Release 25.03 March

Billing workflow

The billing workflow is a widely used feature within Legalsense. This workflow allows you to fully digitize the process of creating, reviewing, and sending invoices. Any changes made to the invoice during the process are recorded in the invoice history, allowing you to review them later.

The process can be configured according to your preferences so that the draft invoice passes through the appropriate individuals within your organization before it is sent. The workflow has been restructured to make this process even more adaptable to your needs. The following options are now available:

• Each step has the same functionality and now includes the option to select 'Back to me' when forwarding the task.
• The workflow consists of at least one step but is no longer limited to three steps. This allows you to expand the workflow to four steps or more.
• A threshold value can be set for each step instead of one value applicable for all steps. This gives you the flexibility to set the threshold for each step in the process or for each user responsible for a step. The threshold value can still be based on either an amount or percentage. Since this can now be set per step, this setting is no longer available under ‘Settings’ - ‘General’ - ‘System’, but is managed in the background. Please contact Legalsense support to change or add a threshold value.
• The assignment of responsibility for each step is now more flexible. The options are:
  • A specific user;
  • A specific role: matter supervisor, billing supervisor, billing assistant, account manager, or practice group head;
  • A permission group: any permission group available within your environment.
• The 'Extra check', triggered when the threshold value is reached, can now be set according to the options mentioned above and no longer needs to be linked solely to a specific user or practice group head.
• Each step can now be assigned to the above-mentioned options, meaning that the first step no longer needs to be specifically linked to the ‘Financial Admin’.

For more information regarding the billing workflow, please see our knowledge base article Billing workflow.

Matters, Clients and Contacts

• If your environment is set to the Swedish language, two fields on the contact form have been renamed with a different label:
  • The field 'Handelskammarens nummer' has changed to 'Organisationsnummer'.
  • The field 'Id-nummer' has changed to 'Personnummer'.

Invoices

• Currently, you can update the fields 'Invoice date' and 'Invoice accounting date' of an invoice in bulk via the invoice list with the button 'Update'. This will allow you to change the date fields to another date. We added two checkboxes, 'Clear date' and 'Clear accounting date', to the pop-up to allow you to empty the date fields of all selected invoices.
• The setting 'Attach UBL', which gave the possibility to attach the UBL attachment to every invoice email automatically, is replaced by a new setting 'Invoice attachment', which has the following three options: 'PDF', ' PDF + XML in UBL' or 'XML in UBL'. This setting can be set via 'Settings' - 'Billing' - 'Emails' and individually per matter debtor and invoice. This setting determines which attachment will be automatically added to the invoice email by default when sending the invoice. It is always possible to manually add or remove attachments to the invoice email. 

Reports

The budget report now has an extra column, 'Date last time entry'. This column shows the date of the last written time entry on the matter, or if a budget is set for a submatter, the last written time entry on the submatter.

Users

We have added two new bulk update functions to the user management. When selecting users from the user list, you can choose 'More actions' and select either 'New function' or 'New target.' These options allow you to set a new function or target for multiple users at once. After confirming the bulk action, a notification will inform you about the success of the bulk change. If, for some reason, the function or target couldn't be added to a user you selected, the notification will also inform you of the reason and the users that couldn't be updated. 

APIv3

• The "firm" field on the matter endpoint has been given a new format to improve the consistency of the data formats used in the API. Previously, the "firm" field was populated with the ID of the firm associated with the matter (if directly set), or null (if not directly set). The "firm" field is now an object with the following format:
  "firm": {"is_derived":true, "representation": {"display_name":"Brouwers & Van Leeuwen", "id":1, "url":"http://domain.legalsense.nl/api/v3/firms/1/"}}
• The field 'archived_date' has been added as extra list field to the following endpoints: Matter endpoint, Contact endpoint, Client endpoint, Submatter endpoint, and the Subscription endpoint. 
• Two fields 'modified_date' and 'created_date' are added to the Invoicesection endpoint. These two field are available for filtering by 'modified_date__gte', 'modified_date__lte', 'created_date__lte' and 'created_date__gte'. 
• Within the Prices and Invoices endpoint we added a filter 'valid_from' that maps to the same logic as filter_end_date__gte. Also the filter valid_until is added that maps to the same logic as 'filter_begin_date__lte'. 

Other

Uploaded files, like engagement letters or invoice attachments, are now better secured with an integrated virus scan. This additional security measure checks files for potential threats, enhancing the safety of your data. 

For more information about our Legalsense features, please visit our knowledge base.