Creating and Sending Invoices

An invoice in Outlaw moves through a short, deliberate life: a draft you shape freely, a finalized invoice that locks the record, a sent invoice the client has in hand, and the payments that close it out. The whole point of the design is that nothing about your billing is locked in until you say so, and everything after that moment is frozen and provable.

Start from Work in Progress

The natural starting point is the Work in Progress page: pick your billing period, select the cases ready to bill, and choose Generate Draft Invoice (or Invoice All for the whole run). Each draft arrives pre-filled: the next invoice number in sequence, your default description, payment terms, and a due date computed from them. You can also create an invoice by hand from the Invoices page when you need one outside the normal rhythm.

The Draft Stage

A draft is a proposal, not a record. Adjust the billing period dates, the description, the included time entries, expenses, and payments, and any discounts. Two things are worth knowing:

• A draft doesn’t claim its work. Every time entry and expense on a draft still shows as unbilled WIP, so nothing is hidden from your other reports while you polish the numbers.
• Drafts can sit. Until you finalize, you can delete a draft or regenerate it without consequence.

Finalizing: the Moment That Matters

Finalizing flips the invoice from a proposal to a record:

• Every included time entry, expense, and payment is stamped as belonging to this invoice. They leave WIP at that moment.
• The invoice’s amounts are frozen as a snapshot. Rate changes, setting changes, and edits elsewhere in the app no longer move this invoice’s numbers. What you billed is what the record shows, permanently.
• The invoice’s appearance is frozen too. Outlaw saves your letterhead, the letterhead width, and the invoice font size with the invoice when you finalize it. A lead invoice also keeps the Period it showed at that moment. When you download or email a finalized invoice again later, it uses those saved settings, not your current Invoicing settings, so a new letterhead never changes an invoice you already issued.
• The Due Date and the order of the time entries are locked. On a finalized invoice the Due Date is shown as text rather than a date picker, and the Sort by Date button and drag-to-reorder are no longer available. You can still record the Date Sent and whether you sent it by Mail or Email.

Sending the Invoice

From the invoice (or a selection of invoices), choose to email them. The Email Invoice(s) dialog collects the recipients, lets you choose the presentation (a narrative summary or a detailed line-item listing), and can include the people paying on the client’s behalf. The Include benefactor checkbox starts unchecked on every send, because an invoice carries privileged billing detail; check it each time you want benefactors to receive the invoice. A benefactor who is also an Opposing Party or Opposing Counsel on the case is never offered. Outlaw renders the invoice to a PDF, attaches it, and sends with the subject “Your invoice from” your firm’s billing name. The sent date and method are recorded on the invoice; if you mail a paper copy instead, record that the same way. Both show up later in your Trust Sweep.

Getting Paid

Clients can pay through Outlaw Payments: send a pay request with a secure payment link, pointed wherever the money should land, a payment on the invoice, a deposit to the case trust, or a deposit to general trust. Payments record as transactions against the client and case (see Transactions), and partial payments are normal. A payment made while the invoice is still a draft appears on it, and the remainder is the amount due. A payment made after you finalize belongs to the next invoice; the finalized invoice keeps the figures it had when you finalized it.

Interest on overdue invoices follows your invoicing settings (rate, method, and grace period); see Invoicing in Settings.

Watching What’s Outstanding

Each case’s financial summary shows what’s currently due, and the Invoices page is the firm-wide ledger of drafts, finalized invoices, and their payment state. When a billing period’s invoices are finalized and sent, there’s one step left before you move any trust money at the bank: Trust Sweep.

Finding Invoices

The toolbar above the invoice list narrows what the list shows:

• Type. Choose All Invoices, Case Invoices, or Lead Invoices. Lead invoices are the ones billed to a lead, such as a paid consultation.
• Case. Search for a case to show only its invoices.
• Client. Search for a client to show only invoices that include that client.
• Hide Finalized. Turn this on to show only drafts. Turn it off to show finalized invoices again.
• Configure. Opens Invoicing in Settings. It is a shortcut, not a filter.

The filters work together. The Case and Client lists offer only what appears on invoices that match your other filters, so choosing a client narrows the cases you can pick, and the reverse. If no case invoices match, the Case list says so. Outlaw remembers your Type and Hide Finalized choices in this browser the next time you open the page. On a phone, the toolbar buttons show only their icons.

How This Connects

• Flows in. An invoice gathers a billing period’s billable tasks and time, expenses, and earned flat fees across one or more cases, starting from the Work in Progress page.
• Flows out. Payments settle it, and once it’s finalized and sent it flows into the Trust Sweep. What it bills and collects feeds each case’s summary and the firm’s financial reports.
• In time. This is the clearest record in the firm. A draft is live and editable, but finalizing freezes the invoice as the exact document the client received; later edits or payments never move its numbers, they belong to the next invoice. Like every record it keeps a full Blame Log. See How Outlaw Fits Together for the loop.