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Fee Earner Draft Billing System

Giving fee earners the flexibility and control to manage their own billing

The Fee Earner Draft Billing system in LAWFUSION is one of several billing modules in the suite. It provides a whole range of functionality to empower Fee Earners to draft and control their own billing, with the flexibility to configure the software to match the firm’s preferred processes. The module is designed to involve fee earners in the tailoring, drafting, adjusting, authorisation, posting and sending of bills to clients, to whatever degree the firm sees fit.

Key Features

Draft Billing

When it comes to billing, different firms of different sizes have a variety of ways of doing things. The LAWFUSION Fee Earner Billing System embraces this, and offers a range of options for fee earner billing. A growing number of firms today prefer their fee earners to be in control of their own billing, and have their cashiers do a final check before posting to the ledgers. The software has been designed to cater for a whole raft of eventualities. For a demonstration of any aspect of LAWFUSION Billing, please call 01482 567601 today.

Billing Wizard

The Billing Wizard that powers Fee Earner Draft Billing walks users through all the stages of billing and it is highly configurable giving firms the flexibility to use the steps it needs, and switch off the functionality it doesn’t want. The wizards cover drafting/editing the bill requirements, authorisation, finalisation for posting, approval, rejection, cancellation, filing, emailing or printing (if required) and completion.

Flexible Configuration

The LAWFUSION draft billing system is highly configurable with lots of options for different style bills, and options for setting defaults, to suit the firm’s requirements. It is designed to make billing far slicker and easier for all users involved in billing at the firm.

Posting Requests

Once draft bills are finalised and approved, the software will present your cashier (or user responsible) with a list of bills that need to be checked and posted. They can select the bills they wish to process, and the system will take each one in turn and allow the user to complete the billing form with the relevant details. If the user responsible is not happy with the draft bill for whatever reason, he/she has the option to reject it and log a reason for the rejection.

Bill Manager

The Bill Manager is a tool designed to help law firms manage their draft billing process, and in particular to make sure draft bills do not get stuck in the system, or forgotten about. The focus of the bill manager is to ensure relevant users are aware of all draft bills, so they can ensure they are all finalised, posted and sent out to clients. A fee earner may use ‘the bill manager’ to check on the draft bills he/she still has to complete or revisit to address changes. A supervisor may use it to review his or her department’s bills. A Partner may need to look at his / her own bills, or the bills of colleagues awaiting approval.

Multi-Level Bill Authorisation

Using the authorisation system, the user drafting the bill can select who is required to authorise the bill before it is produced. Once authorised the system will then forward the bill onto the relevant user/cashier for posting, and if necessary back to the author of the bill for re-drafting or correction. There is a whole raft of options allowing firms to run the billing processes the way they want to, for their firm.

Account Enquiries

As part of the ‘account enquiry’ functionality in LAWFUSION users can see outstanding draft bills that have not been finalised. They are highlighted in a different colour to other bills. Users can open and review draft bills straight from the account enquiry screen.

Priority Action List (PAL)

The Priority Action List (PAL) in LAWFUSION can be used to alert fee earners when they need to draft bills for interim billing. For those matters that require a regular interim bill (bi monthly, quarterly, whatever) the PAL can be configured to notify the fee earner which matters are due a bill and when. The fee earner can then use the fee earner draft billing system to draft the bills when required, a few at at time, rather than letting them build up.

Monies On Account / Receipts In Advance

The Draft Billing system caters for monies on account and receipts in advance. Users can also offset disbursements by client transfer, fully or partially, when drafting their bills in LAWFUSION.

Emailing or Printing Your Bills

Many law firms today send their bills to clients by email, but some still print their bills. LAWFUSION caters for both.

But if you are striving to become paperless or paperlight, LAWFUSION is the ideal legal practice management system to help you on your way. You can transform your processes gradually to bring your whole team on board to change the way you send out your bills to clients.