Magnum One

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Magnum One / Magnum One (Mid-American Digital) (Disc Manufacturing).iso / d6 / bp58a.arc / BILLPOWR.DOC next >

Wrap

Text File | 1991-01-06 | 288.9 KB | 6,544 lines

OTHER PROGRAMS IN THE "POWER OFFICE" LINE-UP TickleX --> the ultimate in scheduling/planning/docket control MT-Tracker --> TickleX's scheduling power, plus client management ReSearch --> research/evidence organizer for litigation support RAMdesk --> pop-up network message system, calculator, scheduler, phone directory, time/work/expense log, data base PopForm --> pop-up form printing program. Nifty --> combination menu and pop-up help system TICKLEX TickleX ($50) is a tickler/calendar program that will keep track of your appointments and deadlines, print your itinerary at the beginning of each day day, keep a "to-do" list, and chart the projected course of each matter you handle. It will also schedule trips and vacations, print weekly and monthly calendars, and beep at you when something needs doing. Stand-alone or POP-UP. TickleX is unusual in its ability to dynamically link reminders to ap- pointments and deadlines. Assume, for example, that you have a very important meeting scheduled for 15 August. As with other programs, you could establish reminders several days or weeks in advance to allow adequate preparation for the meeting. For the purposes of this example, let's say that you have entered a reminder one week in advance and another two weeks in advance. Now, what happens if the meeting is moved forward one week to 22 August? Again, all tic- kler programs would allow you to reschedule it. But TickleX will also automatically update the two reminders, moving each one week forward in order to maintain the original reminder intervals. Other programs would require you to search for each reminder, delete it, and then enter it again on another date. This TickleX exclusive is an absolute "must" for offices that have fre- quent schedule changes. TickleX is also unique in the way it handles multi-day events. TickleX allows you to enter an event such as a week-long trip with just one entry. Other programs might require a separate entry to be made for each day of the trip. If your trip plans change, you need change only a single entry if you have TickleX. TickleX even has built-in project planning. No fancy charts, mind you. Just a very simplistic means of linking and updating related events. And it's completely integrated into the TickleX system. All project updates are auto- matically incorporated into the same schedule that contains appointments, dead- lines, vacations, etc. Add to these features an attractive user interface, the ability to attach extensive notes to each scheduled event, a number of other nice touches, and TickleX comes up a winner. Whether you're an executive looking for a powerful centralized personnel scheduler, a busy entrepreneur needing an easy-to-use tickler system, or a lawyer seeking the ultimate docket control software, Tick- leX is the program for you. There isn't a more robust scheduler available at any price. At only $50, it's a steal. MT-TRACKER MT-Tracker is the ideal client tracker and scheduler. It integrates the scheduling power of TickleX with the ability to track several thousand clients, companies, contacts, projects, or jobs. Also included is a note-keeping module that will link memos to the dates and clients to which they apply. In addition to the expected name, address, phone, and contact information, each client record has space for six full lines of miscellaneous data and nine USER-CUSTOMIZABLE fields. And each note kept in the Note-keeping module may contain up to seventeen lines of information. Because MT-Tracker is an integrated system, you can easily zip from one module to another. Assume, for instance, that you're looking at Mr. Smith's record, and you'd like to see everything (not just one or two items) scheduled for him during the coming month. A few keystrokes later, what you need will be displayed on your monitor or sent to your printer. When you're finished look- ing at the schedule, press a key to re-display Mr. Smith's record. Notes and logged events, income, and expenses are just as easily accessed. If you're a sales representative, consultant, personal injury lawyer, or anyone else who needs to track clients, customers, or jobs, this is the soft- ware you've been waiting for. Give it a try. RAMDESK RAMdesk ($50) is a handy "pop-up" program that contains a number of features useful in a business environment. It will: --> if used on a network, instantly send and receive messages; --> schedule and review upcoming events on a pop-up basis, allowing up to 20 alarms per day; --> maintain a pop-up record of income, expenses, and the time spent working on various projects; --> provide a pop-up address and phone directory, giving you instant access to records on hundreds of people; --> provide a pop-up programmable calculator with a 50-line "tape"; --> allow you to establish numerous pop-up databases, such as to-do lists, general ledger account listings, etc. Once RAMdesk is installed (it needs 7 to 45K), it's instantly avail- able at the touch of a hot-key combination. It may be called up from with- in most word processors, spreadsheets, and other primary applications. If you also happen to have BillPower and TickleX, you'll find that RAMdesk ties in beautifully with them. Whatever appointments or deadlines you've scheduled with RAMdesk will be automatically picked up by TickleX, while BillPower will automatically take in the services, expenses, and receipts you've logged with RAMdesk. TickleX and BillPower can even assimilate en- tries made into RAMdesk by users on other computers around the office. If the computers are networked, the assimilation will be handled automatically; otherwise, you may use floppy disks to transfer the data between each "sate- llite" computer and the main database on another machine. POPFORM PopForm ($50) is a ram-resident program that can be called up from within nearly any application, grab information from the screen, and merge it into a form that's being sent either to a printer or to a disk file. You may design your own forms (in industry-standard ASCII format) with your word processor. PopForm's far more than just the perfect label/envelope printing tool. You see, unlike the typical single-purpose label or envelope printer, PopForm is actually programmable. It can execute subroutines, perform comparisons and conditional procedures, and much, much more. It'll even do simple page format- ting, including margins all around, word wrap, page numbers, and one-line headers and footers. With this program, you can prepare forms of nearly ANY complexity, as long as the information to be plugged into them can be found on your computer's screen. And, of course, provided that you're willing to grasp and implement some basic programming concepts. If you have simple needs, you'll find PopForm a simple dream-come-true. But it's nice to know that it also has the power to do heavy-duty chores, if you'll just take the time to do some programming and experimenting. Since PopForm can deal with numerical and string variables, it it can also be useful as you just browse through a database. When you come to a screen containing information you'd like to record, just call up PopForm and select a "form" you've prepared that pulls selected data from the screen and sends it to a disk file, along with the running total for some important item. When you've finished your browsing, you can either