Expense tracking

Not all of the billable activities can be tracked by docketing time. Sometimes lawyers encounter expenses they need to cover in favor of the client, and they need to efficiently keep track of them.

Creating a new expense

There are several ways of adding a new expense to Matter365.

1. You can use add a shortcut in the top right corner of Matter365, and then Create Expense:

Creating new expense using navigation bar shortcut

2. On Matter dashboard you can select Expenses page and then Add expense:

Creating new expense from Matter expenses page

3. On Expenses page, you can use Add expense button:

Creating new expense from Expenses page

4. You can also add expenses on behalf of other users In order to have this option enabled you to have Docket Manager permission enabled. 

Go to Settings > Permissions to enable it ( to learn more about Roles and Permissions visit: Roles and Permissions). 

The user you are adding the time tracking for needs to be an Owner or a Member of the Matter.

In all of the above cases, add expense dialog will show, and you can fill in the expense info.

Add expense dialog

Date – Select a date when the expense occurred

Matter – Select a Matter that this expense is related to

User - If you are adding an expense on behalf of another user, delete your name and select the user from the drop-down menu

Description – Free text field to name the expense, and describe it if it’s needed

Amount – $ value of the expense (without tax)

Tax – $ value of the expense tax

Add attachment – Here you can add an attachment related to the expense, e.g. a bill you received, or any other file that’s related to the expense itself.

All of the attachments you add to your expenses will be saved in OneDrive folder for a Matter they belong to, in a subfolder named Expenses.

Expenses page

To see all of the expenses tracked, choose Expenses link in the left-hand side main menu.

Expenses page

If you are an owner or a member of a Matter, you can open the Matter related to the Expense by clicking on the Matter name in the Expenses list:

If you only have permission to see other user's Expenses but you are not a member/owner of those matters you won't be able to click on the Matter name. 

Add expense button will open a dialog for creating a new expense in this table. All of the created records can be sorted by any of the columns, searched by Matter or user that created them, and filtered by their billing status, start date, and end date.

Adding a new expense

Clicking on the paperclip icon in the Attachment column will take you to the OneDrive folder where the selected expense’s attachments are stored. You can edit any of the expenses by using a pencil icon on the right side of the page. If you wish to delete them, use the trash can icon.

At the bottom of the page, you can see summed up Total for Amount and Tax for matters displayed on that page.

If you have a QuickBooks account set up, you can generate a QuickBooks invoice out of previously tracked expenses by using Create Invoice button. If there is an existing invoice for an expense you created, the column Invoice number in this table will be filled in. That’s how you will be sure not to forget to invoice something and prevent invoicing something multiple times.

On the invoice, values from columns Amount and Tax will be summed up, so when you're adding expenses, the amount should be value of the expense pre-tax.

Invoice creation from expenses page

In case you don’t use QuickBooks, you can still export selected expenses in CSV format. Possible separator values for your CSV are semicolon or comma.

Exporting expenses in CSV format

If you're just beginning to work with Matter365, and you have some unbilled expenses from your past law cases, that's not a problem, you can easily import them. You should create all of the Matters that you want to import time expenses for and add people working on those Matters as Matter members. Then you can click on Import button to download an Excel importing template.

Expenses import button

In the sample Excel file, for every expense you want to import, you should provide:

1. Date of the expense
   
2. Matter for which the expense occurred (this will be a dropdown menu with all of your Matters existing in Matter365 as options to choose from)
   
3. User (this will be a dropdown menu with all of the members of a Matter you selected in the previous column, as options to choose from)
   
4. Description of the expense
   
5. Amount (pre-tax value entered as a number with no currency signs and maximum of two decimal places)
   
6. Tax (enter this as a number with no currency signs, and maximum of two decimal places)
   

Example of expense import file

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