Streamline Your Workflow with Our Invoice Details Example for Legal

Invoice details example for Legal

hey my name is Kaitlyn Lindo I'm the office manager here at modern law and I want to take a few minutes to go over billing with you it's definitely a hiccup that is sometimes hard to understand and we want to make sure that you have a minute to get some key pointers on power and what structure works how we do it so that then you can better understand all of the work that we're doing on your behalf and with you we send out invoices twice a month on the fifth and the twentieth the days may vary a little bit if those days land on the weekend so you may get at the Friday before or the Monday after they'll come in an email and they'll always be an attachment in the email it's very very very important that you please open that attachment and read through which the items that we're doing in the case so that you can make sure that you understand what's going on in your face and if you have any questions or concerns we can address that really quickly since we in goes twice a month we can always take a look at that and help you understand what's going on in your case and if you want any changes or adjustments made that's a really easy way for us to get that addressed one other thing to note is that we want to make sure that you know that you can always access any questions if you have any confusions on the phone I'm going to run through this video and I hope that you watch it so that you can maybe get some pointers done but if you still have questions please note you can always reach out any questions that actually have to do with the billing never get charged so don't feel like you can't reach out about questions that regard to billing because you might get charged because that saw this case so let's dive in we utilize clio and we'll send out invoices and they will be sent to your email address so let's first start with what that would look like we have we have the email here and it's it's gonna you know mention that it's from modern law if there's any note that is from the billing department it's gonna be right here mentioning you know like for this one it says here's your first invoice you'll notice that it references the invoice number and then on this invoice it says that the amount zero this can be a little bit confusing you did deposit funds into your trust account and we utilize those funds first before asking you to deposit like more fun so the reason why this says zero is when we review the invoice in just a couple of seconds you'll notice that we satisfied the invoice with the money that was in trust so there's nothing actually do for you because that money was taken out of the trust account well the other thing is that this email has is there's always going to be an attachment that actually has your invoice included onto it so you're gonna want to make sure and open up this invoice and when you open up the invoice you're going to get the basic structure of what our invoice looks like it's going to reference the invoice number the date of the invoice and then it has sort of these these basic line structures that will happen all the time the date that the transaction happened sort of a reference and then a description of what we did to move along here case how long it took us what rate we're charging and then what that total amount was so you know the quantity times the rate gives you how much that total item took you to do and then this part here is going to be which person in the firm did the action so I know this does say attorney but it's actually whatever member of the firm did it so I just created this as a entirely like sort of invoice and I used Candice Tully who's the paralegal manager and her attorney Henry Alzate as sort of the the example so anytime it references CT that means that Candice Thole worked on Mike did that transaction an H a means Henry AHS update the other thing to notice is that it's always going to be their first and last initial so if you get that first initial welcome email from us just notice which team members you have that are going to be directly working on your case and then that will better help you understand which person was doing the transaction one of the other big things is we have a hybrid in our firm of flat fee and also just straight time so on the items that our flat fee which are listed in those terms and conditions that you got emailed when you finish the engagement agreement one of them is a petition and the flat rate is $800 when we break out flat fees on the invoice it's always going to come in two transactions they're gonna always reference the flat fee reference what it was that they're drafting so this is the petition and you'll see half of it on one line and then half of it on another line so the total of the flat feet equals $800 which is what is listed in the terms and conditions one of the other things is they'll also continue to do work on that that project but you'll notice though from that point forward reference flat fee track their time but always block put it in a zero because you only get charged once for that one particular project so that's just something that can a little bit get tricky on the invoices there's always going to be a subtotal of the legal services that are due and then the next section is going to be the expenses so these are third party expenses that we pay on your behalf and then invoice you on the next billing cycle so some of the examples are the filing fee that the clerk of the court requires for us to file whatever documents we're doing on their behalf the runner fee that it that we pay for the runner to take the documents to the court and file and deliver them and then if your other party needs to be served then the service fee so those