print the disk file or edit it with your word processor. When it comes to printing any type of form, PopForm is tops. RESEARCH ReSearch ($50) is a program designed to help you keep track of re- search, chronologies, and evidence. When you enter an item of research, you may tell ReSearch such things as the source, page, and line number where that item can be found. You may also enter an eleven-line summary of the item and indicate the subject category into which the item falls. A prime use of this program is to create printouts of research data, sor- ted alphabetically by subject abbreviation. Another use is to keep tabs on documents and other evidence (who sent it, who received it, its current loca- tion, etc.). It can also be used to prepare a chronological report of a se- quence of events which may have been entered at random into the data base. Finally, it can scan depositions provided to you on disk in industry-standard ASCII format and transfer verbatim text directly from the depositions to its data base. NIFTY Nifty ($50) is a unique program that may be used as either a pop-up Help system or a DOS menu. It combines an elegantly simple and attractive user in- terface (much appreciated by the inexperienced user) with a consistent, flex- ible means of set-up (benefiting the system integrator). As a Help system, Nifty can, at the touch of a key or two, provide the user with on-line assistance on any subject (assuming that appropriate help files have been created by the person installing the system). Since the Help system is memory-resident, it may be accessed from within nearly any other ap- plication. Simplicity is also the rule when Nifty is used as a Menu system. A single keystroke can execute any program or read any file on the computer. Some menu systems may be easier to set up, but few provide such flexible screen-creation facilities, and none are easier to use once they're installed. With Nifty, you may "draw" your own menus and place into them any messages you desire. You may use either passwords or "security levels" to control access to sub-menus. You you may even set a timer to automatically execute any program at any time. As a Help system, Nifty uses about 50K of memory; as a Menu system, it requires about 55K. If you know a computer novice, you know a candidate for using this handy product. And if you understand DOS paths and file extensions, you know enough to set up a Nifty Help or Menu system, yourself. TO: INTEGRA COMPUTING, Box 72063, Marietta, GA 30007-2063 BillPower ver 5.8 Name __________________________________________________________ Firm Name __________________________________ Phone ________________ Address __________________________________________________________ City _________________ State ___ Zip _______ County ________ # Professionals _____ # Employees ____ Type of Practice ________________ I first heard of Integra Computing from ___________________________________ Prices and availability are subject to change without notice. Send unregistered** copies of the following: ___ copies of TickleX at $10 ea $_____ ___ copies of MT-Tracker at $15 ea $_____ ___ copies of RAMdesk at $10 ea $_____ ___ copies of Nifty at $10 ea $_____ ___ copies of PopForm at $10 ea $_____ ___ copies of ReSearch at $10 ea $_____ ___ copies of BillPower Plus at $15 ea $_____ Send registered** copies of the following: ___ copies of RAMdesk at $50 [$25 w/TickleX/BillPower] $_____ ___ copies of PopForm at $50 [$25 w/TickleX/BillPower/MT-Tracker]$_____ ___ copies of ReSearch at $50 [+ $60 EXTRA to get 1 hr support]* $_____ ___ copies of TickleX at $50 [+ $60 EXTRA to get 1 hr support]* $_____ ___ copies of MT-Tracker at $75 [+ $110 EXTRA to get 2 hr support]* $_____ ___ copies of BillPower at $100 [+ $110 EXTRA to get 2 hr support]* $_____ ___ copies of BillPower Plus at $150 [+ $200 EXTRA to get 4 hr support]* $_____ To have programs supplied on 3.5" media, enclose $5.00 extra PER PROGRAM $_____ If you don't live in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico, please add $10.00 more $_____ TOTAL ORDER $_____ ___% Sales Tax for ___________ county, if you're a GA resident $_____ Please enclose a CHECK or MONEY ORDER in US dollars -- GRAND TOTAL $_____ (purchase orders unaccompanied by actual payments won't be accepted) I have read and agreed to all the terms of the Disclaimer found below. _______________________________________ _________________ SIGNATURE DATE * Telephone support will be provided if you pre-purchase it with this order form. Such support must be used within a year. When you need assistance, you may reach Integra Computing (404-973-3586) most weekdays from 4:30pm to 6:30pm, Eastern Time. Because so much time is required to respond to mailed correspon- dence, letters requesting assistance may not be answered. If you need help, call -- don't write. But please don't even call unless you've pre-purchased support with this order form; if you call without having prepaid for support, each call will cost you a minimum of $15, plus $1.50 per minute. ** Unregistered software is programmed to remind you to register. Please note that no credit will be given at the time of registration for the cost of an unregistered copy. BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, RAMDESK, NIFTY AND THEIR INSTRUCTIONS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND (INC- LUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE). NO ORAL OR WRITTEN INFORMATION OR ADVICE PROVIDED BY INTEGRA, ITS DEALERS, DISTRIBUTORS, AGENTS, OR EMPLOYEES SHALL CREATE A WARRANTY OF ANY KIND REGARDING BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, RAMDESK, OR NIFTY, AND YOU MAY NOT RELY UPON SUCH INFORMATION OR ADVICE. NEITHER INTEGRA NOR ANYONE ELSE WHO HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN THE CREATION, PRODUCTION, OR DELIVERY OF BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, RAMDESK, OR NIFTY SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSI- NESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, AND LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION) AR- ISING FROM THE USE OF (OR INABILITY TO USE) BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, RAMDESK, OR NIFTY. -- LICENSE: BillPower, TickleX, MT-Tracker, PopForm, ReSearch, Nifty, RAMdesk, and their documentation are copyrighted in 1985 to 1990 by R.A. Kelly. You may use any program on as many computers as you like, as long as it is never ins- talled with a SERIAL NUMBER (provided to you when you register as a user) on more than one computer at a time and as long as you do not alter the program in any way. You may distribute any of these programs to potential new users, pro- vided that you never divulge your SERIAL NUMBER to anyone, that you charge no fee for the program, and that you do not bundle it with (or use it as an incen- tive to purchase or lease) any other product or service, without the written consent of R.A. Kelly. All rights not expressly granted above are reserved in R.A. Kelly. -- DISCLAIMER: BillPower, TickleX, MT-Tracker, PopForm, ReSearch, Nifty, and RAMdesk may contain design and programming flaws. Before using ANY software on a regular basis, try estimating the potential harm that could result from your reliance upon it. Please don't use any of these programs unless you're willing to as- sume the associated risks, such as billing and report inaccuracies and data loss. BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, NIFTY, RAMDESK, AND THEIR INSTRUCTIONS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND (INCLUD- ING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE). NO ORAL OR WRITTEN INFORMATION OR ADVICE PROVIDED BY INTEGRA, ITS DEALERS, DISTRIBUTORS, AGENTS, OR EMPLOYEES SHALL CREATE A WARRANTY OF ANY KIND REGARDING BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, NIFTY, OR RAMDESK, AND YOU MAY NOT RELY UPON SUCH INFORMATION OR ADVICE. USE OF BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, NIFTY,OR RAMDESK IS ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. NEITHER INTEGRA NOR ANYONE ELSE WHO HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN THE CREATION, PRODUCTION, OR DELIVERY OF BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, NIFTY, OR RAMDESK SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSI- NESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, AND LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION) ARISING FROM THE USE OF (OR INABILITY TO USE) BILLPOWER, TICKLEX, MT-TRACKER, POPFORM, RESEARCH, NIFTY, OR RAMDESK, EVEN THOUGH INTEGRA MAY BE ADVISED THAT SUCH DAMAGES ARE POSSIBLE. -- AGREEMENT: As used in this Agreement, the terms "BillPower" ,"TickleX", "MT-Tracker", "PopForm", "ReSearch", "Nifty", and "RAMdesk", if not followed by a series or version designation, mean any version or series of BillPower, BillPower Plus, TickleX, MT-Tracker, PopForm, ReSearch, Nifty, or RAMdesk provided to you now or in the future. Your attempt to use BillPower, TickleX, MT-Tracker, PopForm, ReSearch, Nifty, or RAMdesk constitutes your acceptance of the terms set forth in the foregoing LICENSE and DISCLAIMER (which are incorporated into this Agreement). Your attempt to use BillPower, TickleX, MT-Tracker, PopForm, ReSearch, Nifty, or RAMdesk also constitutes your agreement that if you bring any legal action relating to BillPower, TickleX, MT-Tracker, PopForm, ReSearch, Nifty, or RAM- desk, 1) your sole remedy for the damages for which any defendant is found lia- ble (including direct, indirect, incidental and consequential damages) will be the recovery of whatever you paid to register as a user of the program, and 2) you will pay all defendants' attorneys fees and other legal costs if you do not prevail on all claims made in your pleadings. The terms of this Agreement are governed by Georgia law. If any of this Agreement's terms shall be held invalid to any extent, the remainder of this Agreement shall be unaffected by such invalidity. THE ABOVE PARAGRAPHS CONSTITUTE THE ENTIRE AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND INTE- GRA. NO ORAL OR WRITTEN COMMUNICATION, INFORMATION, OR ADVICE FROM ANY SOURCE MAY ALTER THE AGREEMENT AS SET FORTH ABOVE. SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR OF LIABIL- ITY FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE EXCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. YOU MAY HAVE OTHER RIGHTS WHICH MAY VARY FROM STATE TO STATE. BILLPOWER (ver 5.8) INSTRUCTIONS INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 FOUNDING PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 WHAT BILLPOWER WILL DO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 HOW BILLPOWER ORGANIZES ITS DATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 A FEW DEFINITIONS AND INSTRUCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Monitor Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Keyboard Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Control Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Entering Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Pausing and Aborting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Printer Toggling and Writing Reports to a Disk File . . . . . . 12 Message Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 On-Line Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The EDIT Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Deciding which module to use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Obtaining Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Omitting Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Tricking BillPower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Moving BillPower to a new Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 SETTING UP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 LOADING BILLPOWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 CUSTOMIZING THE PROGRAM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Period during which no interest will be charged. . . . . . . . . 18 Lines printed per page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Lines to Letterhead Bottom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Printer Initialization Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Indent used for Client Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Account automatically adjusted for disbursements and receipts. . 21 Minimum Time Charged per Time Slip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Screen Colors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Employees and their charge rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Tax on Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Using a term other than "case" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Using 24-hour time and non-dollar monetary symbols . . . . . . . 23 Using BillPower with desqVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 OPENING THE DATA FILES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 MAIN MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 UTILIZE UTILITIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 CUSTOMIZE THE PROGRAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 EDIT TEXT FILES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 CASE MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 MAKE A NEW RECORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 MasterRcrd Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Areas of Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Charging Disbursements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Responsible and Originating Employees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Opening and Closing Dates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Case Name, Client Name, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Miscellaneous Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Billing Format and Interval. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Salutation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Methods of Charging your Clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Unusual Fee Arrangements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Account Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Periodic/Occasional Billing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 EDIT/EXAMINE A RECORD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Specifying the Case to be Edited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Closing and Opening a Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Recent History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 The F2 and F10 Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 HUNT FOR SOME INFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 OMIT ALL RECORDS TAGGED FOR OMISSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 SERVICES/FEES MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 MAKE A TIME SLIP OR FEE RECORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Case Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Employee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Reformatting the