Product

A product is the term given to a legal service or key deliverable (e.g. Affidavit) for the purposes of billing. It can be thought of as a way of grouping charges under a particular heading.

Product Definitions

Products are defined within a particular workgroup. The product definition includes its description, notes and charge policy.

A product may define multiple charge policies (for different scales). A history of rates and charge bases is stored on the product, along with the period in which they were effective. The "rates as at" date on each matter determines which policy applies. This allows cost agreements to be honoured without requiring new products to be defined whenever policies change.

Item codes can be assigned to charge policies; for example, when a product corresponds to an item on a court scale.

Charge Basis

Products support several bases for calculating charges:

• As recorded - The charge is calculated from the time records assigned to the product, using the relevant scale rates for each member.
• Fixed amount
• Capped - Behaves like "as recorded" but imposes an upper limit on how much can be charged.
• Formula - The charge is calculated according to a formula that can draw upon matter details.

All charge amounts are exclusive of sales tax (GST/VAT/etc), which may or may not be charged on individual invoices.

Formulas

When charging according to a formula, the expression is functionally identical to that of a matter description; that is, assets corresponding to the matter, parties and fields are automatically defined for use within the expression.

Product Instances

Multiple instances of the same product can be added to a matter (e.g. for billing multiple witness statements, court appearances, etc). Whenever time records or other charges are allocated to a product, a specific instance of that product must be selected.

The product description can be overridden to better differentiate between product instances.