Adding Fee Estimates to a Matter

In this article:

• How-to Video
• Adding a Fee Estimate / Quote to a Matter

In legal accounting, fee estimates are projections of the anticipated legal costs for a client’s case or matter. These estimates help clients understand potential expenses before committing to legal services. However, they are not fixed quotes and can vary based on the complexity of the case, unforeseen developments, or additional work required.

Using fee estimates, you can add an estimate / quote to any billable matter and track the billable hours against that matter. 

Before you begin: 

• An admin must enable this feature by going to Admin > General Settings > Feature preview and toggling Fee Estimates and Alerts to on. 
• An admin can enable or disable this panel for individual users by going to Admin > Users & permissions and clicking Matter overview panels on the right side of the page. Then, select the system role and matter type. You are presented with a list of available panels and options to assign these to particular rows and columns on the matter's Home page. Any panel that is not assigned to a row and column will not be displayed. (See Getting to Know the Matter Home Page and Matter Overview Panel Explanations to learn more.)

How-to Video

Adding a Fee Estimate / Quote to a Matter

To do this:

1. In Actionstep, view the matter you want to add the estimate or quote to. (See Editing a Matter for help.)
2. Make sure you are viewing the matter's Home page. (You can click the Home menu icon if you're not.)
   
   The Fee Summary panel shows the fee estimate / quote (if provided) as well as your WIP (or work in progress) and billed amounts.
   
3. Click Add estimate. The Matter Billing Options page is displayed. 
4. In the Estimate section of the page, click Estimate amount includes and choose Fees only.
5. Enter the Quoted / Estimate amount.
6. Optionally, select Get notified when the matter reaches 80% of the estimate to receive an email alert when the matter gets this close to matching the estimate. Then choose the participants you want to be notified from the Notify the following users drop-down list. 
7. Click Save to save your changes. 
8. Click the matter's Home menu icon to view the Fee Summary panel again. You'll note it has been updated to include the estimate:
   

Going forward, when you add time entries to the matter, the Fee Summary panel will be updated to show those amounts. The tracking bar below the estimate/actual will change color as you get closer to the fee estimate/quote amount:

• Yellow indicates you have passed the 80% mark:
  
• Red indicates you have reached or exceeded 100% of the quote/estimate:
  

When you bill/invoice your time entries, the WIP amount changes and billed value is moved to Billed.