Description Entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Long Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Private Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Asterisk Suppression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Time Entries and Total Charge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Charging Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Next Time Slip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Deferred Billing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 EDIT A TIME SLIP OR FEE RECORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 HUNT FOR SOME INFORMANTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 ZIP TO A TIME SLIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 DISBURSEMENTS MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 MAKE A DISBURSEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Payee or Creditor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 AMOUNT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Check Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 EDIT A DISBURSEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 RECEIPTS MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 ADJUSTMENT MODULE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 GENERAL LEDGER MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 OPEN A NEW ACCOUNT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 MAKE A TRANSACTION ENTRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 HUNT FOR SOME INFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 OMITTING ACCOUNTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 ORGANIZING YOUR BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Accounts vs. Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 DOUBLE ENTRY ACCOUNTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Designating the accounts to adjust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Automating the process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The other account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 BILLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 COMPOSITION OF A BILL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 BILLING FORMATS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 RETURN ADDRESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 OPENING STATEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 OPTIONAL GENERAL OPENING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 CLOSING STATEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 SIGNATURE BLOCK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 SUMMARY SHEET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 PREPARING A BILL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Date of Statement and Month Billed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Other Hunt Gates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 First Case Prepared. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Setting the Print Mode and Aligning the Paper. . . . . . . . . . 67 Cases set for Occasional Billing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 PRE-BILLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 DEFERRED BILLING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 STATEMENT RE-PREPARATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 "UPDATED COPY" BILLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 CUSTOMIZED BILL FORMATS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 NOTE MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 PEOPLE MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 UTILITIES MODULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 BACK UP DATA FILES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 RESTORE BACKUP FILES FROM A BACKUP DISK . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 SORT TRANSACTIONS CHRONOLOGICALLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 ERASE DATA FILES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 CASE RE-INDEXING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 TRANSACTION RE-INDEXING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 CATEGORIES, AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM. . . . . . . . . . . 78 CATEGORIES and ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Income/Expense Category Numbers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Optional Category Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Optional Service Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 AREAS OF BUSINESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 NUMBERING SYSTEM PROPOSAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 USING BILLPOWER WITH OLD CASES AND ACCOUNTS . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 MESSAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 BILLPOWER ON A LOCAL AREA NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 POP-UP BILLPOWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 BILLPOWER NOTE: If you're using an unregistered copy of the program, it will begin to beep at you in several weeks, reminding you that it's time to register. Don't worry -- no data will be destroyed, and you'll be able to use the prog- ram, despite the fact that you delay registering. OVERVIEW BillPower is a timekeeping, billing and bookkeeping program de- signed specifically for small firms. It will track time worked on professional matters and calculate the amount owed by each client. It will also keep up with receipts and disbursements, and it will main- tain such accounts as you wish, allowing you to carry out simple book- keeping functions. Perhaps most importantly, it will automatically compile service, disbursement, and receipt transactions for each cli- ent into monthly bills. And, for your convenience, the program may be used as either a stand-alone system or as a RAM-resident "pop-up" that will allow your access even while you're in the middle of using another program (see the POP-UP BILLPOWER section). BillPower is a member of the "ManageX" series of productivity- enhancing software. As such, it must reside in a MANAGEX directory on your hard disk. Other programs in the series include ReSearch (a pro- gram used to keep track of research and/or evidence), TickleX (the most powerful scheduler/tickler available), and RAMdesk (a set of pop- up utilities, such as a phone book, a calculator, a LAN mail system, etc). If you are already familiar with computer accounting programs, you may be in for a shock, because BillPower represents an entirely new approach to various aspects of bookkeeping. BillPower is far more flexible than other programs which lock you into an electronic version of ancient manual accounting procedures. If you are an "old hand" at bookkeeping, then open your mind to a different system which does not require monthly "postings" or year-end "close-outs"; one that never destroys old data from past months in the interest of consolidation. While other time and billing programs may offer "links" to exter- nal accounting software, BillPower completely integrates its bookkeep- ing functions into the rest of the program. BillPower Plus can, in fact, SIMULTANEOUSLY update affected G/L accounts (as well as a cli- ent's balance and aged receivables) at the time that a disbursement or receipt is entered. This "real-time" approach to bookkeeping, vir- tually unprecedented in a time and billing program, saves you the time you would otherwise spend making duplicate G/L entries, posting trans- INTRODUCTION 4 actions, and/or transferring