CHANGES TO THE BILL OF COSTS

Available in V4.061.789 or higher

The Bill of Costs module has recently undergone a facelift and various new features have been added.  The updated Bill of Costs screen looks like this:-

IMPORTING TRANSACTIONS INTO THE BILL

When importing transactions into the Bill of Costs, you can now specify the date range of transactions to import.

This option is especially useful to prevent duplicate items being imported.

In the Bill of Costs, click on the  icon to import transactions into the bill.  The following screen will appear:-

Select the source from which you would like to import the transactions.  If you would like to import all transactions from a specific source, do not tick the “Specify Date Range” option.  Remember that if you select all three sources, i.e. Debtors Transactions, Fee Notes and Matter Transactions, you may get duplicate entries in the Bill as matter transactions contain posted fee notes, the debtors transactions may include fee notes, etc.

If you would like to only import Debtors Transactions for the date range 10/06/2006 – 11/07/2006, then your screen will look like this:-

Click on OK and the transactions will be imported into the Bill for the specified date range.

CREATING A TIMED FEE TO INCLUDE IN THE BILL

To create a timed fee to be included in the Bill, click on the  icon in the Bill of Costs screen.  Please note that in order for your specified rate to appear automatically, this would need to have been setup in Time Recording.

The following screen will appear:-

Fill in the relevant fields:-

Date:                           The date of the item

Activity:                      e.g. Attending Court, Admin, Research, etc.

Rate:                           The rate charged for this activity

Details:                       The description of the timed record – this description will appear on the Bill

Amount:                     The automatically calculated amount

Override?                   Tick this box if you would like to override the automatically calculated amount

Attorney/Client fee:  Tick this box if the fee is an attorney/client fee.  If this box is ticked and you choose to only display Party/Party items in the Bill, this item will be excluded

To accept the record, click on the OK button.

REFLECTING THE PARTIES AS APPLICANT AND RESPONDENT ON THE BILL

Currently on the assembled Bill, the parties are reflected as Plaintiff and Defendant if they have been taken on as such in the Parties.

In a Bill, the parties are normally reflected as Applicant and Respondent if the matter is an Application.  A change has been made as follows:-

Below if a screenshot of the Parties for the matter in a normal litigation matter – you have your Client, Plaintiff and Defendant / Debtor.

Previously you would have to change the party roles to reflect Applicant and Respondent in order for them to appear as such on the Bill.  Now, in order for the roles to appear as Applicant and Respondent on the Bill, go back to your matters screen and click on the Document Generator Database Icon .

On the General tab, ensure that Application is selected under Type of Case if you would like the parties to be reflected as Applicant and Respondent:-

Click on  and go back into the Bill of Costs.

SETUP DETAILS

To setup the heading details for your Bill, click on the  icon.  The following screen will appear:-

Fill in the relevant details and click on OK to save the information.

SEARCHING FOR ITEMS USING QBE

It is now possible to search for items in your bill of costs using QBE, which is an advanced search function.

To use QBE, click on the  icon in the bill.  The following screen will appear:-

On the left-hand side of the screen are the different column options that you can search.  The middle column is the Operand.  This will change depending on the column that you select.  The last column is the Value.

As an example, I would like to display only items where the description contains the word “letter” and where the amount is greater than R10.00.

My first step is to highlight the word “Description” under  column, my Operand will be “Contains” and the Value will be “letter”.  Once I have inserted this information, click on the  button

Once you have clicked on .  The information you entered will now appear in the box below as - Description contains “letter”.  We also want to see items with a value of more than R10.00.

Click on Amount under Column, the Operand will be greater than and the Value will be 10.00.  Click on the  button as we want to see items with the description containing “letter” AND greater than R10.00.

Click on the  button and in the Bill of Costs, only items containing the word “letter” in the description where the amount is greater than R10.00 will be tagged and displayed:-

This is a nice feature to use if you would like to see the total amount that will appear in your Bill for letters sent and received, for example.  If that is the case, you would simply leave out the second part of your QBE entry, i.e. where you requested the system to only display items where the amount was greater than R10.00.

Remember however that only those items that are on your screen will appear on your Bill when you assemble it.  It you would like to display all items again, click on the  button but remember that some items are still tagged.  Right-click with your mouse and select the Untag All function to ensure that all items are untagged.

PRINT OUT A USER-DEFINABLE REPORT

To print out a report from the Bill of Costs screen, click on the  icon.  The following screen will appear:-

Select the columns that you would like to appear in the report.  The options are:-

Amount

Att/Client Item

Date

Description

Type

Units (Quantity)

Units (Text)

As you select the columns, a number will appear next to them – this is the order in which they will appear on the report.

Once you have selected the relevant columns, you will be able to determine what you want to sort the report by as those options will be available under the “Sort Report by” drop-down list.  The second option is the second sort order.  For example, you can sort the report by date and thereafter amount.  Therefore if there is more than one item on the same date, it will sort it in amount order.

Select the destination of your report, i.e.

Built-in-Wordprocessor

MS Word

Excel

The options available to select are self-explanatory.

If you would like to save your column selections for future use, click on the  icon.  A window will appear prompting you to enter a description for your selection:-

Enter a description and click on OK

The next time you go into your Bill and want to print out a report with the items in Date, Description and Amount order, all you need to do is click on the  icon.  A window will appear with your saved selections:-

Highlight the required report selection and click on .

The relevant columns will then be tagged in the order that they were when you saved the selection:-

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