Financials
Work in Progress
The work you've finished but haven't billed yet. What counts as WIP, where to watch it, and how to turn it into draft invoices.
Work in progress is the money your firm has earned but hasn’t asked for yet: time entries completed, expenses paid out of pocket, flat fees earned, none of it on an invoice. Think of it as inventory on the shelf. Outlaw tracks it continuously, shows it to you in three places, and turns it into draft invoices in two clicks.
What Counts as WIP
In Your WIP
Completed, billable time entries that aren’t on an invoice yet. Expenses you’ve logged that aren’t on an invoice and aren’t excluded from invoicing. Flat fees and milestones you’ve earned but not yet billed.
Not WIP
Tasks that haven’t been completed (a started timer isn’t billable work until the work is done). Entries marked no charge or hidden from the invoice. Anything already on an invoice, draft or final.
The moment an invoice including an item is finalized, that item stops being WIP. Until then it stays on the shelf, visible and waiting.
Why Watch It
WIP is where billable work goes to age. Time that sits unbilled for months is harder to collect, harder to explain to the client, and more likely to be written down. Watching the WIP page at the end of each billing cycle tells you, case by case, what’s ready to bill, and the Trust column tells you how much of it the client’s trust funds can already cover.
Where You See It
- On each case: the case’s financial summary shows an Unbilled total, and the Time Entries section header carries the same running unbilled amount for that case.
- Firm-wide: the Work in Progress page in Financials lists every case with unbilled work: client, case, Labor, Expenses, Total, recent payment activity, and available Trust funds, with a totals row at the bottom. Two date pickers narrow the view to a billing period, and the list exports if you want it on paper.
Turning WIP into Invoices
- Open Work in Progress and set the date range for your billing period.
- For one case, select its row and choose Generate Draft Invoice.
- For a whole billing run, select every row you want to bill and choose Invoice All. Outlaw creates one draft invoice per case, numbering them in sequence.
Each draft picks up its invoice number, payment terms, due date, and default description from your invoicing settings. Nothing is locked in yet: drafts are fully editable, and the work itself stays in WIP until the invoice is finalized. From here, the process continues in Creating and Sending Invoices.