Billing overview
With Practice CS, you can bill your clients using a wide variety of billing methods. Whether your firm bills at an hourly staff rate or fixed rate, periodically or on an as-needed basis, Practice CS can accommodate different methods based on your firm’s arrangements with individual clients. You can bill using as much or as little detail as you need.
To bill your clients, select
Actions
, Billing
(or use Ctrl + B) to open the Billing
screen.You can perform the following tasks in the
Billing
screen.Bill clients
Use the
Bill Clients
tab to select the WIP to bill.note
The default name for this tab is
Bill Engagements
. The name of the tab changes depending on whether you set your user preferences to bill by engagements, clients, or projects. - Mark thePositive WIPcheckbox if you want to see only clients with a positive WIP balance.
- Mark theNegative WIPcheckbox if you want to see only clients with a negative WIP balance.
- Mark both thePositive WIPandNegative WIPcheckboxes when you want to see only clients with non-zero WIP balances.
Search and filter
To narrow down the list of items in the
Billing
screen, use the Search
and Filter
fields.Select the WIP to bill
Select each client you want to bill. Use
Select All
(or Ctrl + A) to select all items at once. Use Deselect All
(or Alt + E) to deselect all items at once.The Billing Selection pane shows all selected items in the order in which they’ll be billed. When the list is unsorted, the items will appear in the order in which you select them. Select 
Auto Hide to display or hide the Billing Selection pane.
Auto HideSelect a billing method
After selecting the WIP to bill, select a billing method.
- Detail bill selected: Use for clients that need greater control over the billing amounts or invoice presentation.
- Quick bill selected: Use to quickly bill at a summary level. In theQuick Billscreen, you can enter the billed or the adjusted amount, and the application will complete the carryover field for you. You can also bill individual WIP items by selecting
and entering the billed and adjusted information for each item. - Standard bill selected: Use to quickly bill the selected clients at their current WIP amount. This will completely bill all selected WIP at its standard amount.noteBefore the invoice can be created, you'll need to have an invoice format set up for the selected client, and WIP entries available to bill.
- Zero bill selected: Use Zero Bill Selected to bill the selected clients at zero. This will completely bill all WIP amounts selected at zero.noteBefore the invoice can be created, you'll need to have an invoice format set up for the selected client, and WIP entries available to bill.
Generate recurring bills
Use the
Generate Recurring Bills
tab to bill clients who have the same work performed on a regular basis.note
To generate a recurring bill for a client, the client’s engagement must be set up on a recurring basis. Select
Setup
, Clients
, then Engagements
tab.Integrated invoices
Use the
Integrated Invoices
tab to bill clients based on imported invoices from other CS Professional Suite applications.note
This tab is available only if you have marked the
Integrate this Firm with other solutions
checkbox in the Preferences
tab of the Firm setup
screen.This tab displays invoices that have been exported to Practice CS from UltraTax CS. Use this tab to accept or reject these invoices. The invoice date is the date the invoice was exported to Practice CS.
You can allocate accepted invoices by creating adjustment entries; by partially or completely billing existing work-in-process for the client; or by creating progress bill entries. Progress bill and adjustment entries must be assigned to a staff member, engagement, and activity.
If an invoice is exported to Practice CS and there isn't a matching client in the Practice CS firm database, you'll receive the following error message:
Add the client to Practice CS in theThe client assigned to this invoice is not a valid client
Clients setup
screen, and then you can accept the integrated invoice.If an UltraTax CS invoice is exported to Practice CS, and the invoice has a prepayment assigned to it in UltraTax CS but one doesn't exist in Practice CS, an error message will display. You won't be able to accept the invoice until you enter a receipt for the amount of the invoice in Practice CS.
Invoices that you accept in this tab can be displayed in the
Review
tab.Review
note
If your firm requires an approval process for invoices, you can use the
Review
tab to review and approve invoices before they're posted. If your firm doesn't use an approval process, invoices are posted as soon as they're saved. However, you can use the Review
tab to display invoices and make further changes to them after they've been posted.In the
Review
tab you can do the following:
- Modify an invoice: Select the invoices you want to modify, right-click, and select one of the following:
- Open Selected: Enters the detail bill menu for editing.
- Edit Selected: Edit 1 or multiple fields of the invoice
- Delete an invoice: Deleting an invoice will unbill all entries on the selected invoices, making the WIP items not available to be billed again.
- View the Invoice Journal: Select
to preview the Invoice Journal report. The report will automatically filter for the grid content on the Reviewtab. - Preview selected: SelectPreview Selectedto display the invoice information before posting or printing.
- Print selected: SelectPrint Selectedto print the selected invoices to 1 or more destinations, including a printer, FileCabinet CS, GoFileRoom, a file, email, or NetClient CS.
Related Content
-
Billing methods
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