Billing Reporting - how can I have "no charge" time "billed" NOT show as uncollected fees?

  • 30 June 2022
  • 6 replies
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CarsenTazi
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I include a lot of admin activity and smaller communications in my invoices which currently requires me to mark them as “billable” and manually go in and waive the charge. It shows clients value and keeps them informed of actual activity even though we aren’t charging them for it. 

 

Unless I’m not doing something right, this appears to be showing as billed and uncollected in the fee insights/reporting. That is giving me very misleading information that I can’t truly dig into since I can’t customize the reporting to not consider waived time. 

The only way around this that I can come up with for reporting purposes is to bill for everything and then give an invoice credit. However, that will cause significant problems with client understanding and perception of value (creating the opposite of my intention of showing lots of “no charges”)… 

Is there a way to adjust what is included or how the waived time is classified so that my actual collection rate on charges shows up? 

- Carsen Tazi | Keeping Divorce Out of Court
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6 replies

D
Rank
Userlevel 2

Hi Carsen,

Thanks for using Community! Another way you could show these items on your invoice is to mark them as ‘non-billable’, and then include those items on the invoice.

In your Invoice Settings in Smokeball Billing, you are able to select a box which will show non-billable items on the invoice:

Thank you!

Legal Automation Specialist
CarsenTazi
Userlevel 5
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Thank you.  That is probably a good solution for most people. 
 

I want to show the client the actual cost that I’m NOT charging them. These items are traditionally billable work that we choose not to charge for (transmittal emails, file admin, time spent on prepping a pleading for filing, etc). I need to know how much I have waived as (1) we have a fee contract provision that essentially means that in the event of a fee dispute, the waived charges are no longer waived, and (2) for attorney fee requests, we want to show how reasonable we’re being (total billed of X, paid Y, waived Z…) 

 

yes, I appear to be wanting cake & to eat it too…

- Carsen Tazi | Keeping Divorce Out of Court
Sam Stephens
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Hi Carsen!

When you create a Time entry (also accessible by clicking on a line item on the Draft invoice page), there is an option next to the Billable switch called “Write Off”.

If you ensure the item is Billable, and the also select write off, on your invoice your client will see the line item, with the price, and with a strikethrough showing you’ve written that line off, thus allowing you eat that cake after all.

 

Time entry with the Write Off switch
Your Invoice with a written off line item

 

CarsenTazi
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@Sam Stephens - yes, that’s what I am already doing. However, then in the fee insights, I believe that it is treating those entries as billable but not collected and my “collection rate” is artificially low. 

- Carsen Tazi | Keeping Divorce Out of Court
Sam Stephens
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@CarsenTazi Ah, I see what you’re saying - yes, this is a tough one as the report is actually designed to show these types of items as not collected.

What types of entries would you want to see in firm insights around collection rate? What would you categorise as not collected? Would it be when you waive full invoices, for example?

There isn’t currently a way to show amounts on the invoice but not bill them and not have it tracked as uncollected, unfortunately.

I wonder if anyone else in the community has a similar thing they do, I’d be interested to hear how they handle it!

 

CarsenTazi
Userlevel 5
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I don’t know that there is an easy “fix” around this - just trade offs and I’m fine with that! 
 

The only thing I can think of from a “reports” stand point would be to have a report available on the total fees invoiced (not waived prior to invoicing) that are collected - perhaps like an aging A/R report. However, I don’t know how that would work as I believe all “waived” fees are treated the same. 
 

I believe a “no charge” option on fees for invoices would be helpful (or somehow distinguishing no charge line items from fees that are written off from collections). 

- Carsen Tazi | Keeping Divorce Out of Court
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