Typically, at the end of a billing period, law firms will create multiple invoices to either review internally and/or send to their clients. Instead of having to create all of these invoices one-by-one, MyCase offers a Batch Invoice Creation feature that simplifies the process and saves a lot of time. This article walks you through the process of Batch Invoice Creation.
The "Create a New Invoice" Screen
From the Main Dashboard or Billing Dashboard, click the Add Invoice button.
You will be taken to the Create a New Invoice screen. By default, the "From Open Balances" tab will be opened (pictured below). Here, you will be presented with all of the cases that currently have un-invoiced time entries, expenses, flat fees, or cases with overdue balances. You will also see the "Last Invoice Date" column so you can determine if certain cases with overdue balances need to be invoiced again or not.
If there is a Lead Attorney assigned for the cases on this screen, you will see the Lead Attorney name listed as well.
Un-invoiced and overdue balances are organized by client (with each case appearing under the client grouping). You will see a checkbox to the left of every client and case on this list. Check the boxes that you would like to invoice for. You have three options for selecting invoices:
Select All Invoices: Clicking this checkbox will select every client and case that is listed on this screen.
Select a Client name: Clicking on a client name will select all cases for that client that currently have an un-invoiced balance. You can select multiple clients.
Select a Case: You can click individual cases to create an invoice for that cases. You can select multiple cases.
Once you have selected more than one checkbox, the Batch Billing tab will appear (pictured below). Use this window to set up the various options you have available to apply to the invoices. It's important to remember that any options you define here will be applied to ALL of the invoices that you selected on the previous step.
The adjustments section (pictured below) offers the ability to add an interest adjustment based on balances forwarded (overdue balances) or any other section of your invoices of your choosing.
You have the option of enabling "Apply Trust Funds" in the batch billing menu. This will allow you to automatically apply the balance of a client's trust funds to all selected invoices in that batch when created. You can also select how the trust account activity will be displayed on the invoice.
If you have Online Payments turned on, you will need to select which bank account you would like the payments to be deposited into.
Batch Billing Options Profile [highlighted in blue in the image below]
Clicking "Create New Profile" will display the following view:
With this configuration panel, users can create custom Batch Billing configurations including:
The bank account from which funds should be applied
The bank account to which funds should be deposited
Trust Allocation Priority: this determines how MyCase will apply a client's trust funds. One can choose to apply only trust funds allocated to the relevant invoiced case, both funds allocated to the client's case as well as the client's unallocated funds, or only the client's unallocated funds.
Multiple contacts: for invoices with multiple contacts, choose whether you want to apply only the designated billing contact's balance or spread the invoiced amount evenly across all the invoice's linked contacts.
Multiple cases: for instances in which a client had multiple cases invoiced in the batch, you can choose in what priority MyCase should apply their balance (e.g. oldest case first).
Once a user has created a billing configuration, they can save it for future use. There is no limit to the number of configurations a user can save.
Once you have set up the options, click the Create Invoices button to generate the invoices. After the invoices have been created, you'll be presented with the "Batch Saved" window. If you click Continue Billing, you will be taken back to the Create a New Invoice screen where you can continue creating invoices. If you click View Bills, you will be taken to a list of all the invoices that were just created in the batch.
To view your invoices after they have been created, click the View Invoices button, or navigate to the Invoices tab and search for the Batch created (typing “Batch” into the search bar within this page will bring up all batches created in MyCase along with the date created).
When applying Trust funds in batch, the full balance of the trust funds available will be applied to the invoice. If the client has less in trust than the invoice, the invoice will be created with a partial payment and have the remainder outstanding as due. If the client has more in trust than the invoice balance, the invoice will be created and marked as paid, and the remaining balance in Trust will be updated to reflect the payment made during batch billing.
If you select a case that has multiple linked contacts with trust balances, the case will automatically be unselected when the "Apply Trust Funds" toggle is enabled - this is done to ensure Trust funds aren’t erroneously applied from the wrong contact. Similarly, if you select multiple cases linked to the same client with a trust balance, they will automatically be unselected - this is done to ensure Trust funds are not incorrectly allocated to one or more cases.
After creating a batch of invoices, many firms would like to export them to PDF so they can be printed out. MyCase makes it easy to print a batch of invoices. Learn how to Export and Print a Batch of Invoices.