Disbursements reach the invoice with the receipt attached
Recoverable expenses land on the client's invoice with their documentation attached. A question about a disbursement line gets answered on the spot.
Smartbills tags each expense to its client and matter when it's coded, while the engagement is still open to bill.
Client and matter chosen before the expense is approved
The person submitting picks the client and matter, and from that point the expense is either billable or overhead. Nothing gets reclassified later from memory.
- Client and matter picked from a list, never typed
- Billable and overhead separated at capture
- Policy checked before the expense reaches an approver
Partners see the recovery rate as it stands
Because billable and overhead are split at capture, the recovery rate is measured, and you can look at it by client, matter and person.
- Recovery rate by client, matter and team
- Drill from a rate to the underlying expenses
- Trends over time, beyond one quarterly figure
Why teams switch
Billable costs turn up after the invoice has gone out.
We find billable expenses after the invoice has gone out, and nobody wants to send the client a second one.
Allocation happens when the expense is coded. Recoverable spend is already on the invoice when it goes out.
Nobody can tell a partner what a matter has cost until it closes.
Cost by client and matter updates as expenses post, and a partner can read the position in the middle of the engagement.
Recovery is a number someone estimates at quarter-end, and then we argue about whether it's right.
Billable and overhead are split at capture. Recovery is measured from your own records.
The products that do the work.
Each product works on its own, and when you run two, the same record carries from the receipt to the ledger entry.
Expense management
Capture receipts, categorize expenses and check policy compliance as expenses are submitted.
Accounts receivable
Accounts receivable automation that sends each invoice on time, escalates the reminders on schedule and lets customers pay from a link.
Accounting automation
Accounting automation software that codes each transaction and posts the journal entry to your accounting software the day it happens.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What people ask us before they sign up.
The person submitting picks the client and matter from a list at capture. Picking from a list keeps allocation consistent, whereas a free-text field produces three spellings of the same client within a month.
It's the share of client-attributable spend that makes it onto an invoice. The gap is rarely a decision to absorb cost. Usually it's spend found too late to bill, which is a process problem with a process fix.
Yes, and that's the idea. Deciding later means deciding from memory, which is where recovery leaks. The classification is made at submission, and an approver can override it.
Smartbills posts to QuickBooks, Xero, Sage and NetSuite. If your practice management system is where billing happens, the allocation travels with the expense so the disbursement is raised against the right matter.
Get started
Measure your real recovery rate for one month.
Allocate expenses at capture for a month, then compare what reached invoices with what you would have estimated.