This article explores the Billing Process within Insight Legal.

What is the Billing Process?

The Billing process on Insight Legal is used to record the invoices that your firm sends to its Clients. There are a number of elements to the functionality, and it can be used in a number of different ways. 

How you implement this functionality will depend on whether you require a document to be produced, and also depends on whether the whole billing process is managed by a single user or whether there are elements done by the fee earner and elements done by the accounts user/s. 

There are a number of parts to the process of billing, including adding the bill request, producing the bill document, and then processing the bill request and turning it into a full financial entry on your account ledgers. This guide shows you how to set up your bill template/s.

Why Do We Need the Billing Process?

As part of keeping accounts records up to date in conjunction with the SRA Accounts rules and HM Revenue and Customs, all firms must keep records of the invoices that they issue to their clients.
The simple recording of these transactions can be done through the posting routines in Insight Legal, but there are also additional functions that enable you to manage all parts of the process. This includes review and selection of any time recording and disbursement records to calculate the figures for the bill, and then also includes generating the bill document itself.

Where does the Billing Process Take Place?

• Bill templates are set up from the System Menu within the Document Templates section.
• Bill requests are raised from the Case Enquiry screen under the Cases menu.
• Bill requests can be viewed and amended from the Bill Requests tab on the Case Enquiry screen.
• Bill requests can be posted to the matter ledgers through the Requests screen in the Accounts tab.

How to Set Up Templates

1. Bill Templates

• Each firm can set up as many bill templates as they like. These documents are created in Word and have merge fields inserted to populate information such as the client name/address, the costs, VAT and disbursements, as well as any required totals. • As mentioned above, your bill documents are created in Word. In accordance with the Insight minimum specs, this needs to be Word 2007 or later (i.e. the documents need to be .docx format).

2. To Add a Bill Document

• Bill templates can be created either from scratch using a new blank Word document, or by taking a copy of a document that you already have.
• The document/s that you want to make in to templates need to be either copied in to a folder behind the Insight system or a brand new document can be added from the Document Templates Screen. 
• Go to the System menu and then to Settings. From the menu on the left of the screen, select Document Settings from the Templates menu. 
• At the top of the screen you will see a box with a Set button to the right of it. This is where you tell Insight where to find any document templates.
• If you already use the document creation functions in Insight, this path will already be set. If so, ensure you do not amend this path.
• If you haven’t used any of the document creation functions before, the box will read ‘Folder Not Valid’. If this is the case, you will first need to complete the settings in Insight to set up the folders

If the box says "Folder Not Valid" 

• Click the Set button to the right of the box, Navigate to the area of your computer or network where you want the document templates to be stored.
• If you are working on a single user system, we recommend that this is C:\Insight. If you are working on a networked system we recommend that you store these documents in a folder named Insight, on a network drive accessible to all users. In the example given below, we have chosen to store the templates in a folder called Insight, stored on the R drive.

• Once you have selected the path on the local or networked drive, click OK. Once you have clicked OK, you should be taken back to the Insight System Settings screen.
• Click Save in the top left corner of the screen.

3. Starting a Blank Bill Document from Insight

• Now you have set the path for your Insight templates to be stored you can start using the Template functions.
• From the System tab of Insight, click Documents.
• Within the new screen of Document Settings, you have the ability to create a new blank template.
• Clicking New in the top left will bring up a window prompting you to enter the Document’s name and then select if it is a Matter or a Bill Document from the dropdown.
• In this case, you will select Bill.
• Clicking Create Document will create a blank Word Document stored within the path you set in System Settings > Document Settings.

• As soon as the Document has been named and created it will show in the list on the left-hand side.

