Billing Advanced Tool

The Billing Advanced tool is designed to facilitate billing across an entire Org in one central location. Here, you can create time and expense entries, record payments, create invoices, and send those invoices off, all without having to go to an individual project. 

Navigate to the Billing Advanced tool by selecting Advanced from the main menu and then selecting Billing from the left side menu. The Billing Advanced tool contains three tabs: unbilled, invoices, and payments.

• Unbilled Tab
• Invoices Tab
• Payments Tab

Unbilled Tab

The Unbilled tab is a list of all projects that currently have any billing items not yet added to an invoice. In this tab, you can choose all unbilled items for a project, or all unbilled items within a chosen date range, and queue one invoice each for multiple projects.

Viewing

In the Unbilled tab, you see a table of projects and their data. You can move, resize, reorder, and filter the fields in the table. You can also use the search bar to filter the list by project name or by timekeeper. Learn more about managing the table.

Invoicing

To create a single invoice and select line items individually, click a project name in the list to open the invoice modal. Read more about how to handle invoices.

Bulk Invoicing

Select all projects you’d like to generate an invoice for, or select the checkbox on top to select all. If the projects have been filtered, selecting the top checkbox will only select the projects that have been filtered.

When you’ve selected the desired projects, click + Create Invoice in the top right to open the Create Invoice flyout. In the flyout, you can choose to include all unbilled items from the selected projects, or all unbilled items within a chosen date range. 

• By default, invoice due dates are determined by the individual project settings, but you can choose to override these terms and select your own due date for all the invoices. 
• If you add a description using bulk invoicing, that description will appear on each invoice you’re creating. Descriptions are included in LEDES files and can be added to PDF templates.
• The Generate PDF field must be toggled on in order to enable you to finalize the invoices. This field is toggled on by default. If you’d like to create invoices without creating a PDF or finalizing, toggle the option off. 

Once you’ve selected your options, click either Create or Finalize. Clicking Create will create the invoices without finalizing them, allowing you to review or edit them as needed. Clicking Finalize will create and finalize the invoices.

When you click Create or Finalize, you will see a message indicating that the invoices have been queued for attention and are being processed. You do not need to remain on this screen for the invoices to generate.

You can choose to receive a notification when all invoices for the selected projects have been generated. To receive an email notification, navigate to the Notifications page in Filevine and select the option “Bulk invoice actions that I requested have completed.”

Note: The invoices appear as they are processed, so you may see some of the invoices before you receive a notification. You will receive a notification once all invoices that are part of the bulk request have been processed.

Invoices Tab

The Invoices tab shows all invoices and their totals. Users can take bulk actions like finalizing, generating a PDF, and generating LEDES-compliant files for invoices in this tab. 

Viewing

The Invoices tab displays a list of all invoices and can be filtered and ordered by project, date, total, and more. By default, the billing items are listed in descending order of invoice date. You can use the search bar to filter the list by project name, and select from the dropdown to filter the list by invoice status. 

Users can customize the table to more easily view and find the information they are looking for. Learn more about how to customize and manage the table.

To create a new invoice, click Create Invoice in the top right and select the desired project. To open an existing item’s invoice modal, click the item’s invoice number in the table. Click an item’s linked icon in the PDF column to open the PDF in a new tab. If the item does not have this icon, you must first generate a PDF for the item.

Select billing items by clicking the checkmark for each item in the table. Click the checkmark at the top to select all items. If you’ve applied filters, only items that meet the filter criteria will be selected.

The total outstanding balance of the selected items appears at the top of the table, alongside the total outstanding balance of all items. 

Bulk Actions

Select the desired items. Once you’ve selected an item, icons for bulk actions appear at the top of the table to the right.

The bulk actions include:

• Generate PDF: The PDF icon generates or regenerates a PDF document for each selected item.
• Download PDF: The download icon downloads all already-existing PDF documents for the selected items. If an item does not already have a PDF, this option will not create one. 
• Send for Approval: The arrow icon marks all eligible selected items with the status “Pending Approval.”
• Approve: The stamp icon marks all eligible selected items with the status “Approved.” Invoices marked with the “Approved” status are no longer editable.
• Finalize Invoice: The “$” icon finalizes all eligible selected items. Invoices marked with the “Final” status are no longer editable.
• Email Invoice: The paper plane icon sends all eligible selected invoices as PDF attachments in an email to the project contact. (The PDF file is the one that was most recently generated for the invoice.) The invoices are marked as sent. Read more about emailing invoices, including email requirements.
• Mark as Sent: The envelope icon marks all eligible selected items as sent. 

These actions and additional bulk actions can be selected in the vertical ellipsis menu. The dropdown menu also includes the following actions:

• Revert to Editing: This action is available for invoices in “Pending Approval” or “Approved” status, and returns the invoice to “Editing” status.
• Download LEDES: This action generates and downloads a zip folder with LEDES 1998B files. Learn more about LEDES-compatible bills.
• Delete: This action deletes the selected invoices. Invoices must not yet be finalized to be eligible for deletion.
• Void: This action voids the selected invoices. Only invoices that have already been finalized can be voided. The invoices will be marked with “Void” status. 

Once you’ve chosen a bulk action, a modal summarizes the action and asks you to confirm. This modal tells you how many of the selected items are eligible for the action. 

For example, invoices that have already been finalized or paid can not be finalized again, so items without this status are not eligible for the action. If you select one item with Editing status and one with Final status, the modal will let you know that one item is eligible and one is not. 

Click to confirm the bulk action. The items are queued for the action. 

When an invoice is queued, a caution icon appears next to its status, letting you and other users know that the item is currently in queue for an action. 

In your notification settings, you can choose to receive an email notification once the bulk action is complete. Navigate to Main Menu > Setup > Notifications. Under the Immediate tab, select Bulk invoice actions that I requested have completed in the list.

Payments Tab

The Payments tab displays a list of all projects that have had payment records created. Items in the list can be sorted using filters.

Clicking on a project will open a list of payments made in that project. Clicking on a payment will open the payment window, where you can view the date of payment, the source type, and the reference number for the payment.

If your Org is set up for manual payment in the Billing Setup Advanced tool, you can also select the invoices to which this payment should be applied by checking those invoices and selecting the amount.

The Payment tab will display 10 items per page as the default, but the default can be changed by changing the page selection. The user’s preferred per-page selection is preserved. Pagination options include 10, 25, and 50 items per page, and these options appear only as more items are added to the list.

Filters

The lists in the Payments tabs can be filtered to make it easier to find the items you’re looking for. These filters will reset to the default when you leave the Org-level Billing Advanced tool, or they can be refreshed by hitting the refresh icon to the right of the filters. 

Read below for an overview of the filter options:

• Project Filter: Search for and select a project to include only payments from that project.
• Include Archived: By default, archived projects are excluded from the payments list. Selecting the Include Archived checkbox will pull in archived projects to the list. 
• Team Member Filter: Search for and select a name or username to include only payments created by that user.
• Date: From/To Filter: Select a from and to date to filter by payments created during that time period. This filter includes a dropdown, which provides several options for easy searching.