files from one program to another. With BillPower, a SINGLE entry can handle all the updating that needs to be done. No other program offers such a degree of integration. BillPower is designed as a unique "free entry" system. You may, for instance, open accounts at will, any time you want. If, several months after having established your chart of accounts, you discover that you need to add a new account, you may easily do so. With Bill- Power, you may also correct nearly ANY entry made at ANY time in the past. Assume, for instance, that you wish to modify the service des- cription or charge appearing on a time slip that was entered three or four months ago. While some other office management systems would require the awkward procedure of entering a corrective time slip to offset the faulty one, BillPower allows you to follow your natural in- clination: simply calling the erroneous time slip to the screen and editing it. That keeps your files uncluttered and your reports and bills neat. Also unique is BillPower's ability to re-prepare bills. Other programs won't redo a client's bill after transactions for that client have been "posted" or "closed out", since these procedures often in- volve the subsequent destruction of those transactions' data. Posting and closing out are tedious bookkeeping procedures which are necessary with manual systems, and which have been emulated in many computer accounting programs. BillPower, however, has been designed to capi- talize upon the power of the computer. It will automatically update all data as each transaction is entered into the computer. No time- consuming posting or close-out procedures are required, and there is no data destruction; therefore, you may re-prepare bills that may be even several months old. If a client asks you to correct and re-sub- mit a bill, it's no problem with BillPower. BillPower's aged receivables are also more meaningful than other programs'. Other programs might report aging periods of "0-30 days", "31-60 days", etc. These periods are typically figured backward in time, beginning with the latest posting date. If you haven't posted for some time, you will find yourself doing mental gymnastics to cal- culate how the aging periods relate to the CURRENT date (who really cares about the last posting date?). With BillPower, which does not require posting, the aging periods are reported as "OwedSince FEB", "OwedSince JAN", "OwedSince DEC", etc. Hence, you know at a glance how much of the money CURRENTLY owed you has been owed since the end of each month shown in the receivables report. FOUNDING PHILOSOPHY BillPower is based upon the proposition that it is usually best to send a statement to each client at some regular interval, preferab- ly every month. Even when nothing is due from the client for work done during that period, a statement should be sent, if for no other reason, to let him know that you're still thinking of him. With this INTRODUCTION 5 principle in mind, you may select a regular billing interval of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 months for each client, though, for simplicity's sake, you are urged to use the one-month interval for as many of your cli- ents as you can. Even if a case or project is a fixed fee or contingency one, a statement should be sent to the client on a regular basis before the case has been completed, so that he may have an ongoing appreciation of all that you are doing for him. It takes only about a minute for BillPower to prepare the bill. Your investment in time, paper and postage will be insignificant in comparison to the payoff resulting from keeping each client informed of what you're doing. WHAT BILLPOWER WILL DO BillPower requires 420K of RAM (but only 7K if loaded as a "pop- up" and sitting in the background waiting for you to press the hot- key -- see the "POP-UP BILLPOWER" section). The program can handle any combination of the following: 15 timekeepers/employees (partners, secretaries, and others); 4000 cases/projects; 4000 accounts; and 8000 transaction entries per month (services, disbursements, etc). Each client may be set up for either "Periodic" or "Occasional" billing. The vast majority of your clients will probably be ones whom you want to bill on a regular basis (monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, etc.). These should be set up for Periodic billing, whereas those few clients that are to be billed haphazardly, or only once, may be as- signed to Occasional billing. BillPower is unique in that it allows you to prepare bills for the same period many times, not just once. Each bill sent out for any period of time reflects the most current status of the client's ac- count with you for that period. Correcting and re-submitting bills to your clients present no problem to BillPower. Periodic Billing There is a nominal "minimum" period for which a client set up for Periodic billing will be be billed: one calendar month. Each bill will include all transactions from the beginning of the first month covered by the bill to the end of the last month covered. A bill may be re-prepared for the same calendar month (or months) several times. For example, if it were now January 15, and you wanted to send Mr. Smith's bill for work done so far this month, the bill prepared by BillPower would cover all work done during the entire month of January (the beginning of the first month covered by the bill is January 1, and the end of the last month covered is January 31). However, since INTRODUCTION 6 no work will have been done after the fifteenth, the bill will effec- tively be one for only the period from January 1 to January 15. If, in February, you had some reason to prepare another January bill for Mr. Smith, that bill would also show work done during the entire month. Included on the second January bill would be 1) a recap of what had already been shown on the previous January bill and 2) a listing of what, if anything, had been done from the 16th to the 31st. You may not request a bill for only the period from January 16 to Jan- uary 31, since, as mentioned above, the minimum billing period is one calendar month. But don't worry. Mr. Smith will NOT be charged again for the work already reflected in the first bill. The second bill will SHOW that work for a second time (as a recap), but will not CHARGE him a second time for it. Of course, if Mr. Smith had sent any payments since the first bill was mailed, those payments would also be reflected on the second bill. Clients set up for Periodic billing must be billed at least once every nine months. As long as you run at least one mass billing per month, BillPower will insure that at no Periodic client goes too long without a bill. Occasional Billing There is no minimum billing period for clients set up for Occa- sional billing. If you wish, you may prepare one bill today, another tomorrow, another next week, and yet another eight months from now. Each bill will contain only those transactions falling AFTER the date of the last transaction on the preceding bill. As is the case with Periodic clients, current and previous bills may be re-prepared as needed. The advantage of Occasional billing is that you may allow as much time as you wish to elapse between bills (while nine months is the maximum for clients billed Periodically). One disadvantage is that BillPower will not automatically compute a client's interest, taxes, or monthly retainer fee (as it would if the client were set up for Periodic billing). And, while clients set up for Occasional billing will be included in mass billings (along with Periodic clients), they can't be RE-BILLED en masse (as can be done with clients set up for Periodic billing). Thus, if you've already prepared actual (final) bills for a given period of time, and then for some reason need to re- do those bills, your Periodic clients may be handled with a mass bil- ling. Your Occasional clients may also be re-billed, but you must handle each individually. The Best Billing Method By far the simplest billing method is Periodic. It assumes that most of your clients are the sort that should be billed regularly. And it requires that you have the discipline to set aside a few hours at the INTRODUCTION 7 beginning of each month to do your billing for the prior month. Don't do sporadic billing unless it's absolutely necessary. The scattergun approach is an awful time waster. Still, you may have a few clients for which regular billing is not appropriate. These clients should be set up for Occasional bil- ling, unless you need to have BillPower automatically calculate inter- est, taxes or monthly retainer fees. And if you think you lack the discipline to stick to a regular billing schedule, you might consider billing ALL your clients with the Occasional method. Automatic Adjustment of Billing Periods As mentioned previously, BillPower is unusaual in its ability to accept new or changed transactions for dates anytime in the past and to re-prepare old bills. But there's an effect you may not have considered. Let's say that the current month is March and that you've already prepared a bill for each of January and February. Now, for some rea- son, you want to enter a new transaction with a January date. Doing so will, of course, change January's balance forwarded to February (and February's to March). Since this complication doesn't even occur to most users, BillPower has to somehow account for the changes auto- matically. What BillPower does is to assume that you'll want the next bill prepared (March's) to reflect the new January entry. The only way to do so is to insure that the bill includes everything entered since January. Therefore, the bill prepared for March will actually be one for January, February and March. Normally, a March bill will contain only transactions entered for March, but, in this case, BillPower has found it necessary to also include a recap of January and February. In this fashion, BillPower attempts to insure that your clients are apprised of changes made in prior months' data. HOW BILLPOWER ORGANIZES ITS DATA BillPower consists of the following files: BP.BAT the batch file used to load BillPower BILLPOWR.EXE the main program file BILLPOWR.OVR overlays for the main program EDIT.EXE an ASCII text editor ________.LBF major data files maintained by the program ________.LBI indices to the major data files ________.HLP help files accessed when you press the F1 key ________.LTR files that contain the text portions of bills ________.DAT miscellaneous minor data files INTRODUCTION 8 BillPower considers each matter handled by the firm to be a "case", unless you customize the program to use another term, such as "project" (see the CUSTOMIZING THE PROGRAM section below). If you do select another term, you'll have to mentally translate these instruc- tions wherever the term "case" appears. Each case will be assigned a Case Name, a Case Number and a "Mas- terRcrd" Number. The Case Name is simply a convenient name by which you can recognize the case, such as "Smith Project" or "State v. Wil- liams". The Case Number is used by the program to locate the case re- cord in the computer's data files. It may be in the same format as that used by your firm to manually file the paperwork pertaining to that case. The MasterRcrd Number is used to link up to 500 subordin- ate case records to their master record. Each case is subordinate to its master. If a case is indepen- dent (that is, not subordinate to another), then it is its OWN mas- ter, and its Case Number and MasterRcrd Number will be the same. If, however, it is subordinate to another, then the other's Case Number will be the subordinate's MasterRcrd Number. For example, if case number 2 were subordinate to case number 1, then case 2's MasterRcrd Number would be "1" (case 1, being its own master, would also be as- signed MasterRcrd Number 1). When would you want to subordinate one case to another? Assume that you and Mr. Smith had a retainer agreement whereby he would pay you $150 per month for any services he needed from you at any time. You might set up a case record with the Case Name, "Smith Retainer" and the Case Number, "SMITJO1". If Mr. Smith subsequently asked you to help him with a building contract, you might do one of two things. One would be to charge the time you spend working on the contract to the "Smith Retainer" (SMITJO1) case. The other would be to establish a separate case record, perhaps named "Smith Contract" and possibly numbered "SMITJO2". If you wanted to make sure that both Mr. Smith's cases were linked for easy subse- quent identification, you would assign to the new SMITJO2 case the MasterRcrd Number, "SMITJO1". A graphic representation of this mas- ter-subordinate relationship follows: MASTER SUBORDINATES Case #: SmitJo1 Case Name: Smith Retainer Case #: SmitJo1 MasterRcrd #: SmitJo1 Case Name: Smith Retainer MasterRcrd #: SmitJo1 Case #: SmitJo2 Case Name: Smith Contract MasterRcrd #: SmitJo1 INTRODUCTION 9 As can be seen, the SMITJO1 case is its own master, and it also acts as a master for the SMITJO2 case. In the future, whenever you want to look through ALL of Mr. Smith's cases, it will be easy, because they all have the same MasterRcrd Number. MasterRcrd Numbers LINK several cases together for future reference. Now, on to a related matter. Unlike some other programs, Bill- Power does not require you to set up a separate "client record" before you open any case (or "matter") records for the client. Each Bill- Power case record contains both matter AND client information. Hence, if you have a client for whom you do not expect to be handling more than one matter, you need open only ONE record (a case record) for him, rather than TWO (a client record and a matter record). If, sub- sequent to your having opened that single record for him, the client comes to you with more work, you may either: 1) do that additional work under the same case already opened, or 2) set up another case for him. If you do the latter, you may, though you do not HAVE to, link the two cases by making the first record the second's MasterRcrd. Though BillPower does not REQUIRE you to do so, you may set up something comparable to a separate "client record" for each client before opening actual cases for him. To do so, you would actually set up a "case" record for the client and use it as a MasterRcrd for the several matters that you handle for him. After all, a "client record" does nothing more than link several cases together under one client, and a BillPower MasterRcrd can serve the same function. You would tell BillPower that this record is intended to serve as a simple cli- ent record by beginning its "case" name with an asterisk. An example of a "client" record follows: MASTER SUBORDINATES Case #: SmitJo1 Case Name: Smith Retainer Case #: SmitJo MasterRcrd #: SmitJo Case Name: *John Smith Cases MasterRcrd #: SmitJo Case #: SmitJo2 Case Name: Smith Contract MasterRcrd #: SmitJo In the above example, the SMITJO record is a "client" record, which contains only the client's name, address, salutation, bil- ling interval, responsible employee and a "case" name beginning with