4. Starting a Bill Document from an Existing Document

• If instead you are going to use an existing bill document to create your template, open a Windows Explorer or My Computer window and navigate to the path that you set in the previous step.
• Within the Insight folder you should have a subfolder called Templates. This is where all of your document templates need to be stored.
• Double-click on the Templates folder to open it. Within that folder, you should have two sub-folders called Bill and Matter.
• If either of these folders is not there, you can create a new folder. It is important to make sure that you name the folders carefully as either Bill or Matter, as in the example below:

• You should now save the document that you want to make in to a bill template in to that folder. If you have multiple documents, you can create sub-folders to store them in if you wish.
• If you are starting off with a completely new, blank document you should open it up and enter some text. This can just be a single word or even a single character. There just needs to be some text in the document.
• Once your document/s are saved in to the Bill folder, you can close or minimise this window and go back to the Insight program.
• When back in Insight, go to the System menu and then into Documents.
• Click the ‘Existing’ button at the top of the screen.

• A window will appear titled Import Existing Templates and a list of all the templates that you have copied in to the Insight folder will appear.
• If they do not appear:
  • Check that they are in the correct format. All documents need to be Microsoft Word 2007 or later and saved as type .docx.
  • Check that folders within your directory are named correctly. The first folder within the Insight directory must be called Templates, the folder within that must be called Bill or Matter.
  • Check that you have the path set correctly so that Insight knows where to find your documents. Go to System Settings Document Settings. In the box at the top of the screen, check that the path is correct (e.g. R:\Insight as in the example above). Make sure that this screen is saved before you exit.

• Click the Import button by the side of the template that you wish to work on:

• This document will then appear in the list on the left-hand side.

5. Making Templates Available on the Matters

• From the list of document names on the left of the Document Templates screen, click once on the document that you want to work on. This will highlight the document.
• In the Filters section in the middle of your screen you will see a list of all your Departments.
• Tick the box next to each department that is relevant for this document template. For example, if the document will only be used for conveyancing matters then just tick the Conveyancing department
• If the document will only relate to a particular matter type, you can expand the department listing and select the relevant matter type instead.

• If you do not tick any boxes in the Filters section, your bill template will not be visible when you are billing on any of your matters, so you should make sure that at least one Department is ticked here.
• Click the Save button in the top left corner of the screen.

6. Choosing Fields for the Template

• On the Document Templates screen you will see a Fields section on the right-hand side. This is a list of all the fields that you have to choose from.
• You should look through this list and tick all of the fields that you want to use in your document.
• It does not matter what order you tick them in as the next stage of the process will deal with placing the fields in the correct places in the template.
• The list of fields that you have to choose from is shown below:
   

• You will notice that there are some items on the list which have arrows by the side of them. These are groups of fields rather than individual fields.
• Click on the arrow by the side of the tick box to expand the group. You will then see all the fields within the group listed. Bear in mind that there may be additional groups within groups, so you should always click on the arrows to expand the sections wherever you see them.
• Having more fields selected than you need can make the document more difficult and time consuming to work with, so it is important just to select the individual fields you need.
• The table below explains each of the fields that are available for selection.
• They are listed here in the same order as they appear on screen. These first tables show you the fields that are available in Bill template documents.
• The tables later in the document show fields that are available in Matter template documents.

7. Adding Fields to the Template

• Once you have selected all the fields that you want to include in your template, click Save. 
• It is important to save your selection so that the information can be carried through in to the document.
• Once you have saved, click once on the document name to highlight it, then click the Edit in Word button on the menu below:

• Insight will now open Microsoft Word for you. As Word opens, a message box will appear on screen. It will look similar to the example below:

• Click Yes on this message and the Word document will then open
• Once the document has opened, you can insert the merge fields. To do this, go to the Mailings menu at the top of your Word document.
• On the Mailings menu you will see an option called Inset Merge Field. Click the arrow at the bottom of the button and a list of all the fields you selected in the previous screen will appear.

• Click on the field you wish to insert and the field will then appear in the document. Merge fields can be identified by chevrons at each end of the field.
• It is important to note that, if you move the fields around in the document, you ensure that the brackets are not lost. Without the brackets, the fields will not work.
• Examples of fields for Matter Description, Costs and Disbursement Description are shown in the picture below:

• Once you have finished creating your template and the fields are all inserted, you should save the document and close Word. Click Save again within Insight.

Your template is now complete.