Invoicing

The Invoicing page decides two things: how tracked time turns into billed time, and what your invoices look like when clients receive them.

Billing

• Billing Increment in Minutes: the unit you bill in. Entering 6 means you bill in 6-minute increments (0.1 hours); the default is to bill per minute. The page shows the fraction of an hour your increment works out to.
• Rounding Method: what happens when tracked time lands between increments. With a 6-minute increment: Always Round Up turns 9 minutes into 12 (0.2 hours); Always Round Down turns 9 minutes into 6 (0.1 hours); Round Up Past Halfway Point rounds 9 minutes down but 9 minutes and 1 second up.
• Lead Invoice Period: how a consultation (lead) invoice shows its period. Up to Consult Date (the default) shows “Up to” and the lead’s consult date. Full Range shows the invoice’s start and end dates, when it has both. Hide It shows no period. Finalized invoices keep the period they had when they were finalized.

The increment and rounding method work together on every time entry: Outlaw always tracks the real elapsed time, and applies the increment and rounding when computing what the client is billed. A case can override them for its own billing.

Taxes and Interest

• Tax Rate and Tax Label: a sales tax percentage, if your state taxes legal services (New Mexico, South Dakota, and Hawaii do), and the label shown next to it on the invoice, such as “Sales Tax” or “GRT”. A rate of 0 disables tax entirely.
• Interest Method: how overdue balances accrue interest. Simple Daily (accrues daily based on a monthly rate), Simple Monthly (the rate applies per whole month overdue), or Flat Monthly Fee (a fixed dollar amount per month). The rate field flips to match: a percentage for the first two, a dollar amount for the flat fee.
• Grace Period: days after the due date before interest starts. Zero means interest begins immediately.

Letterhead and Page Contents

Invoices are generated as PDFs, and PDFs can only embed certain (TrueType) fonts. If your letterhead needs a specific font, paste a high-resolution image of it (at least 2000 pixels wide for printed invoices) into the letterhead editor instead; it will appear at the top of every invoice. A Sample group on the page previews exactly what you’ve set.

The Letterhead Width slider sets how wide the letterhead image prints, from 1 to 100 percent of the 7.5 inches between the margins of a letter-size page. The slider shows the percentage and the width in inches, and the image keeps its proportions. Until you move the slider, the image prints at its own size. Finalized invoices keep the width they had when they were finalized.

You can also choose the invoice font and font size, a Default Summary (the note displayed to clients on every invoice, editable per invoice), and the Narrative Header. That last one matters if you use narrative invoices (the style the ABA recommends, where the work is described in prose rather than line-by-line detail). It’s the title that introduces the narrative, like “Work We Did for You”.

Expected Expenses

Expected expense rules remind you to record expenses that should go with certain work, such as a parking expense for a court appearance. Each rule pairs an activity type with an expense type (from Expense Types) and a Within number of days, where 0 means the same day. Choose both types, set the days, and select Add Rule. You can’t add a second rule for the same activity type and expense type.

A draft invoice card shows Missing Expected Expenses when the invoice has an activity of a rule’s type but no expense of the expected type within that many days of the task’s completion date. Any expense of that type on the same draft invoice counts, whoever entered it. If an activity needed no expense, select No Expense Needed next to it, and the card stops warning about that task. The warnings never add or block anything, and finalized invoices don’t show them.

Discount Reasons

When you discount an invoice, you pick a reason from a list managed here. Add your own, or use Import Standard Options to pull in the standard set and keep the ones that fit your practice. Anyone applying a discount can also type a new reason right on the invoice (it joins the firm’s list), so this page is where an administrator keeps the accumulated list tidy.