Help Center

Creating a Disbursement from a Supplier Invoice

NOTE: In the U.S., disbursements are called expenses. Throughout this article, any reference to a disbursement also means an expense.

In Actionstep Practice Management, you can bill an expense from a supplier invoice straight onto a client matter.

 

Creating a Disbursement from a Supplier Invoice

NOTE:  For an in-depth explanation of the fields available in this workflow, see Creating Supplier Invoices. The instructions below only cover the steps specific to creating a disbursement from a supplier invoice.

  1. In Practice Management, click the global Create button and choose Purchase from the Accounting section. (You may need to click Show all to view this option.) The New Supplier Quote page appears.
  2. On Step1, choose Purchase Template or Supplier Invoice and click Next.
  3. On Step 2, complete all of the fields and click Next.
  4. On Step 3, do the following:
    • Enter the Supplier Name.
    • Click the Related Matter drop-down list and choose the matter where you want the disbursement to be billed.
    • Choose a Shipping Address.
    • Click Finish. 
  5. On the page that appears, enter the required supplier invoice details on the Supplier Invoice Items tab (if completing a supplier invoice) or the Purchase Template Items tab (if completing a purchase template). (See Creating a Supplier Invoice/Vendor Invoice for complete instructions.)
  6. For the expense you want to bill as a disbursement, make sure to select the Bill checkbox.
  7. Complete any other information that is needed.
  8. Click the Save drop-down list to choose the Save option you need, The disbursement is added to the matter.

 

To view the disbursement in the matter:

  1. In Actionstep, view the matter. (See Editing a Matter for help.)
  2. Click the Billing menu icon. The Billing page appears.
  3. Click the Disbursements link on the left side of the page. A list of disbursements is displayed.
  4. Click the link for the disbursement you just created in the previous section. The Edit Disbursement window appears:

 

Understanding How This Works

If the expense account you use on your supplier invoice has a corresponding income account in the chart of accounts, the disbursement billed to the matter will automatically use the corresponding income account.

In the example screenshot above, the expense account for Disbursements has a corresponding income account for disbursements in the chart of accounts. Remember, when entering an expense, it costs the firm something so it will show as an expense in the accounts. However, when you bill this to your client, it will be shown as income. Since the client will pay the amount to the firm, it will show as income in your accounts.

To explain further, the account details are set up like this: (You can access this by going Accounting > Accounts > Account List.)

Then, in the example below, the expense account 6-3005 is used:

This means the disbursement will automatically be allocated to the corresponding income account as shown in Account 4-1200  in the Accounts List:

 

Updated