Electronic Billing LEDES & LSS

This article contains information relating to all electronic billing templates. This includes LEDES98B and LSS.

Electronic Billing settings are governed by the Electronic Billing section in System Settings.

General Settings

• Enabled – Is electronic billing enabled in Centerbase
• Tax ID – Your law firm’s tax id or tax code.  Used by LEDES98B.
• Firm Name – Your law firm’s name.  Used by LSS.
• Firm Location – The physical address of your law firm.  Used by LSS.

Template List

• Displays all electronic billing templates. You can add new templates, edit, copy, or delete templates from this screen. Clicking edit or copy will take you into a details screen.
• There are two default templates that cannot be deleted: Ledes 1998B and LSS. You can, however, update their names, extensions, or set them inactive.

Template Details

• On edit or copy, you will see a screen like this:
  

• Template: a selector to quickly change the template to edit details for instead of going back out to the main list
• Is Inactive: Set the template active or inactive. If inactive, it will not show in the “Download E-Billing Files” list.
• Name: The template’s name. Must be unique.
• Format: Supported formats include LEDES1998B and LSS. If you are on an existing template and you change its format, the default xml for the new format will replace your saved xml.
  

• Extension: when downloading the electronic bill, this is the file extension.

• Only “txt” and “xml” are in there initially, but this field supports addition of new tags. Simply type the extension you want and hit enter.
• Template Xml: Xml that is used to create the electronic bill
• It is very important that you DO NOT change <Key> for any value. You may, however, change <DisplayName> or add it if it isn’t already there.|
  

• Reset to Default Xml button: Looks at the current Format and gets the default Xml for that format and replaces Template Xml
• Copy button: The additional action under the Save button. Resets the current details form to be a copy of it. On save, a new template is created.
  
  
  

Template XML

• Electronic billing settings are currently managed by editing an XML file which lists all of the columns and/or headers used in that e-billing format.  There are several tags that can be added/edited to change the way electronic billing will retrieve its information.
  • Key: Don't change this value.  It uniquely identifies which header/column we are adjusting settings for.  The default XML begins with one section for each key that can then be customized.  Don't remove, change, or add a new key as it will cause electronic billing to fail.
  • DisplayName: Most electronic bills use standard column headers such as LAW_FIRM_ID or CLIENT_MATTER_ID; however, on occasion a client will require custom text for this column header.  If you leave this blank, the standard column header will be displayed.  If you fill in a DisplayName, this will be used for the column header instead.
  • IsRequired: If you mark this as true, the electronic bill will not be generated and an error will be shown if the value for this field is empty.  This is a good way to make sure a matter has a CLIENT_MATTER_ID (for instance) before submitting an e-bill.
  • MaxLength: Some e-billing formats have restrictions on how large a certain field can be.  You can set a number in MaxLength to ensure that a field does not go above this length.  If the value is too large, the e-bill will not be generated an an error will be shown.
  • DataType: This is only used for formatting data values.  This can be left blank or set to Decimal or DateTime.
  • FormatString: Only works if a DataType is specified.  Allows you to set a custom format for either number or date values.  If not specified, Centerbase will use the preferred format for the given e-billing type.
    • Standard/Custom Date Formats
    • Standard/Custom Number Formats
  • There are 3 ways to tell a column to pull a value:
    • CenterbaseSettingKey: Used to pull a value from a system setting.  Usually only used in protected templates when pulling something like Law Firm ID (for instance)
    • TextValue: Let's you specify a hard-coded text value that will always be used.  This allows you to do things like put a custom Law Firm ID in different templates or always show the same Invoice Description for all e-bills generated.
    • Object Type: When not using a setting key or text value, this allows you to say whether a given value should be pulled from the Bill level or the Billing Entry level.  The only valid values are blank (if using text/settings), 30 (if pulling from the bill), or 32 (if pulling from the billing entry). For instance, if you wanted to pull the bill's client name, you would specify 30.  If you wanted to pull the name of a timekeeper for a line item, you'd specify 32.
    • FieldId: This allows you to specify what field the value will be pulled from.  You can either specify a field directly on the billing entry or bill (such as issue date or billable hours) or you can use lookup fields to pull connected information (such as timekeeper initials or the matter's client's ID).
• You can not add or remove columns in the LEDES and LSS files. This information is hard coded, so the most you may be able to do is replace a field with a different field in Centerbase.

On Invoices page (pre bills, posted bills)

• Make sure you have at least one invoice selected and you can click on one of the templates to download the electronic bill.
• If everything goes well, you will get a file download of your electronic bill.  If you selected a single bill it will download the electronic bill file directly.  If you selected multiple bills, it will download a zip file with all of the electronic bills in it.
• If something is incorrect about the electronic bill template, you will see a message like this:
  
• If you do not see an error message but you do not get a download, you may not have pop-ups enabled for Centerbase.