an asterisk (any other information filled in will be disregarded by BillPower, since this is only a "client", not a real "case", record). A FEW DEFINITIONS AND INSTRUCTIONS Monitor Contrast INTRODUCTION 10 Make sure your monitor's contrast is set so that the screen can display different shades. If it's not set properly, BillPower's instructions will occasionally seem confusing. Keyboard Entries Using BillPower requires you to make data entries at your compu- ter keyboard. When you are asked to `enter' something, you should type in the response at the keyboard and then finish your entry by pressing RET (the Return or Enter key). `Enter', therefore, implies that you will complete your entry with a RET. If you are asked merely to `press' a key, you should not press RET after you have pressed the appropriate key. `Press' means that you need make only one keystroke; 'enter' implies that more that one keystroke is permissible, since all entries must end with RET. Control Characters On-screen instructions will frequently instruct you to press con- trol characters. A control character is represented graphically as a letter preceded by an up caret (eg: ^A or ^H). If you are instructed to press a control character, you must hold the Ctrl key down, while simultaneously pressing the appropriate letter key. For example, to press ^O, hold down the Ctrl key and tap the "O" (or "o") key. Do not actually press the up caret key; the up carrot is used merely as a graphic representation of the control key. Entering Numbers When prices or other monetary figures are entered, never enter a dollar sign, comma or any symbol other than a minus sign. If, for instance, a price were $9,999.95, you would enter only "9999.95", not "$9999.95" or "9,999.95". Numbers may usually be up to eight charac- ters in length, including the decimal point's position, if there is one. Entering something other than a number when only a number is called for will result in an entry different from what you intend. Pausing and Aborting When you find the computer in the middle of some lengthy proce- dure, such as printing a report, and you want to pause, press the space bar. Doing so will cause the process to stop until you press the space bar again. This use of the space bar will not work in all of the program's operational modes, but it will in most. Pressing the space bar will often take a few seconds to have an effect, so be pa- tient. If, instead of wishing that the computer pause in the middle of a INTRODUCTION 11 procedure, you prefer to abort that procedure altogether, press ESC (the Escape key). As with the space bar, this key may not work in all parts of the program, and it may take a few seconds to have effect. Printer Toggling and Writing Reports to a Disk File Whenever you are about to have a report printed on the screen, and you would prefer that it be printed on your printer, press ALT-P (that is, hold down the ALT key and tap "P") just before the report preparation begins. ALT-P is the printing toggle, and it turns the flow of data to the printer on and off. You may alternatively send the data to a disk file, instead of the printer, by pressing ALT-F (in place of ALT-P). The file created or appended, named "TEXT.MX", may then be modified with most any text editor capable of handling indus- try-standard ASCII characters. Writing reports to the disk is useful if you need to make unusual changes. And you may wish to occasionally write a bill to the disk, so that you can modify it with your word processor before having it printed. Message Line The last line on the display screen will nearly always have a message for you. If you are ever unclear about what you are supposed to do next, look at the message line, which will be printed in reverse video. If the intent of the message is not clear, you might find an explanation of it in the MESSAGES section of these instructions. On-Line Help Any time you want help, the best place to look for it is in this documentation. However, you may find just the tidbit of information you require if you press the F1 key. Accounts Certain accounts are opened and maintained automatically by Bill- Power. These are each case's balance due and aged receivable ac- counts. In order to see one of these accounts' status, you need sim- ply (E)dit/Examine the appropriate case's record, as explained in the CASE module section. Some accounts, however, will NOT be automatically opened by the program. You will have open them, yourself, in the GENERAL LEDGER module. These discretionary accounts may include case retainer and trust accounts, as well as escrow, checking, and ANY other type of account you can think of. BillPower will track up to 4000 such ac- counts. INTRODUCTION 12 The EDIT Program There are a few files which will need to be created or modified by BillPower's text editor, EDIT, before you can realize the full pot- ential of the program. For instance, you will certainly want to cus- tomize the return address file, so that your correct return address will be reflected on bills prepared by BillPower. You will have to set up these files only once, unless you wish to subsequently modify them. EDIT manipulates simple industry-standard ASCII code. An extra facility is the ability to embed printer codes in the text prepared with EDIT. If, for instance, you want your printer to switch to let- ter-quality mode when it prepares bills, you could place the appro- priate printer code (available in your printer's manual) at the top of the return address file. To embed any control character (such as the escape character), press ^P first. For instance, to embed "esc N", actually enter "^P esc N". You may access EDIT from BillPower's MAIN MENU by pressing ^E. Incidentally, you may also access it directly from the DOS prompt by entering "EDIT". Deciding which module to use Use of BillPower requires your understanding its basic modular organization. Each choice in the MAIN MENU corresponds to a different module. There is a SERVICE/FEE module, a BILLS module, a DISBURSE- MENTS module, and so on. Whenever you want to do ANYTHING in this program, you should go to the module whose subject matter most prob- ably encompasses what you want to do. For instance, to run a report showing all your services performed during any period, you would go to the SERVICES/FEES module, not to the BILLS module or CASES module. There may be times when your first guess as to the proper module is incorrect. In that case, take a second guess, and you'll be right. It is important that you clearly distinguish among the concepts of a disbursement, a receipt, and a service/fee. If you do not un- derstand the differences among them, you will make entries into the wrong modules. A service is an amount of WORK performed for a client. A fee is an amount charged to the client for services performed. Both services and fees are entered in BillPower's SERVICE/FEE module. A disbursement is an amount ADVANCED or PAID BY YOU for some- thing. It must be entered in the DISBURSEMENTS module. If, for in- stance, you have paid court costs of $55, this expenditure is a dis- bursement. Do not enter it on a time slip in the SERVICE/FEE module. INTRODUCTION 13 A receipt is a sum of money PAID TO YOU. It is not a disburse- ment (which is a sum paid BY you). BillPower considers receipts to be income, not expenses. Do not enter into the RECEIPTS module any items purchased by you, since these purchases are properly entered into the DISBURSEMENTS module. Receipts are often a source of confusion. Remember that they are money PAID TO YOU, that is, money that