This article covers the handling of posted invoices, including approval, decline, voiding, and deletion. It assumes you understand the process of posting invoices. If you need a refresher, check the following article: Uploading invoices from your legal service providers
In this article:
Required permissions
Invoices can be a sensitive thing, so the person uploading the invoices will need to have the appropriate permissions. These permissions must be set by the Organization Administrator.
Who can approve invoices?
Any user with a LawVu license, including Business Users and Contributors, is eligible to approve invoices. However, Business Users will only be able to view the invoice preview and will not have access to the matter itself.
To approve invoices, your Organization Administrator must enable this specific permission for your profile:
Approving or declining invoices
Who can approve invoices?
Any user with a LawVu
Once an invoice is posted, the matter owner/or delegate or assigned approvers can easily review it - approve or decline it from the LawVu interface.
From Inbox, clicking Actions will display the invoice that needs approval.
The invoice modal opens:
Select Approve if you want to approve the invoice. The fees to date will be updated for the matter, and the invoice will be sent to Accounts Payable if this was selected as an option (see this article for more information).
Select Decline if you want to decline the invoice. You need to provide a reason for declining.
Once an invoice has been declined, the invoice fields cannot be edited anymore
The invoice status, as well as the reason for declining, is sent to the person who uploaded the invoice, and to the Matter Manager and Organization Administrator on the law firm side in an email/in-app notification. The reason for declining will also be recorded as the last field in the invoice.
You can also mark the invoice as paid from the preview modal, and the option to download the invoice if needed.
If the invoice is from a LEDES file, the workflow is similar. The in-line editing modal will open, and you'll select Review to approve or decline the invoice.
A copy of the original uploaded LEDES file will also be available for download in the Original Invoice column found in the Invoices grid.
To learn how to mark an invoice as paid, click here.
UTBMS codes showing in invoice review for LEDES invoices
When Legal Service Proveders submit LEDES invoices, they are converted into a PDF preview for easier review by invoice approvers.
To improve clarity and transparency, we’re now displaying UTBMS task and expense codes in the PDF preview. These standardized codes help categorize legal work and expenses, making it easier for approvers to quickly understand and verify the billed items during invoice review.
See the screenshot below for an example of how the codes now appear in the PDF preview.
Deleting Invoices
Once the last invoice in a batch has been uploaded, the preview window will close, and a grid view will display a breakdown of the invoices in the batch.
Go to Invoice batches > select the appropriate batch and click the Delete icon.
You can only delete invoices that have not yet been posted. Once deleted, all traces of that invoice will be removed.
You can also delete individual invoices once you open them in preview:
Voiding Invoices
Once a batch has been posted, invoices cannot be deleted anymore, but they can be voided from the Spend grid. This can be done either before or after the invoice has been approved.
Click on Spend > Invoices. Having selected the appropriate invoice from a legal service provider, click the Void button.
A pop-up box will appear requiring confirmation:
If you are working on a large invoice batch, you can make use of the date range option from the grid and filter the invoices weekly, monthly, yearly, or a specific date range. With the desired invoices highlighted, click Void.
Voiding posted invoices will leave a record in the batch view, highlighted in red with a strike-through.
