Setting Up a Consolidated Billing Invoice Template

In this article:

• Creating a Consolidated Invoice Template
• A Closer Look at the Consolidated Invoice Template

If you’re using consolidated billing, you can create and upload a special invoice template that accommodates the different billable items for the matters included in the bill. This article provides a link to a sample template you can upload to your system as well as a few notes about how the template is set up.  

Before creating any invoice templates (including a consolidated billing template), you should have experience using Microsoft Word merge fields as well as Actionstep merge fields. For help, see these resources on building a template using merge fields: 

• Microsoft Word Help (Access from Word’s Help ribbon) 
• Document Templates Overview 
• Merge Fields Overview 
• Using Merge Field Repeat Blocks 
• Using Conditional Merge Field Statements 

You should also be familiar with consolidated billing and invoice templates: 

• Setting Up and Using Consolidated Billing 
• Working with Invoice Templates

Creating a Consolidated Invoice Template

You can download a sample consolidated invoice template and use it to build out your own consolidated billing workflow. 

To set up a consolidated invoice template: 

1. Download the sample template. (Clicking this link will save a copy of the Word document to your browser's Downloads folder.)
2. Review the template and make any additional changes to it; or use it as an example to build your own template. (See A Closer Look at the Consolidated Invoice Template, below, for information about the consolidated billing merge fields used in this example.) 
3. Once set up, upload it to your Billing template list. (See Working with Invoice Templates for help.) 

A Closer Look at the Consolidated Invoice Template

A consolidated invoice template typically includes a few special merge fields and merge field options that allow FOREACH and REPEAT blocks to work within each record. The following attempts to explain these different components:

• Section A: Matter Summary Options 
• Section B: The FOREACH Block
• Section C: Outside the FOREACH Block

Section A: Matter Summary Options 

In this section, you’ll see a REPEAT block that includes a summary list of data (fees, hours, expenses, and a total of all these things) for all matters included in the invoice.  

Because this is a consolidated billing template, this REPEAT field must use the |data_source=bill_consolidation merge field option:

Also. with any repeat block anywhere in the template, any individual fields that are repeated must include a record number merge field option, which looks like this: |rn=* :

Section B: The FOREACH Block

REPEAT blocks cannot contain nested REPEATs, which are required when consolidating invoices (i.e., you cannot repeat matters and then repeat data (like fees) within those matters). To accommodate this, you can instead use a FOREACH block, which does allow you to include REPEAT blocks within the FOREACH block. (In fact, FOREACH works very similarly to a REPEAT.) 

In the sample template, the FOREACH block covers everything from the opening FOREACH field to the last «end» before the list of totals. You’ll see this includes repeated fee and expense information:

The data_source option for the FOREACH block is consolidated_bills (i.e.,  |data_source=consolidated_bills):

Any REPEAT merge field nested within a FOREACH block must also include one of the following options: 

• The |context_action_id=* option includes details about a matter. 
• The |context_sale_purchase_id=* option includes details about the invoice.

Section C: Outside the FOREACH Block

Invoice fields outside of the FOREACH block (like the totals just below Fees and Expenses) will calculate values for all items across all the invoices. For example, because Total fees is after the END FOREACH field, the merged answer will show total fees for all the invoices.