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Working with Invoice Templates

Invoices serve as a formal request for payment and often detail for your client the legal services provided, associated time entries, and any disbursements incurred on their behalf. Invoices help ensure transparency, support compliance with billing standards, and facilitate timely client payments.

In Actionstep Practice Management, you can create and use your own invoice templates to simplify the process of billing your clients. When setting up an invoice template, you use merge fields, which pull data (like names, amounts, etc.) out of Practice Management and insert it into a Microsoft Word document.

 

Accessing Sample Templates

Actionstep provides several sample templates you can review and customize for your own use.

CAUTION:  The invoices Actionstep provides are examples and should not be relied on in terms of meeting any trust and/or accounting regulations. Before using, verify the requirements for your jurisdiction and either create your own invoice template that meets your requirements or engage an Actionstep Certified Consulting Partner to assist you.

 

To download these templates:

  1. In Practice Management, go to Admin > Billing. The Billing page appears.
  2. Find the Custom bill templates section. This lists any existing bill templates you've set up and associated with your system.
  3. Click Create new custom bill template. The New Custom Bill Template window appears.
  4. In the Template downloads list, click the link for the invoice you want to download.
    The template is downloaded and saved to your browser's Downloads folder.

From here, you can review the template and make changes to it so it fits your own firm's needs for invoicing. You can also create your own invoice template. To learn more about this process, see these articles:

 

Uploading an Invoice Template

Once you've created your invoice templates either by customizing the sample templates available in Practice Management or building your own, you can upload it into Practice Management for use in your billing workflow.

 

To do this:

  1. In Practice Management, go to Admin > Billing. The Billing page appears.
  2. In the Custom bill templates section, click Create new custom bill template. The New Custom Bill Template window appears.
  3. Enter a Template name.
  4. Enter a Description.
  5. In the Upload new template file field, click Please select a file to browse to and select the Word docx template you want to use. 
  6. Click Save to finish uploading the template and save your changes.

 

Editing an Existing Template

At times, you may need to update the templates you are using.

 

To do this:

  1. In Practice Management, go to Admin > Billing. The Billing page appears.
  2. In the Custom bill templates section, click the link for the template you want to update. 
    The Edit Custom Bill Template window appears.
  3. Click the link for the Current template to download the template so you can make your changes. 
  4. Once your updates are made, view the Edit Custom Bill Template window (if you've closed it) and complete the fields in it, selecting and uploading the updated template in the Upload new template file field. (See the instructions outlined in the previous section, "Uploading an Invoice Template".)
  5. Click Save. The previous template is overwritten with the updated version.

NOTE:  To delete a template, click the link for the template in the Custom Bill Templates list. In the Edit Custom Bill Template window, click Delete. Then provide a reason for the deletion and confirm the action.
Please note that when you delete a template, there is no way to recover it. Consider downloading the template first and saving it either in your firm's document repository or associating it with a matter you've set up for managing administrative items.

 

Sample Templates

The following is a list of ready-made invoice templates, which you can modify to suit your needs by editing them in Microsoft Word. Click a link below to save a copy of that template to your browser's default Downloads folder.

 

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