Finances Overview

Overview: The Finances Module is a comprehensive system designed to help corporations track, forecast, and manage legal expenses. This tool is essential for organizations seeking to improve financial oversight of their legal matters, streamline invoice reviews, and stay on budget. Purpose: Finances helps organizations: Review and approve law firm in...

Simple Finances Setup for a Law Firm

Overview: Enable importing of actuals LEDES files and automatically set up a simple signature authority flow and basic forecast rules. Steps: Go to the Contacts module. Select the Law Firm you wish to enable. Click the Enable Finances Slot button. (This button will only show if the Finances product is enabled and the account has available law firm s...

Forecast Rules

Steps to Configure Forecast Rules: Navigate to Finances > Forecast Rules. Click the Add button.  Add Forecast Rules Using a Template To add forecast rules using a template, search for and select the template in the Use Template field.  Note that with the template selected, the Code, Amount, and Name fields will be automatically populated once sav...

Budgets

Overview: Budgets are financial allocations set for law firms or matters to manage spending effectively. Steps to Set Budgets: Navigate to Finances > Budgets. 2. Click the Add button to create a new budget. Configure the fields to correctly represent the budget for a particular law firm, billing code, etc. Start by entering a Description. Give th...

Signature Authorities

Overview: Signature authorities define multi-step workflows for invoice approvals based on monetary thresholds and delegation.  Configure and Create Approval Flows   Go to Finances > Signature Authorities.  To edit an existing record, click in the Record to open the Edit Signature Authority Rule pop-up.  To create an approval flow, click the Add ...

Forecasts (Viewing, Filtering, Exporting)

Overview: The Forecasts Tab provides insights into budgets, actuals, and predicted expenditures. Steps: View Forecasts: Open the Forecast Editor to access the main dashboard.      Filter Data: Use filters to refine data by country, law firm, or matter type. Use the Show Budget and Show Actuals checkboxes to compare Forecasts with budgets and/or actu...

Invoice Import

Overview: You can import law firm invoices for review and approval.The imported invoice is assigned a signature authority flow based on its properties. Steps: Prepare LEDES File: LEDES files are a standard format to communicate billing information.  AppColl and other billing systems should allow exporting of your invoices in LEDES format.  Currently...

Invoice Review

Overview: Review, approve, or reject invoices based on predefined workflows. Learn about notifications, adding comments, and walk through a scenario. Review, Approve or Reject Invoices: Begin by going to Finances > Actuals Invoices. Click in the row for the Invoice to review all the billing items in the invoice. Note that any invoices that have y...

Create and Use Billing Item Templates in Finances

Billing item templates streamline the process of creating billing entries for common fees or expenses.  For instance, if you routinely charge flat fees for tasks like drafting a provisional patent application or responding to an office action, you can set up a billing item template that includes the fixed amount and a standard description. Then, whe...