Invoices

Every matter workspace has an Invoices tab, on every matter type. This is where you build a bill: pick a lump-sum narrative or an itemised solicitor-client bill, adjust the lines, and generate an Excel tax invoice into the matter’s Working Documents folder. The wording — the fee narrative, the standard disbursements, the statutory client-rights notice — is seeded automatically from the matter type, so a probate bill reads like a probate bill without anyone retyping it.

The generated file is a real spreadsheet with live formulas. The secretary can edit amounts in Excel and the GST, totals and amount due recalculate themselves.

Building the bill

Open a matter and click Invoices in the sidebar. The composer has three parts: the bill setup at the top, the line items in the middle, and a totals card at the bottom.

Bill type and account

• Bill type — a two-way picker: Lump Sum (a narrative description of the professional costs) or Itemised (a line-by-line bill). The fee wording for each is seeded from the matter type, and each type keeps its own set of fee lines — switching between them never wipes what you’ve typed.
• Pay to — which firm account the bill directs payment to: Trust (the default) or Office. The payment block on the generated bill names the account you pick here.

Line items

The bill has two sections: Professional fees and Disbursements. Both are seeded with the standard lines for the matter type — a purchase matter, for example, starts with the planning, rates and water certificates already listed.

• Add a line with Add line; remove one with the delete button on its row.
• Every amount is GST-exclusive. Type the ex-GST figure; the GST is worked out for you.
• Each line has its own GST toggle. Statutory disbursements that carry no GST — court filing fees, planning certificates, title searches — are seeded with GST already off. Professional fees and sundries carry 10% GST.

Tip

You can paste figures from elsewhere, but watch for descriptions that start with an = sign — the app writes those as literal text, so a pasted formula can’t silently recalculate your bill into something else.

The totals card

The totals card mirrors the printed bill, row for row: professional fees, disbursements, Total (ex GST), Total GST, then Payment received (editable) and Amount due. Use it to cross-check the bill before you generate.

Generating the invoice

Click Generate Excel. Certum Draft writes a file named like Tax Invoice 000123-1.xlsx into the matter’s Working Documents/Invoices folder and offers to open it.

The workbook carries live Excel formulas for per-line GST, subtotals, totals and the amount due, so later edits in Excel recalculate on their own. The invoice and due dates are deliberately left as live =TODAY()-style dates — they finalise when the bill is opened in Excel. Until then, the file is a draft, not an issued bill.

Every bill also carries, from the firm’s wording library:

• The firm header block (name, ABN, address and contact details)
• The payment details for the account you chose
• The statutory NSW Notification of Client’s Rights notice

Note

If every line on the bill is empty or $0.00, Certum asks you to confirm before generating — a guard against a bill going out with the amounts still sitting in an uncommitted field. Check the lines, then click Generate Anyway only if a zero bill is genuinely what you meant.

Invoice numbering

Certum numbers each bill one past the highest number already used for the matter — and it checks both the files in Working Documents/Invoices and the Generated bills register (below). Gaps are never reused, and renaming a file in Finder (say, adding “-final”) can’t trick the numbering into re-issuing a number.

If you do generate a bill whose file already exists — perhaps it carries edits made in Excel — you’re asked before anything is replaced:

• Replace — overwrite the existing file (its Excel edits are lost)
• Keep Both (new invoice number) — issue this bill under the next free number instead
• Cancel — go back and change the number yourself

The invoice number itself is editable. It’s free text, but characters that can’t go in a file name are cleaned up — when the saved name will differ from what you typed, a small “Saves as …” caption tells you so.

The Generated bills list

Below the composer, the Generated bills list shows every bill generated on the matter, newest first: the invoice number, when it was generated, the account it directed payment to, the amount due, and a button to reveal the file in Finder.

Read the dates carefully: the list says “Generated”, never “Issued”. It’s a record of what Certum wrote and when — provenance, not bookkeeping. Because the dates on the spreadsheet finalise when it’s opened in Excel, Excel owns the bill’s lifecycle from there. Whether a bill has been sent or paid is for your accounting records, not this list.

Your draft is safe

The composer saves as you go. Closing the matter, switching tabs, or quitting the app loses nothing — the line items (both the lump-sum and itemised sets), the payment received figure, the invoice number and the chosen account are all restored exactly as you left them when you come back.

If the firm’s wording is edited while your matter is open, an untouched draft re-seeds with the new wording automatically. A draft you’ve typed in is left alone — your edits always win.

Caution

All the Macs in the office should run the same version of Certum Draft. A matter saved by an older version (before the bill register existed) loses its generated-bills list and its saved invoice draft.

When another Mac has the matter open

Like the rest of the workspace, the Invoices tab follows the editing lock. If a colleague’s Mac is editing the matter, a banner appears — “Another Mac is editing this matter — the invoice composer is read-only” — and the controls and Generate button are disabled until the matter is free.

Editing the firm’s wording

The seeded wording comes from a firm-wide library (see Reference Tools for the full editor). You don’t have to leave the matter to fix it: click Edit firm wording… on the Invoices tab and the Invoice Screeds editor opens in a sheet. Changes are saved to the firm’s shared wording file in Dropbox and apply to every new bill, on every matter, once saved.

Related

• Reference Tools — the Invoice Screeds editor and the rest of the Reference toolbox
• Editing Matter Details — the matter workspace the Invoices tab lives in
• Settings — where the templates folder (which holds the wording file) is configured