Introduction

In Actionstep you can bill clients based on recorded billable hours, a Fixed-Fee, or both. This document describes how to setup an action for Fixed-Fee billing.
Fixed-Fee billing can be as simple as entering a sales order (or invoice) with the Fixed-Fee amount, or you can formally specify a payment schedule. The advantage of setting up a payment schedule is that these payments will appear on the action billing screen when they become due.

Setup

Just like in time-billing, you need to make sure that the Action (Matter) you wish to bill is either an Action-type that has been marked as billable, or the matter has been forced to Billable.

Setting the Action-type to Billable

Go to Admin->Workflow->Action-types and edit the Action-type. Make sure it is marked as billable.

Overriding the Billable Setting in an Action

If the action-type is marked as non-billable you can still mark individual actions as billable by setting the "Is-Billable" setting on each action. Conversely, double-check that somebody has not marked the individual action as "Force Non-Billable". To check this setting open the action and choose "Edit".

Setting up a Payment Schedule

You can set up a formal payment schedule for an action based on time intervals after a specific date (the "Expected Sale Date"), or when the Action reaches certain steps in the workflow. You set this up using the "Sales Pipeline" feature within the Action.
Note that "Sales Pipeline" might be called something else in your system. Check your Accounting Preferences for the "Action Sales-Pipeline" alias.
Open the Action and click on the Accounting menu and click on Sales Opportunity.

You will first need to enter the expected sale information. This will become the basis from which you can schedule the payments. If you have already loaded a sales quote against this action then you can link the sales quote to the sales pipeline and Actionstep will use the date of the sales quote as the expected sales date.

Once this information has been saved you will be able to enter any number of fixed-fee payments by clicking on the "Add Expected Payment" button below the sales pipeline area.

 


Enter each forecast or expected payment in turn to setup a payment schedule.

You can either specify a fixed amount or a percentage of the total sale amount.
Once you have finished setting up the payment schedule it should look something like this:

Billing a Fixed-Fee Payment

Once you have setup a payment schedule you will see payments as they become due in the Action (Matter) Billing screens.

How to Enable the Sales Pipeline

If the Sales Pipeline does not appear in your accounting menu, go to Admin > Permissions > Menu Permissions then choose Action_Details_Accounting_Menu and make sure that the Pre-sale boxes are ticked for the appropriate System Roles. In some instances of Actionstep the Sales Pipeline is called Fee Schedule or Sales Opportunity.