Billing workflow

Legalsense's billing workflow routes draft invoices through one or more responsible users for review before they go out to your client. It automates this back-office process, cuts down the time firms spend on billing, and lets you track every step and change to a draft invoice at any point.

Legalsense's billing workflow sends every new invoice through one or more reviewers before it's finalized and sent to your client. While the invoice is in review it stays a draft that reviewers can edit, and each step and change is recorded. Reviewers can finalize the invoice or postpone it with Bill later.

You can fully customize the billing workflow per installation: the number of steps, the responsible users assigned to each step, and the actions available at each step all adapt to your firm's needs. The billing workflow isn't enabled by default. Contact Legalsense Support if you'd like to use it. Support activates your workflow and configures the steps to your specifications.

Configuration of the billing workflow

When setting up the billing workflow, you can make several choices about the steps and their order, described below.

Responsible users

Every step in the billing workflow is assigned to a responsible user. You can choose the responsible user for a step based on different criteria:

• Role: the responsible user is one of the following:
  • The matter supervisor.
  • The billing supervisor on a matter.
  • The client's account manager.
  • The billing assistant of the matter supervisor, the billing supervisor, or the client's account manager. You can assign a billing assistant to the responsible user's account.
  • The practice group supervisor.
• Permission or permission group: the responsible user is anyone who holds a specific permission or belongs to a specific permission group. See the article ↪ Permission groups for an overview of all permissions and default permission groups.
• Specific user: you select an individual user from a list and assign them to a specific step.

Required comments

You can require a comment when a step is approved. This is a free-text field where the responsible user explains their decision or asks a question. Legalsense shows this comment to every subsequent responsible user in the workflow and stores it under the History button on the invoice.

Threshold

You can set a threshold for the whole workflow or per step, as a specific amount, a percentage, or both. If you configure both, the invoice only proceeds once it exceeds both threshold values. The threshold applies only to write-offs and to adjustments to time entries that reduce the value of the draft invoice. If a responsible user changes the draft invoice beyond the threshold, Legalsense triggers an additional step and sends the draft invoice to a designated responsible user for extra review or approval. You choose this designated responsible user using the same options described above.

For example, say the threshold is set at €200. If a responsible user modifies the invoice by €100 in step two, no extra approval step is triggered and the invoice proceeds directly to the next step. If the change exceeds €200, Legalsense adds an extra step for approval by the designated responsible user.

Important: Legalsense always calculates the threshold against the initial value of the draft invoice, not against the value at the end of the previous step. No matter how much responsible users have changed the invoice in earlier steps, Legalsense always compares the current amount to the invoice's original value.

Overviews and actions

Once you activate the billing workflow, the Tasks and Tasks Overview tabs appear under the Invoices menu.

Invoices section showing the Tasks and Task Overview tabs.

Tasks

The Tasks tab shows every task assigned to the logged-in user. Click a task to open its draft invoice for review. From an open task, you have the following actions available.

Draft invoice opened from a task, showing the Task done, Pass responsibility, and Bill later buttons.

1. Task done: confirms you've checked the invoice and forwards it to the next responsible user in the workflow. This opens a pop-up showing who is responsible for the next step and a comment field.

Task done pop-up, showing the next responsible user and a comment field.

2. Pass responsibility: forwards the invoice to a user who isn't a responsible user in the workflow but has, for example, also worked on the matter. When you choose this option, you can also enable the Back to me checkbox, which returns the invoice to you once the forwarded user completes it.

Pass responsibility dialog, showing the user selection field and the Back to me checkbox.

3. Bill later: forwards the invoice immediately to the financial admin, who can delete the draft invoice. Deleting the draft invoice returns all its billable items to the relevant matter.

Task overview

The Task Overview tab lists every task in the workflow, regardless of which user it's assigned to. Users in the Financial Admin permission group have access to this tab, with full visibility and control over every task and draft invoice in the workflow. They can act on tasks from this overview to influence the workflow, for example to reassign a user's tasks to someone else if that user is unavailable, such as due to illness.

The Task Overview tab.

If you want other users to see the task overview, grant them the view_task_overview permission. This permission only grants visibility into tasks; it doesn't let the user make changes or otherwise influence the workflow.

Note: To fully open an invoice, the user needs at least the permission to view other users' invoices. Without it, access to the invoice overview stays limited.

Permissions

Two further permissions apply specifically to the billing workflow:

• can_change_invoice_in_workflow: allows a user to edit an invoice within the workflow when a task on it is assigned to them. This matters especially for users who otherwise can't edit invoices.
• alter_workflow_loglines: allows a user to modify time entries within the billing workflow. Always combine this with a permission that allows editing invoices, such as can_change_invoice_in_workflow.

Overview status and history

When you open an invoice, you can see which step of the workflow it's currently in.

Invoice showing its current workflow step.

Click the History button to view previous tasks, responsible users, and comments, and to see the invoice as it looked before a given change.

History view of an invoice, showing prior tasks, responsible users, comments, and earlier versions of the invoice.

Notifications

Legalsense can send email notifications to keep the workflow moving, so responsible users don't have to check their Tasks tab to find out that an invoice is waiting for them.

There are two kinds of email:

• Notification: tells a responsible user that a new task has been assigned to them.
• Reminder: tells a responsible user that a task is still open after a longer period.

You choose the subject, message and timing of each email separately. The timing is how long a task has to be open before Legalsense sends the email. For example, a notification after 15 minutes and a reminder after three days. Legalsense checks for tasks every five minutes, so an email can go out up to five minutes after that time has passed.

Who receives the emails

For each step in the workflow, you choose whether its responsible users receive these emails. If a step has more than one responsible user, for example everyone with a certain permission, all of them receive the email. Users without an email address in their account don't receive anything.

Legalsense combines tasks into one email: a user with several new tasks receives one email, not one per invoice. Each task triggers at most one notification and one reminder, so users aren't emailed about the same task over and over.

Email content

The message is the same for every user and every task. It doesn't list the invoices waiting for the user, so link to Legalsense in the message and let recipients open their Tasks tab from there.

Contact Legalsense Support to set up or change the notification emails.