Billing Holds Overview: How to hold all Fees, and Soft or Hard Costs from invoicing for a new Matter.
1. Click '+ Add New' and select 'Matter'.
2. Complete all required fields and any additional optional fields you desire. Then, click on '+ Billing Information' to expand this section.
In the middle column, you'll find the 'Billing Holds' option.
3. Choose one or more of the three options.
Hold all fees from invoicing - Toggling this feature will enable you to hold all Fees from being invoiced. When viewing your Pending Billable Activity, these items will appear. However, when processing your Invoice, these items will be withheld from the Invoice and remain pending until the hold is disabled.
Hold all soft costs from invoicing - Toggling this feature will enable you to hold all Soft Costs (expenses) from being invoiced. This does not impact all costs, but only those identified as 'Soft Costs' when adding the Expense. When viewing your Pending Billable Activity, these items will appear. However, when processing your Invoice, these items will be withheld from the Invoice and remain pending until the hold is disabled.
Hold all hard costs from invoicing - Toggling this feature will enable you to hold all Hard Costs (expenses) from being invoiced. This does not impact all costs, but only those identified as 'Hard Costs' when adding the Expense. When viewing your Pending Billable Activity, these items will appear. However, when processing your Invoice, these items will be withheld from the Invoice and remain pending until the hold is disabled.
4. Enter the remaining Matter information and click 'Save Matter'.
5. When adding an Expense to a Matter, toggle your selection and click 'Save and Close' or 'Save and Add Another'.
These Expenses and/or Fees will be included on the Matter Dashboard as part of the Pending Invoicing Total. However, they will NOT be invoiced until the 'hold' has been manually removed from the Matter. To remove the hold, edit the Matter and un-toggle the hold. Save your changes before exiting the screen.
NOTE: Rocket Matter gives you the flexibility to decide what expenses should be hard or soft. We do not advise firms to consider an expense hard or soft based on any definition. Each firm should ask their accountants for advice.
Typically, firms designate 'Hard' costs as expenses incurred on behalf of a client that require a direct payment by the firm to a vendor. These are normally reimbursed to the firm by the client, but again, each firm does this differently. 'Soft' costs are typically expenses that are charged to the client but a direct payment is not made to a vendor.