Overview
Once you've create a pre-bill, you can now review, make changes, and approve pre-bills before generating the final invoice and sending to clients.
If pre-bills are not appearing after creating a flat fee charge, ensure your firm has a default invoice term set. Navigate to Firm Settings > Settings tab, select Invoice Terms, and add or edit an invoice term to set as the default. Retry creating the pre-bill after saving your changes.
How To Edit A Pre-Bill
You can easily add or edit charge line items to a pre-bill; review and approve the pre-bill; add a pre-bill invoice discount; and apply unallocated or trust funds to a pre-bill.
To manage pre-bill status effectively, you can use the Approve button to toggle approval statuses. For bulk actions, use the bulk action tools to reject pre-bills, preventing them from being invoiced inadvertently.
Go to the Pre-Billed page from left navigation bar
Search or filter your table results
Click on the Pre-Bill number from the "Pre-Bill #" column in the table
Alternatively, click the "..." three dots icon under Actions column and click "Edit Pre-Bill"
You will be redirected to the pre-bill edit page
Under the Billing Information section, you can set:
Invoice Date
Term Days
Due Date
From the top toolbar, you can:
Approve/Unapprove by clicking "Approve" button
Add Invoice Discount by clicking "Discount" button
Add Private Note and Customer Memo by clicking "Settings" button
Show/Hide Client, Matter, and Invoice Summaries line items by clicking "Settings" button
Clicking the "Settings" button in the top toolbar, you can adjust the following settings:
Set billing contact and billing address
Add private notes to invoice
Use the copy icon in top right corner next to Private Note header to copy matter information into the note field.
Add customer memo
Use the copy icon in top right corner next to Customer Memo header to copy matter information into the note field.
Custom Info Section
Use custom template fields to populate matter custom field values on invoices in the Customer Memo section of the invoice PDF.
For Example: "{matter.cf.claim_number}" in which “cf” tells PracticePro to use the custom field “claim_number” for the invoice's matter. ZenCase will automatically replace the template field "{matter.cf.claim_number}" with the matter's custom field's value to display on the invoice PDF.
With LEDES enabled, you can set a pre-bill to be "Final Bill?" check yes or no, when used with a custom LEDES template, this will generate the "FINAL" word on the LEDES .txt output file.
Read more about how to Create Custom LEDES Billing Templates.
Turn on and off specific PDF summaries for:
Show Client Summary and details
Show Matter Summary and details
Show Invoice summary and details
Show Time Summary and details
Show Trust Replenishment Summary and details
Show Client Payment Summary
Show Matter Payment Summary
Show Pre-Bill Charge Numbers
Show Law Pay Link when Law Pay enabled
Reviewer Roles in the Pre-Bill Process
When reviewing pre-bills, the acting user may be automatically marked as an optional reviewer. This optional role does not impact existing workflows or approvals but provides an added review layer.
How To Add Attachments To A Pre-Bill
On the pre-bill edit page, you can add documents and images to your pre-bill directly from your computer or by copying expense attachment to your pre-bill attachments.
Note: Only PDF files will be appended to the end of your pre-bill and final invoice PDF. You can preview the pre-bill by clicking "Print Preview" from the top toolbar. All other files types are linked to the invoice for reference purposes.
Under Attachments section, click "Pre-Bill Attachments" tab
Click "Attach From Computer" and select a file to upload
Alternatively, you can drag and drop the file (one file at a time) in the dashed box area to upload the file
You should now see your files in the Pre-Bill attachments tab
Click the "Import Expense Attachments" tab to view all expense attachments available to add to your pre-bill
These are pulled from all expense line items under each Matter section of the pre-bill. If the expense has attachments, you will see these under Available Attachments section.
Click the "+" icon to move the expense attachments to the Selected Attachments area
Once you are done selecting expense attachments, click "Add To Pre-Bill" button
Click on the "Pre-Bill Attachments" tab to confirm expense attachments were copied over to the pre-bill
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.