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Setting Up and Using Consolidated Billing

Consolidated billing means that when you have multiple matters open for a client, the billable items for those matters are combined into one bill. Without consolidated billing, each matter will have its own invoice.

This article covers how consolidated billing works in Actionstep Practice Management and the steps you must take to set it up. Please note, however, that if you are a NetDocuments user, consolidated bills cannot be saved to NetDocuments.

 

Before you begin: 

  • Enable consolidated billing by going to Admin > General settings > Feature Preview and toggling Consolidated billing (EBM) to on.
  • To email invoices to all parties on a consolidated bill, enable the matters to be billed in the matter's Billing Options. See Setting Up Billing for a Specific Matter.

 

Enabling or Disabling Consolidated Billing at the Contact Level

Using Practice Management, you can enable / disable consolidated billing for individual contacts. When enabled, billing for all matters where that contact is the client will be consolidated.

 

To do this:

  1. In Practice Management, edit a contact. (See Editing a Contact for help.)
  2. Click the Accounting tab on the contact record.
  3. Toggle Consolidated billing to on. Additional fields are displayed.
  4. Complete these additional fields:
    • Invoice/Bill template: Choose the template that will be used when the consolidated bill is produced. (See Working with Invoice Templates to learn how to set up an invoice template.)
    • Send to email address: Enter (or select) the email address (or addresses) that will receive a copy of the bill once it is produced.
    • Email template: Choose the template that will be used for sending the billing email. (See Working with Bill Email Templates to learn how to set this up.)
    • No. of copies to print: Click the drop-down list and choose the number of copies that will be printed when the bill is produced.
  5. Click Save to save your changes.

 

Creating Consolidated Bills

There are two ways you can create a consolidated bill:

 

Using Mass Billing

Complete instructions for using mass billing can be found here: Using Mass Billing. 

As you complete those instructions, the information below can help you ensure mass billing using consolidated invoices will be successful. 

Matters will automatically be consolidated if all the following conditions are met:

  • All the clients on the bill match (primary and any secondary clients)
  • Clients have consolidated billing set on their contact record
  • The bill date of the invoices are the same
  • If you mass bill and any bills meet the conditions described in the previous options, they will be consolidated automatically. If the client participants match but they are listed in different order in the list of parties (like in the following example), the invoices will not be consolidated:

TIP:  To see if a client is set up for consolidated billing, the term Consolidated is listed in the Invoice Type column on the Mass Billing page for the clients' invoice(s).

 

Use Matter Billing

Complete instructions for individually billing a matter can be found here: Creating, Viewing, and Approving Draft Bills and Creating a Bill for a Specific Matter. 

As you complete those instructions, the information below can help you ensure billing an individual matter using consolidated invoices will be successful.

You can create a draft bill for individual matters. If Practice Management finds two draft bills for the same client and that client has consolidated billing set on their contact record, the bills will be consolidated.

If you create a consolidated bill one matter at a time, make sure that the invoice date is the same. If the invoice dates differ, the invoices will not be consolidated.

NOTE:  Having a contact record set up to use consolidated bills does not mean that every bill must be consolidated. You can bill one matter and approve the bill for that matter then bill the second matter and approve that second bill separately. Practice Management will only consolidate bills from two or more matters in draft when the bills have the same bill date.

 

Additional Consolidated Bill Tasks

 

Editing a Consolidated Bill

When you first open a consolidated bill, you are presented with a list of the different matters that are associated with this bill. You can then review and edit this information as needed. (To edit the bill, click the invoice number link to open those billable items.)

 

Paying Consolidated Bills

Once a consolidated bill is approved, it can be paid in the same way that any other bill in Practice Management can be paid. For more information, see Processing Client Payments.

You will see a list of the sub-bills and you can choose how to allocate the payment amongst those bills. Alternatively, bills can be paid separately like any other bill in the system.

 

Viewing the Mass Billing List

The Mass billing list is displayed when an invoice has been consolidated. It lists all clients on the invoice and if the invoice should be emailed to more than one client.

 

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