discounts interest tax or an addition on your invoice let's say we wanted to give a discount for an early payment first thing it would ask me is what am i applying this to I could choose the subtotal or it could choose a certain section of the invoice is it a percentage off or a flat amount I'll choose five percent discount for an early payment you'll notice that the basis is populated for what I entered here if I change it to apply to just the time and you'll see that the basis has now dropped this would work the same way with adding on an interest etc next I can add any terms and conditions or notes the terms and conditions are another great section that you can have pre-populated by adding them into your settings and then we have the option to apply trust or credit funds so instead of having to apply a payment later on if I have trust balances associated with any of my contacts on this case I can apply the trust balance right here let's apply $500 to this invoice right now you can then choose to show this trust transaction on the invoice just the summary or the full history in this case let's show the full history on the invoice we do have a couple different payment plan options there's a manual payment plan where you can choose how many payment installments that you would like to break this up into and how much is due on those dates or on the right you can have one auto generated for you you again choose how many payment installments to break the invoice into whether they will be weekly bi-weekly or monthly payments and the first due date my case will then do the math for you lastly once our invoice looks perfect we can then share it simply click on the name of the contact that you would like to share the invoice with then on the right hand side if you have my case payments enabled you can go ahead and specify which bank account that you'd like his payment to be deposited into so if your my case payment account has been linked to both your operating and trust account you could specify which one you would like his payment to be deposited into once we click Save the client will receive an email letting them know the invoice has been shared with them they can click on the email to log in to their my case client portal and view the invoice they could also make their secure payment there I will also see a copy of the saved invoice it's categorized as partially paid because we did pay a portion of it with that trust balance we can review all of the detail and at the very top you will see the invoice history which shows you who created it the payment history if it's been shared and so forth this is also where you could make any refunds on the invoice the Edit icon allows you to go right back into that invoice editor screen to make any adjustments needed the remind icon allows you to send invoice email reminders to your client about that outstanding invoice it will show you how many reminders have been sent when the last one was sent and when they view the invoice the share via the client portal icon allows me to either share or unshare the invoice I'll also be able to see when the contact has last logged into the portal and when it was shared along with when they viewed it the email invoice icon allows you to email a PDF copy of the invoice directly to your clients inbox this will bypass the client portal this may be helpful for clients who are not logging into their portal if you are using my case payments your client will have the ability to click the payment link and process just a credit card payment through this email the icons on the top right allow you to download a PDF copy of your invoice to your computer one click print copy the invoice payment link that you can either directly email to a client or text it to someone who does not have an email address this is the same a payment hyperlink that appears on the PDF invoice lastly the trash can icon will delete the invoice anytime entries that were previously captured would go back into that uninvite 8 where you could pick them up on a new invoice when you choose the final icon on the right will allow you to record a payment let's say we received a check payment of $500 we could insert all details like the bank account the check was deposited into any notes the date and so on it will be immediately reflected on the invoice history if you have any trust funds available for contacts associated to your case you can also apply them from this window now let's login as our client to see what it would look like once the invoice has been shared again Bob would receive an email alerting him of a new invoice in his account once he logs in he'll see that what's new section that shows him that he has a new invoice he can expand the invoice details review all of it here before clicking the pay invoice button clients will then be prompted to enter in their preferred payment method whether it's credit card or a check and the amount that they would like to pay once they click the make payment button at the very bottom of the pop-up box their payment is immediately processed and they will receive an online confirmation as well as an email confirmation of the payment you as the attorney will also receive real-time notifications when payments are made to your invoices or any requests for funds now that we've seen a lot of our billing functionality we've established a billing structure for a case tracked our time and expenses and then finally invoiced and receive some payments let's take a look at some of our reporting features here at my case the reason being is we've created a lot of great reports that are designed to assist you with time and billing information let's navigate to the reporting tab to see all available reporting options on the left hand menu a few dimension we have an aging invoices report which you could filter by contact or by case or if we leave it blank we'll see all outstanding invoices this is a really great way to ensure nothing slips through the cracks we have time entry reports by user by firm or by case which is a great way to view performance we have a couple different trust reports one of which shows summaries by contact for total credit total debit and their trust balance you can even dive deeper with the trust activity report which shows every client that has a trust balance and every transaction that has contributed to that balance by a certain time frame our electronic payments report will show you all payment activity via e-check and credit card within a specified time frame in my case by default the report shows all each checking credit card payments within the current month but you can change this date range and you can also filter by case in contact the my case credit card fees report will give you a more detailed view into which fees have been pulled from your operating account in each batch this will help you reconcile with your bank statement all of our reports are exportable in both PDF or CSV file one last thing to mention is our mobile application time and expense tracking can all be taken care of on the go you no longer have to worry about taking notes on paper you can download both our app for both Android or iPhone and even your clients can access our client portal and pay you on the go thank you for joining the my case billing and invoicing tutorial if you have any questions or need help at all please don't hesitate to reach out to us by calling 1-800 five seven one eight zero six two extension one