Matter Accounting Menu

Overview

Note: This article applies to users on Classic Billing. All concepts and processes are not applicable to EBM users. 

Each Matter has an Accounting menu and there are a number of options under this that can be explained further. Some of these options are switched off for most new databases but can be switched on. It is also possible that the names of some of the options might have been changed. "Billing" might be called "Sales", for instance.

Matter Billing

This screen allow you to review the Work in Progress (Time entered, Disbursements, Scheduled Payments and Purchases) for this Matter and convert them into an invoice to bill your clients with.

To learn more about this screen and its functions see our User Guide here: Billing a Single Matter

Income Split

Income splits give you the option to allocate which users can be credited with the income earned from this Matter. Sometime called "Finder, Minder Grinder" it lets you assign percentages for different date ranges to help you help users know which staff members should be credited with what proportion of the income this matter generates. See Income Split (Finder, Minder, Grinder) for more details on how this works. 

Budget

This screen is a place for you to enter in what you forecast to happen with the Matter. There is room for you to enter in what you consider would be the Billable Time and Non-Billable Time for this Matter. You can enter in the rates that you expect to be billed and how many Billable and Actual hours would be recorded for each rate.

Likewise you can enter in the disbursements you expect to charge for, Other Income or Expenses or Intangible Income and Expenses.

Disbursements

The Disbursements menu allows you to see a record of the Disbursements that have been loaded against this matter, regardless of whether it has been billed for or not.

Sales Opportunity

The Sales Opportunity Screen is where you can record details about the Opportunity this Matter is presenting for your Sales. You can enter the amount you expect the Matter to return to you and monitor how likely that sale is likely to occur. This can feed directly into your Sales Pipeline reporting.

You can also record any Marketing events that brought about this sale (if you are using Actionstep to Track your marketing successes, read here: Marketing to learn more about how Actionstep can help you track your Marketing).

Lastly, you can record Scheduled Payments that are to be made by the client against this Action. These feed through to your Matter Billing Screen.

Billing

Billing is where you can see the various accounting transactions that have been created for this Matter that concern you billing other people. These include sale transactions such as Quotes, Invoices and Orders that you send to clients. You can also view the payments made to invoices for this Matter and access statements for clients who still owe you money in regard to this MAtter.

This screen functions just like the Billing menu that you access under the Actionstep Accounting menu (the "Accounting" in the grey bar across the top of the Actionstep screen) but filtered to only show transactions particular to this Matter.

For more information on how this screen looks and works see "Sales from within an Action (Workflow Module)" on this page: Sale / Purchase Menu bars

Expenses

Expenses is where you can see the various accounting transactions that have been created for this Matter that concern you paying other people. These include Expense transactions such as Quotes received, Supplier Invoices and Orders that you sent to suppliers and entered against this Matter. You can also view the payments made to Supplier Invoices for this Matter and access statements for suppliers who you still owe money in regard to this Matter.

This screen functions just like the Expense menu that you access under the Actionstep Accounting menu (the "Accounting" in the grey bar across the top of the Actionstep screen) but filtered to only show transactions particular to this Matter.

For more information on how this screen looks and works see "Purchases from within an Matter (Workflow Module)" on this page: Sale / Purchase Menu bars

Ledger

The Ledger screen lets you track how much money this Matter is cost and making you. It gives you an overview of the profitability of the Matter showing income and expenses and the net result. It will also show the markup and margin percentages. These are broken down into amounts that are sitting as Quotes, Orders and Actual.  

There are further links to a Income vs Cost of Sale report and a Budget Analysis reports.

Budget Analysis

The Budget Analysis screen will break down the Income and Expense accounts that are used in line items in Quotes, Orders and Invoices within this Matter. It allows you to track if the expected income and expenses that you quoted for actually has been ordered and actually earned.

Income vs Cost of Sale

A report which compares the Income accounts used in invoices for this Matter and the Cost of Sale account.

Trust Account

This screen show shows you the details of what has happened regarding this Matters Trust. It will show all trust transaction (money received into and paid from trust) and Sale/Purchase transactions (credit notes and invoices raised, payments made to them from trust) linked to this Matter. You are also able to create new transactions from within this screen such as receive funds into trust, make a payment from the funds in trust, Transfer funds from one trust account to another, pay an invoice from the funds in trust.

To learn more about how the Trust Accounting works in Actionstep see this page in our User Guide: Trust Accounting - old