Write off fees

What is the best way to Write Off Fees for a matter?

Karen

Hall, Friedly & Ward

PCLaw 9.31c

Have they been billed yet?

Hi Caren!

Yes the fees have been billed! 

In the situation where they haven't been billed I'm assuming I just go in and delete the individual fees that were billed.  Correct? 

I also have another question -- 

There is a matter that has an unapplied payment with a balance owing still -- how do I apply that unapplied payment to the balance due?  and why isn't it doing this automatically?

I may be calling you soon!

Thanks, Karen 

Hi there. There is an option under billing, change or write off bill. (Ctrl+W will also open this window.) Enter the invoice number that you want to write off. For unbilled fees, I would create a bill in the amount of 0.00 rather than delete the entries. In this way reports include those entries. I'm checking on how to allocate an unallocated payment to an existing invoice. This is not something that normally occurs. You would have to choose to not pay an existing bill by taking the payment amount off the invoice row at the time the payment is entered, in favor of applying to a new bill. I'll see what I can learn. You may need to delete the payment and re-enter it. But, I'll see if I can find another solution.

Regarding an unapplied payment; there is not a good way to change the allocation once you selected to not pay an existing bill. The system creates a general retainer when you elect to avoid payment of an invoice. (By the way, there is a default at system settings/data entry to auto allocate payments to invoices.) You should delete the payment and then re-enter it and allow it to apply to the outstanding bill. That will get rid of the credit in favor of reducing the AR. Hope that helps.

Caren is right.  You should not delete time entries.  Then time listing and productivity reports are wrong and it looks like the attorney who did the work didn't work those hours.

As far as correcting that retainer, before you remove a payment you must consider whether it is in a reconciled period.  If you just did it today, then fine, delete and reenter.  However, if you did it last month and trying to correct this month, you want to enter a negative retainer receipt which backs it out of retainer, and then enter a positive general receipt and apply it to the invoice.  Use today's date and you will have a positive and a negative so the net affect to your bank balance is zero. 

I believe in the new version of PCLaw that you can set the system to automatically apply the retainer to an A/R, but that might be Trust I am thinking about.