Invoicing & ledger

An invoice turns billable activity on a matter into a request for payment. It can bring together fees from work items, disbursements, cost recoveries, tax, adjustments, and retained client or trust funds.

Creating or approving an invoice does not necessarily post it to the general ledger. Efimis separates drafting, approval, and financial posting so firms can apply an appropriate review and segregation-of-duties process.

Building an invoice

An invoice can start as a blank draft or as a prototype assembled from eligible matter activity. A prototype lets a user review the proposed line items without saving an invoice if the billing run is abandoned.

Tenant and matter configuration determine when invoices are prepared. Common billing bases include:

• Periodic — prepare billing on a schedule from eligible activity;
• Ad hoc — prepare an invoice when a user chooses to bill;
• Pro bono — report the work while posting it to the firm’s pro-bono treatment; and
• Non-billable — exclude the matter from ordinary invoicing.

Before issue, users may add or remove eligible items, adjust presentation, and write fee values up or down. These billing decisions do not erase the original work-item record.

Approval and finalisation

Approval and finalisation answer different questions:

• Approval confirms that the invoice’s content is acceptable.
• Finalisation issues the invoice and posts its financial effect to the general ledger.

A firm can allow an authorised biller to approve and finalise in one action, or require approved invoices to wait in a separate ready-to-post queue. Users who can create or approve invoices may therefore be unable to finalise or unfinalise them.

Segregation of duties

Use approval workflows to control legal and commercial review. Use finalisation permissions to control who can post to the general ledger. They are separate controls.

See Invoice finalising and unfinalising controls for the current user and permission workflow.

Invoice lifecycle

The public contract defines these invoice states:

State	Meaning
Draft	The invoice requires amendment before approval.
Pending	The invoice is moving through an approval workflow.
Approved	Content is approved but the invoice may not yet be posted.
Issued	The invoice has been finalised and posted.
Closed	The invoice balance has been settled.
Cancelled	The invoice was cancelled before completing its normal lifecycle.
Credit note	A credit document reverses or reduces a previously issued charge.

Rejecting a pending invoice normally sends it back for amendment rather than making “rejected” a terminal financial state. Cancelling a draft or pending invoice releases its eligible items so they can be billed again.

Unfinalising an issued invoice removes its posted effect and returns it to an editable or approved workflow. Because that can remove recognised revenue, it is a privileged operation and may require renewed approval after changes.

Amounts, currency, and splits

An invoice records its display currency, the firm’s base currency, exchange rate, net and tax totals, current balance, and any unpaid disbursement amount. Historical invoice values must retain the rates used when the underlying activity was created or billed.

The billed entity can differ from the matter’s client through billToEntityId and a billing address. Efimis also supports split invoices, where a parent invoice is divided between child invoices. Each child follows its own payment and credit lifecycle after issue.

Receipts, credits, and allocation

Issuing an invoice creates a receivable; it does not mean the invoice has been paid. The balance is reduced by later financial activity such as:

• office receipts;
• eligible client or trust funds transferred to office;
• credit notes; or
• authorised invoice write-offs.

Allocations associate those credits with invoice item types or individual lines. They preserve how a payment was applied without changing the original fee or disbursement record.

An invoice can also hold a retained amount representing client or trust funds intended for payment. Finalisation marks the retained amount as protected funds; the actual transfer remains subject to the firm’s jurisdictional and approval rules.

General ledger relationship

The following invoice operations affect the general ledger:

• Issuing or finalising an invoice posts the invoice’s financial effect.
• Receipting an invoice records the payment and reduces the outstanding balance.
• Unfinalising or cancelling an invoice reverses or removes the previously posted financial effect.

In the REST API

Invoice endpoints support search, creation, update, prototype generation, posting receipts, and finding payments. The current public contract does not expose every UI billing and approval action, so integrations should rely only on documented operations rather than inferring an endpoint from the application workflow.

See the REST API reference for the current contract and Client & trust accounting for the separate flow governing money held for clients.