Apply a Discount to an Invoice

/

Early in my practice, I met a person who was five years ahead of me in running his own firm. He gave me this sound advice:

Charge your clients for everything you do. What you do is valuable!

He went on to say that if clients tried to do it themselves, it would cost them much more and they’d have worse results.

No one is expected to do everything with perfect efficiency, to never go down a path that leads to nothing helpful. So, as a general rule, charge for what you do.

Still, there are times when a discount is appropriate. On those rare occasions, you may want to emphasize to clients that they are receiving a discount.

If you need to apply a discount to an invoice, Billing Matters lets you:

  • Apply a discount to just to one invoice or to multiple future invoices.

  • Reduce the bill by a flat amount or a percentage.

  • Apply the discount to an entire invoice or to one or more items on the invoice.

Our previous post explained how to show a Discount Message on one or more invoices. This post shows you how to apply a discount to one or more items or to the entire invoice.

Apply a Discount to All Fees on an Invoice

To apply a discount to an entire invoice:

  1. Open a Matter form.

  2. Go to: Matter Menu / Edit / Billing Preferences.

  3. Click: Actions / Add

In the Billing Action window:

000782.png

  1. In the Action drop-down, select Adjust Bill.

  1. Select: Adjust by Amount or Adjust by Percent.

  2. Fill in the Amount or fill in the Percent as a whole number.

  3. In Frequency, select Next Bill or Every Bill or another option.

Note: The Description field is for your internal reference only. On the invoice, the discount will be labeled as “Adjustment to Fees.”

Here is how the discount will show on the invoice:

adjustment-to-fees.png

To provide and explanation for the discount, see our previous post, Add a Discount Message to an Invoice.

Apply Discounts to Individual Items on an Invoice

To apply discounts to one or more items on an invoice:

From the Billing tab on a Matter Record or other list of Billing records, find and open the Billing record to be discounted.

000783.png

In the Overrides and Totals panel of the Billing record:

  1. Click the Markup/Disc box for a percentage discount.

  2. Enter the percent as a negative whole number using the minus sign.

If you want to apply a flat dollar amount as a discount, check the Adjusment checkbox and enter a negative number.

Questions? Call us at 800.575.0007 or send us an email…