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Budgets

Law Firm Budgets | Options for Requiring a Budget or Unbilled Amounts

All matters: Turning off the budget requirement in a firm profile

Required role | Only a company system administrator can modify the budget and accrual requirements for law firms.
In the profile for a firm or vendor, you can turn off the requirement for that firm or vendor to enter a budget for all matters in Tracker.

Specific matter: Turning off the accrual requirement for a secondary firm or all firms

If the Accrual module has been activated for your company, you 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 will be excluded from the report because no accrual will be recorded for the matter. If accruals are turned off for a matter, the requirement for firms 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 to require firms to submit unbilled amounts. You can do this by leaving accruals turned on in the matter, but turning off the requirement that the secondary firms or all firms submit unbilled amounts.
Turning off the unbilled amounts requirement
If secondary firms are not required to submit unbilled amounts, no accrual will be generated for the secondary firms. This is true even if the secondary firm has a matter budget and/or the secondary firm has pending invoices or invoices with a status of delivery on hold, which amounts would normally be included in an accrual if generated.
If no firms or vendors are required to submit unbilled amounts, an accrual will be generated using budget data, as specified in this table:
Budgeting options
Accruals generated
Dept. budgets not enabled
Separate accrual generated for each firm with a matter role of editor or administrator; unbilled amount for each accrual is estimated using the firm's matter budget (if no budget, then the budget is treated as $0)
Dept. budgets enabled; the law firm matter budget is used
Same as above
Dept. budgets enabled; the company matter budget is used (one budget for matter)
Single accrual generated; unbilled amount for all firms is estimated using the company matter budget (if no budget, then the budget is treated as $0)
Dept. budgets enabled; the company matter budgets are used (one budget for firm)
Separate accrual generated for each firm with a matter role of editor or administrator; unbilled amount for each accrual is estimated using the company matter budget for each firm (if no budget, then the budget is treated as $0)
note
An accrual is the sum of pending invoices plus the firm unbilled amount.

Specific matter: Turn off the accrual requirement for a specific firm

You can turn off the accrual requirement for an individual firm associated with a matter. 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.
  1. In the relevant matter, click the
    Edit Options
     tool bar button.
  2. Under
    Accrual Options
    , for
    Who enters unbilled amounts
    , select
    All Law Firms/Vendors
     (except if matter access is "Billing Only").

This article applies to:

  • PRODUCT: Legal Tracker
  • Subject: Budget
  • Audiences: Firm