Skip to content

Invoices

Invoices (Accounting ▸ Invoices) is where you turn a matter’s work-in-progress into a client bill, post it to the general ledger, and track payment. It’s the Accounts-Receivable counterpart to Vendor Bills.

Click New bill from WIP and pick a matter. Athenty drafts an invoice from everything currently billable on it:

  • Time dockets (billable, not yet invoiced)
  • Fees (billable, not yet invoiced)
  • Recoverable disbursements — soft (estimated) and hard (paid)

This is the generate-then-trim model. The draft starts with all eligible work; you remove what you don’t want to bill yet.

Use the trash icon on a line to remove it. Removed work returns to WIP and reappears next time you bill the matter — nothing is lost. Prefer to start empty? Use Blank draft and add lines by hand.

Work you’ll never bill shouldn’t clutter every draft. On the matter’s tabs:

  • Mark a time docket or fee non-billable → excluded from WIP, no ledger effect.
  • Mark a hard cost non-billable → the firm absorbs it: its recoverable asset clears to a write-down expense (DR 5950 / CR 1210). Soft costs simply drop out. Re-enable billable to reverse.

Set an optional due date and click Issue. Athenty assigns the next gapless number (INV-YYYY-NNNN), freezes totals, and posts DR Accounts Receivable / CR revenue + tax. Each fee or time line credits its source timekeeper’s revenue sub-account (4001.NICK fixed fee / 4002.NICK hourly); ad-hoc lines and work without a timekeeper land on the UNASSIGNED catch-all so the books always reconcile. Issued lines are locked.

ActionWhat it does
Record paymentDR Bank / CR A/R; advances status. Overpayment → client credit.
Settle from trustPays from the client’s trust in one GL-correct move. At/above the requisition threshold, Form 9A signatures are required first.
Write-offRecognizes an uncollectible amount as bad debt.
Credit memoReverses fee revenue to correct an over-bill.
PDFDownloads the client-ready invoice.

Void reverses the ledger entry and returns billed work to WIP. Issue a fresh, corrected invoice rather than editing a posted one.

One invoice covers one matter (consolidated multi-matter statements are a future enhancement). For aged receivables and per-client balances, see Accounting ▸ A/R Reports.