Generating electronic bills (e-bills)

Bills can be output in XML format for forward transmission. This is known as "e-billing" and is particularly useful for extracting billing data that can then be transformed into specific formats and integrated with third-party software, e.g. Barclays, Zurich, etc. Clients/contacts can be flagged for e-billing, which tells the software that any future bills raised for the selected client/contact should be automatically output as XML as part of the bill merge process.

To flag clients/contacts for e-billing:

1. Open the Contact List or Client List and click the Financial tab.

2. Under Billing, tick Generate e-bill. This setting is held at client and contact-level, but changing in either place automatically updates the other.

• The e-billing option can also be set as part of a billing rule in System Setup. This setting is then defaulted to when the Auto-billing Wizard is run to create a batch of draft bills. However, it can be changed manually if required.

• The e-billing option can also be set when running the Billing Wizard to create a draft bill.

3. Click Save.

To generate an e-bill:

1. Raise a bill using the Bill Delivered (BD) posting slip or a draft bill using the Billing Wizard or Auto-billing Wizard. The default e-billing setting (if one has been set) is automatically picked up and displayed.

• On the BD posting slip, the setting is displayed on the Billing Options tab.

• On the Billing Wizard, the setting is displayed on the Bill Summary step.

• On the Auto-billing Wizard, the setting is displayed on the Billing Options Selection step.

2. Make sure Generate e-bill is ticked/selected and click OK (BD) or Finish (Wizards). The e-billing status of bills is shown in the E-bills column of the Batch Posting screen (Draft Bills tab) or the Bill Ledger (Real and Draft tabs). This is indicated by a "Yes" or "No".

3. Next, highlight the desired bill and initiate the Bill Merge process. This can be done by:

• Clicking Post All in the Batch Posting screen (Batch Posting tab) when posting all bills

• Clicking Post in the Batch Posting screen (Batch Posting tab) when posting a single bill

• Clicking Merge in the Bill Ledger (Real tab) after a bill has been posted

• Clicking Merge in the Office Ledger after a bill has been posted

4. When a bill is merged, the bill details are merged into a Word document (using the selected template) and also exported as an XML file. Both files are stored in Document Management – the document at matter-level and the XML file at contact-level. When the XML file is opened a style sheet is applied so that it can be read in your default Web browser.

Three types of bills can be generated in the software – standard, consolidated and split. Any of these can be flagged for e-billing, but the XML output is slightly different for each:

• Standard bills produce a single XML file with billing details for the matter.

• Consolidated bills (i.e. client bills for multiple matters) are similar to standard bills, in that a single XML file is created, however the XML file contains billing details for each matter.

• Split bills (i.e. client bills split between various invoicees) produce a single XML file for each invoicee. Each of these show the billing values for the invoicee (i.e. the split amount) and the total billing values for the whole invoice.

5. History entries appear against the client (Client List) for standard, consolidated and split bills. They also appear in the history for the matter (Matter List) and the contact (Contact List). However, there is a slight difference with split bills in the Client List – only the split(s) associated with the client appear.

• For example, if a bill is split between Mr & Mrs Smith (where Mr Smith is the client and Mrs Smith is an invoicee) the Contact List will show split 1 for Mr Smith and split 2 for Mrs Smith. However, in the Client List a history entry will only appear against Mr Smith, as he is the client, and not against Mrs Smith, as she is just an invoicee.

Notes

• A new bill-level merge field is available – [bill_ebill_document_path] – which references the physical location of the e-bill on the file system (per invoice). It is anticipated that system integrators will reference this merge field in a macro run from Word after the document merge so that the electronic output from Legal Enterprise can be transformed according to customer specific requirements (e.g. LEDES).

• The generation of e-bills is LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard) compliant.

• If a bill is flagged for e-billing, an electronic bill (per invoicee) is generated every time a bill is merged/re-merged.

• The e-bill flag can be changed manually when either raising a bill or modifying a bill before it is posted. It can also be modified after a bill has been posted by opening the Bill Viewer for the desired bill and changing the setting.

• E-bills can only be generated when posting a bill (and doing a merge) or after a bill has been posted. They cannot be generated when merging draft bills.

• The profit split section of the e-bill XML document also includes entries for anticipated time value, anticipated time allocated value and anticipated time unallocated value. This information is per fee earner per bill.