Overview

Actionstep has settings and overrides to determine the fee allocation for bill payments. Fee allocations are tracked per fee earner whether all fees go to a specific fee account or fee accounts for individual fee earners.

System-Wide Settings

Located at Admin > Billing in the Fee earner fee allocation section.

Default fee allocation for matters

This sets the system default for how fees are allocated on matters.

The Pro-rate option distributes fee allocation based on how it was entered. If a timekeeper's fee entries account for 50% of fees, they are allocated 50% of the fees amount on a bill.

The All to responsible lawyer option ensures that ALL fees are allocated to the Responsible Lawyer participant.

Note: The Responsible Lawyer participant type is designated in Admin > Billing.

Edit fee earner fee income accounts

Selecting the Edit fee earner fee income accounts button launches the Edit fee earner fee income accounts screen.

Here, specific GL accounts can be designated for specific fee earners. To select a fee income account, it must first be created in the Accounts List.

Designating a specific fee income account can be useful for GL reporting.

Matter-Specific Settings

Located in a matter by selecting the Billing icon > Matter billing options in the Fee allocation section.

Allocate fees	Determines how fees are allocated for this specific matter. Additional to pro-rate and all to responsible lawyer settings, a selected fee earner can be selected to receive all fee allocation.
Allocate fee adjustments	Determines how adjustments to fees are allocated. An adjustment to an invoice is an increase or reduction in the fees that are being charged when compared to the WIP on the invoice. This field lets you choose how that reduction or increase in fees should be allocated. You can choose to allocate them to the responsible lawyer (used when the gains or losses on an invoice can be attributed to the responsible lawyer), allocate to a selected fee earner, or have it based on original fee split (pro-rate). For example, if you use the 'Based on original fee split' option on an invoice in which 3 fee earners recorded $1000 each of time and had a $300 discount, then each fee earner contributed one third each so the discount will be divided by three and applied to each. In this case, each fee earner will get a total fee allocation of $900.
Enable origination fees	Toggles the ability to designate an origination fee earner and origination fee %.
Originator fee earner	Allows the selection of any fee earner in the system to receive an origination fee %, allocated off the top of fees.
Origination fee %	The percent of fees allocated to the originator fee earner. However allocation is set, the selected originator is allocated the defined percentage of total fees to be allocated before other allocation is calculated.

Changing Fee Allocation on a Bill

Fee allocation can be manually edited when creating a bill using the Fee Allocation tab.

Income accounts, allocated amounts, and allocated percentages can be changed. The total allocated must be the total for fees and the split percent has to equal 100%.

Other fee earners can be added to further determine allocation.

Changing Fee Allocation for a Payment

When a payment is received, the allocation can be edited by selecting the edit icon for the invoice item.

This launches the Receipt fee allocation screen.

Here, the amounts and percentages can be edited. They must total the whole amount and 100%.

Fee Allocation Reporting

Fee Allocation Report

The primary report for fee allocation in Actionstep.

The Fee Allocation Report displays payments and their timekeeper allocations from a specified date range. This is useful to see the value of work completed by each fee earner. The report includes filters and summaries by various criteria to offer the best information for your reporting needs.

Fee Earner Productivity Report

The Fee Earner Productivity Report provides two comparison date ranges to gauge the productivity of all timekeepers/fee earners in your system. For each timekeeper, a row of information is displayed that contains the value of the following:

Billable items
Billed items
Unbilled items
Payments collected
Write-offs
Percent of payments received against the total of what has and what can be billed.

Account Entries Report

The Account Entries Report shows a list of entries for a selected account in the general ledger. It only shows one side of the transaction - the debit or credit posted to the selected account.

This report can be useful for fee allocation where specific fee income accounts have been set up for fee earners.

Help Center

Bill Fee Allocation