are just some examples of fees that might show up or expenses that might show up then you have the expense total and then you end up getting the total of the two combined for the total of the invoice you'll see here where then we reference the payment on 6:22 and it's the same amount as the total that's where I was mentioning before that we just satisfy the invoice with the funds that are available on the trust account which then leaves the invoice itself at zero dollars because we paid it using your trust account phones then it's gonna break down the statements of accounts if you don't have any other invoices that are unsatisfied this is always gonna reference zero but in the example that we'll do in just a second you'll see that this will change if there are fees like if your your trust account didn't have funds and one of these invoices still had money owing then this would reference whatever that amount was then we have just a detailed statement sort of a wrap-up of the invoice and then this section here is the status of your trust account so you notice that references trust account it'll show the initial deposit and then that this invoice that we're looking at here was taken out leaving a remaining balance and the big balance in bold here of three thousand three hundred and forty-one dollars so that's sort of the concept of the invoice I'm also going to show an example because this is something that sort of gets a mix up so here's another example where you know we were going to the hearing the cases near at the end and the person had partial funds in their trust account but didn't have the full funds to be able to satisfy the entire invoice so in this reference the 1641 is the remaining amount that was left in the trust account and the way that you can always tell that is you know if we pop down to the bottom of every invoice it has that wrap up of what happened in your trust account so you know here was that initial deposit here is the first invoice that we just looked at an example of then another invoice came on xx and it was for 1700 which was taken out of the trust account leaving 1641 left in the trust account which then we just used on this and ways to partially satisfy the overall invoice and then you can see that that brings the trust account to zero and then you see this amount in bold is at zero so this isn't seeing that uo0 dollars this is simply referencing that zero dollars is remaining in your trust account with the firm so this once you get to the trust account Chase part this is just summarizing and laying out exactly what and how we use those funds that you put into trust with our firm then to pop back up here so we have the 1641 that we just used to make a partial payment and then this right here is going to be referenced as you making a payment for five hundred dollars towards this invoice it's not gonna show in that description below because it's not going into the trust account that description below here is only going to reference when you put funds into the trust account and then how those funds were used so if you make a direct payment through the email so you know we got these emails here so for this example it's letting you know that you have a balance you can click online here and make a payment and it will show you the amounts that are due this is never going to go into the trust account it's simply going to pay the outstanding balance with the firm so that's important to reference because you're going to need to know that you're gonna it just helps you understand like why maybe it's not showing up down here and then this is where I had mentioned you know here was the charges here's the payments that we receive and then here's the outstanding balance so that sort of lets you know that you're owing the four five hundred and fourteen dollars then the NICS invoice comes in the cycle and you know we're getting off the case we're wrapping up and this is where it shows that you know the previous invoice that we sent still has a five hundred and fourteen dollar balance we have the new charges of having to ask the court to remove us as attorney of record because your case is done so you have an outstanding balance of $619 I'm still gonna wrap up everything else here showing that you have this balance here this is the invoice number this is how much has been paid leaving and then the new invoice and this is just the same repeat of what happened in your trust fund so this is gonna be on every single invoice and it may or may not change depending on if you put more funds or you didn't put more funds into your trust account but every time you get an invoice if you have an outstanding balance you'll see that it's going to recap for you the new invoice and that new invoice is always going to be attached as an attachment for you to review and then it's going to mention that you have another invoice with an outstanding balance it also gives you this ease of pay like I said for you to be able to then make a payment quickly and easily to pay off that balance with the firm but it's only ever gonna allow you to pay exactly what's due so the billing department will also if your case is very active still reach out to you via email to let you know that you do need to posit funds into your trust account and they'll give you a separate link that then puts those funds directly into the trust account so those are just some of the differences that's sort of a best recap I can give you on how to sort of guide through the billing department and we're always here Marcee Townsley is the billing department you're the one she's the one who you'll get correspondence with the most my name again was Caitlyn Linda I'm the office manager and also oversee the billing department so feel free to reach out to us at any point in time