We have noticed that multiple billing items on the same date are listed in order of the staff/user number who created the entries.  We would rather have the items appear in the order of the time they were entered. We are getting out of sequence entries the current way.  Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Total Practive Advantage 8.0

Here is a workaround we use in Time Matters 7.0/Billing Matters Plus. There may be a smoother way in 8.0.

 

Ordering items on bills

        1) Items appear on the bills based upon bill date then by phase. We only use phases for ordering purposes. If you have three entries on 1/9/2006 and the atty wants them to appear in a certain order, do the following.

            2) Open the matter and go to Billing Preferences (Ctrl B). Choose the phases tab. Click Add and from the drop down box select “1”. Repeat and add enough numbers to sort the day in question.

            3) Now open the billing items and assign phases to represent the order you want the billings to appear.

            4) In order for this to work it is necessary to have the billing profile adjusted to sort by date then phase. It is on tab 2. Can order by two of the following fields, Date, Staff, Bill Code, Phase.

Jeff Wyatt
Abilene, Texas

Dera,

I believe that you can effect the sort order of Billing Items on the same date by also assigning a billed time for each record.  For instance, you could have the first time entry on a given date have a time of 8:00am, the second 8:30am, third, 9:00am, and so on.  A lot of time people don't fill out the billed time because it is one extra field, but if there are multiple time entries for a particular client on a particular day, you want to make sure people are using the field.

Hope that helps,

Dera:

I experimented with Art's suggestion and it looks much superior. On the billing item in the middle of the page there is a "Start Time" field. Populating that will order the items on the Final Invoices if the billing Profile is set to Sort by date. I don't know why I didn't discover it sooner.

It doesn't appear to affect the order on the PreBills, however which is unfortunate since the people in the know about the desired order are typically looking at the PreBills. Perhaps there is an answer to that as well.

Jeff Wyatt
Abilene, Texas

On your billing item form is a field 'start time'. As an alternative to using the phase code field, that start time field is, by default, the second sort field. Items by the same timekeeper on the same date, can be re-ordered on the bill by entering a time of day that will get you the order you want. Down the road, if you find you have a client requiring you to organize and sub-total your time by phase, or requiring electronic billing, that phase code field will be invaluable.

My client said the start time was not defaulting as the second level sort. I am wondering if anyone knows if this actually worked in v7 or was added subsequently. I am trying to convince them to upgrade and if it was added in v8 or 9 this would be helpful.