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Budget and accruals setup

Accruals | Requiring Input of Unbilled Amounts by Law Firms and Vendors

If the Accruals module has been activated in Tracker, the general rule is that any law firm or vendor that has been connected to a matter will be required to enter unbilled amounts when such unbilled amounts become due. This topic discusses the settings that can be changed to turn off this requirement.

ALL Matters: Turn Off Requirement in Firm Profile

In the firm profile, there is a setting to turn off the requirement for entering unbilled amounts. This setting turns off the requirement for the firm/vendor in all matters in the system. If turned off, it will also cause the system to not send the Accrual Announcement Email to the firm.

Specific Matter: Turn Off Requirement for Secondary Firms or All Firms

If the accrual module has been activated in Tracker, you have two options in every matter. First, Company System Administrators can turn off accruals for specific matters. In other words, when your law department sends its accruals report to the finance department each month, specific matters are excluded from the report because no accrual is recorded for the matter.If accruals are turned off for a matter, the firms' requirement to submit unbilled amounts is automatically turned off.
However, in some situations you may still want an accrual generated for the matter, but you don't want firms to be required to submit unbilled amounts. Company System Administrators (but not other users) can do this by leaving accruals turned on in the matter, but changing the setting so that company users enter unbilled amounts on behalf of the firm/vendor (see image below).

Specific Matter: Turn Off Requirement for a Specific Firm

The setting described above lets a company system administrator turn off the requirement either for all secondary firms or for all firms in the matter. If you want to more selectively turn off the requirement for only specific firms, you will need to do the following:
  1. In the matter options, accruals need to be turned on.
  2. In the matter options, in the Accrual Options section, click All Law Firms/Vendors (except if matter access is "Billing Only").
  3. Any firm that should be required to submit unbilled amounts must have at least one user with a matter role of matter editor or matter administrator.
You can see which firms have billing only access, and therefore are not required to submit unbilled amounts by clicking View list of Firms/Vendors that are not required to post unbilled amounts. Note that a law firm is considered to be a billing only firm if all firm users in a matter are assigned the billing only matter role.
REMINDER: Bulk Update Option If you are a company system administrator or company office administrator, you can use bulk update to change which users enter unbilled amounts for multiple matters. For example, if you want only company users to enter unbilled amounts instead of all law firms or vendors (including firms with billing only matter access), use bulk update to make the change.

What happens to accruals if the unbilled requirement is turned off for a firm?

Turning off the unbilled amounts requirement for a firm (whether in the firm profile or in a matter) has the following effects:
1. Only company users can submit unbilled amounts. Company users can enter unbilled amounts for the firm using the Unbilled Amounts Report (the amount must be entered before the accrual period ends). On the other hand, firms are not allowed to submit unbilled amounts.
2. Accrual is generated for any firm in a matter, whether or not there are unbilled amounts. An accrual is generated for every firm in a matter, whether or not the firm is required to enter unbilled amounts, and whether or not an unbilled amount is actually entered. The reason is that the firm could have pending invoices that have not been sent to AP.

This article applies to:

  • PRODUCT: Legal Tracker
  • Audiences: Company