Bill states are the categories that your bills move through from bill generation to bill payment. Throughout this process, you can submit bills for approval, approve bills, edit bills, delete bills, void bills, download bills, and record payment or apply trust funds on approved bills.
Tip: Learn how to generate bills.
View bill states
You can view the state for each of your bills from the main Billing tab or from the Bills subtab in a matter or contact.
- Go to Billing or go to the Bills subtab in the contact or matter.
- Click any one of the Draft, Pending approval, Unpaid, Paid, All, or Archive quick filters to view bills within that bill state. Learn more about each state in the section below on Summary of each bill state.
Summary of each bill state
- Draft:
A bill enters the draft state when it is generated manually, unless you select the box to Skip the bill approval process when you generate a bill. You can fully edit or delete bills in the draft state. Learn more about submitting draft bills for approval and approving draft bills below, editing bills, deleting bills, and applying client funds to bills in draft state.
- Pending approval:
A bill enters the pending approval state, when the draft bill is sent to another firm user for approval, or it is automatically generated by Manage AI. Bills with a pending approval can be fully edited or deleted. Learn more about how to approve the bill below, and how to edit bills pending approval.
- Unpaid:
When a draft bill is submitted for approval and the bill is approved, it will move into this state. You can bypass the draft and pending approval states when generating a bill by clicking Skip the bill approval process when you generate a bill. If you skill the approval process, the bill will automatically move into an unpaid state from the draft state and is ready to be sent to the client for payment. By default, you have limited options to edit unpaid bills, but you can specifically update your settings to enable full editing of unpaid bills. Any unpaid bill can voided—rather than deleted—which allows you to retain a full record of your bills.
- Paid:
A paid bill has been sent to the client and payment has been recorded on the bill. You cannot edit paid bills and you cannot void a paid unless you first delete any recorded payments.
- All:
This quick filters shows all your generated bills regardless of bill state.
- Archive:
This quick filter shows all deleted and voided bills.
Submit bills for approval and approve bills
When you generate a bill and you choose not to skip the bill approval process, you will need to submit the bill for approval. Once submitted, the bill will move to a pending approval state. Then, the firm user to whom you submitted the bill for approval can approve the bill and send it to the client.
- Go to Billing or the Bills subtab in a contact or matter.
- Click the Draft quick filter.
- Click the down arrow next to Edit and select Submit for approval.
- Search for the firm member(s) who will approval the bill.
- Click Submit for approval.
- Go to Billing or the Bills subtab in a contact or matter.
- Click the Pending approval quick filter.
- Click the down arrow next to Edit and select Approve bill.
- Optional: Check the box for Update the issue date. This option appears if the bill was issued on an earlier date.
- Click Approve.
Autocharge status
If you autocharge your clients according to a schedule, you can view the status of these transactions or attempted transactions from the main Billing page or the Bills subtab in a contact or matter. The Autocharge column in the table will display the relevant status. If you do not see this column, click Columns above the table header and check the box for Autocharge to display the column in your table.
- Charged:
The autocharge schedule successfully ran and the contact's payment method was charged.
- Date:
A date appears for when the autocharge schedule is set to run. Click the information icon to view the specific schedule and make changes to it (e.g., pausing the schedule).
- Failed:
The autocharge schedule failed. Click the information icon to retry the charge.