Running a Paid Consultation

A paid consultation is the rare moment in your sales pipeline where money changes hands before the client has signed a retention agreement. Outlaw Practice handles the whole thing for you: it takes the payment and produces a real invoice for the consult, even though the engagement itself hasn’t begun. This guide strings the pieces together into one workflow, from the setting you turn on once to the invoice you hand the client at the end.

Each piece has its own home elsewhere (the Options settings, the Case Type toggle, the Milestones on the lead), but the value here is the order you do them in.

Turn On Paid Consults

Go to Options / General and find the Initial Consults group. Check Our firm charges for initial consultations, then fill in the fields that appear:

• Cost: what the consult costs the client.
• Duration (hours): how long the consult runs.
• Task Name: the client-facing name for the consult. Make it something that signals value, like Case Strategy Meeting, rather than a generic “consultation”, so the client understands this is more than a quick fit check.
• Activity type: the activity this consult logs against. Pick a standard one or create a custom one in your activity types.

A common setup is to offer a fixed-price, fixed-duration Case Strategy Meeting.

Choose Which Case Types Use a Paid Consult

Turning on paid consults firm-wide doesn’t retroactively flip your existing case types. Any new case type you create from now on defaults to having a paid consult, but case types you’ve already defined need to be switched on one at a time.

Open Options / Case Types, edit a case type, check Paid Consult?, and save. Repeat for each type that should bill its initial consult. Skip the ones that shouldn’t.

Work the Lead to Appointment Made

Run the lead through your normal sales pipeline. The paid-consult tools don’t appear until the lead reaches the Appointment Made milestone, so check that milestone off once the appointment is set. From that point on, the lead’s head shows the consult workflow buttons.

Enter the Initial Consult Date

On the lead head, fill in the Initial Consult Date once you’ve scheduled the meeting. If the lead’s case type uses a paid consult, Outlaw automatically checks the Paid Consult? box for you when you set this date. (You can also set it by hand.) This is what tells the lead that an invoice is coming.

Add the Consult Task

Click Add Task for Consult on the lead head. Outlaw opens a new task with every field already filled in for you: the title, the activity type, the case association, and the estimated time all come from your settings. Review it, change anything you like, and save. This task is what you’ll run a timer on during the meeting, and it’s what the consult invoice will eventually bill.

Take the Payment

Click Take Payment. Outlaw creates a new transaction pre-filled with the consult’s amount. Choose the Payer and the Payment Method, add any notes, and save. You can collect the payment as soon as the consult is scheduled; creating the task first is best practice, but the order is up to you.

After the payment posts, the lead shows Waiting for completed time entry. That’s the expected state: the money is in, and Outlaw is waiting for the consult itself to actually happen before it will let you invoice for it.

Hold the Consult and Complete the Time Entry

When the meeting time arrives, start the timer on the consult task. Have the consult, stop the timer, and mark the task Completed. Completing the time entry is the trigger that unlocks invoicing: an invoice for a consult that never took place would be a problem, so Outlaw won’t generate one until the work is logged as done.

Generate, Finalize, and Save the Invoice

With the time entry completed, the lead head shows Create Invoice. Click it to generate the consult invoice from the completed time entry. Review it, and if it looks right, click Finalize to lock it. (After it’s finalized you’ll see Edit Invoice on the lead head if you need to revisit it.)

A finalized invoice gives you two ways to hand it over, and they go to different places:

• Download saves the PDF to your computer’s Downloads folder, ready to email or print.
• Save to Documents files the PDF directly into this lead’s Notes & Attachments, so it stays attached to the record.

Many firms do both: save a copy to the lead for the file, and download a copy to send. With that, the paid consult is complete, payment collected and invoiced, all before a single line of the retention agreement is signed.