you intend to put into YOUR coffers. Money given to you in trust is NOT a receipt. If a client gives you $100 and you intend to put it into trust for him, DO NOT enter it as a receipt. That $100 should be registered with BillPower in the GENERAL LEDGER module, where you can follow trusts, escrows, retainers, and other types of accounts. That $100 is not meant to be a present payment to you for past or future services; rather, it is meant to be placed into trust for the client (in the GENERAL LEDGER module). At some future time, you might withdraw part or all of it from the trust account as a payment to you, but, until that time, it is not a RECEIPT; it is merely money given to you in trust. Remember, money given to you is a RECEIPT only if it is going directly into YOUR pocket. Likewise, a disbursement is money paid by YOU, from YOUR FIRM's accounts, not from a trust account. DO NOT enter as a disbursement any payment from a trust account. Remember, it is not a disbursement unless it comes from your firm's own funds. Money taken out of a trust account is NOT a disbursement, as BillPower understands the term -- it is simply a withdrawal of money from an account, to be handled in the GENERAL LEDGER module, not the DISBURSEMENTS module. Do not read further until you understand the discussion, so far. Sometimes, the item you wish to enter does not seem to fit well into the main categories of services/fees, disbursements, and re- ceipts. For instance, an established client's current (at the time you first enter his data into BillPower's files) balance is not strict- ly a "fee", since it does not apply to a specific single event or transaction. Nevertheless, it must be entered somewhere. The AD- JUSTMENTS module exists for the purpose of adjusting client bills for things that do not seem to fit well into the categories discussed above. If, for instance, you wished to decrease the amount due re- flected on a bill, you would probably wish to register an adjustment in the form of a write-off. Obtaining Reports In order to obtain a report, you will have to go to the approp- riate module and request a (H)unt through that module's records (Hunt- ing will be explained in later sections). The records found in the hunts may be displayed on screen or on your printer (ALT-P toggles the printer, remember?). INTRODUCTION 14 Which module contains the report you want? Just ask yourself what the report concerns. If it concerns services performed, fees charged or hours worked, then you should go to the SERVICE/FEE module. If it concerns money received, go to the RECEIPTS module. For a re- port on money paid out by the firm, the DISBURSEMENTS module is appro- priate. The GENERAL LEDGER module will give you a report about ac- counts and their balances, while the ADJUSTMENTS module will report on write-offs and other adjustments. If you are looking for general in- formation about cases, such as a case's balance, try the CASE module (which contains data for each case that would typically be kept on the "cover sheet" for that case's file folder). Omitting Records Records may be physically omitted from any of the Case, and Ac- counts files when such records are no longer needed. The process in- volves two steps: first, "tagging" a record for omission in the Edit mode by pressing ^O; and second, actually omitting all the records in the file which have been tagged. Though a record may not be physically omitted from the transac- tions (Services/Fees/Disbursements/Receipts/Adjustments) file, ^O (pressed while the record is being edited) will cancel its EFFECTS, just the same. In these files, ^O does not "tag" a file for future omission; it simply deletes all the data on the affected record, thereby canceling its effect. The record will still physically exist after it is "omitted", but it will be empty and will have no effect. Tricking BillPower WARNING! When BillPower asks for some information, NEVER, NEVER try to manipulate it by giving false data. Doing so will almost certainly cause errors resulting from BillPower's reliance upon your input. Never, for instance, succumb to the temptation to tell BillPower that today is any date other than today's real date. There is no way you can anticipate all that BillPower will do with the false data you may give it. Moving BillPower to a new Computer BillPower intimately binds itself to the data base you create on your computer. Therefore, if you wish to move BillPower to a computer other than the one on which it is presently being used, be sure to transfer ALL the files contained in the MANAGEX sub-directory to the new computer. Also and make sure that the new computer's MANAGEX dir- ectory is on the drive whose designation (eg: C, D, or E) is the same INTRODUCTION 15 as the old computer's. INTRODUCTION 16 SETTING UP LOADING BILLPOWER The first thing you must do to get BillPower into operation is to make sure that all the files found on the distribution disks are put into the ManageX subdirectory of your hard disk. When you've done that, you will be ready for the next few para- graphs' CAUTION. Remember that disk data is easily corrupted or des- troyed. Therefore, you should be aware of the need to make backup copies of your data on a daily basis. Integra recommends that you keep at least two separate sets of backup disks for your data. Label the disks in one set "odd" and the other "even". On odd dates, use the "odd" disks for backups, and on even dates use the "even" ones. In this way, even in the event that one of your backups sets fails, you will still have the other contain- ing data no more than two or three working days old. You should also have another set that you use for weekly backups and yet another for monthly backups. Note that, as your data base grows over time, you will have to add more backup disks. When you start out, you'll probably need only one disk in each of your ODD and EVEN sets. But, as time goes by, you may end up with as many as three or four backups per set. If your data base grows beyond that, you may decide to erase some files from the hard disk. NOTE: Before you erase ANY records, you should re-label your most recent set of backup disks as "archives", to be stored perpetually. You should indicate on them the months whose data they contain. Then, start a new set of backups (to take the place of the ones converted to archive use). Bac- kup disks are to be used regularly. Archives are to be stored permanently, so that, if ever needed, you will be able to retrieve data long ago deleted from the hard disk, and no longer being backed up on the backups. NEVER, NEVER erase any data files until you have first designated your most recent backups disks as archive disks. They must not take the place of archives made earlier; rather, they should be ADDED TO your archive collection. CUSTOMIZING THE PROGRAM Now that all the BillPower files are located on the ManageX sub- directory, you should move to that subdirectory to use the program. To start the program, enter "bp" (or "bp mr" for memory-resident ser- SETTING UP 17 vice) at the keyboard. NOTE: You must be sure that you are in the hard disk ManageX subdirectory. FOR USERS FAMILIAR WITH DOS: If you wish to access BillPower from a batch file lo- cated in another subdirectory, you must put BP.BAT into that other subdirectory and erase it from the ManageX sub- directory. Use EDIT to modify the subdirectory refer- ences at the top and bottom of the BP.BAT file. Do not change BP.BAT's name, and make sure that the subdirectory that contains it is in the DOS path. NEVER rename BP.BAT (BillPower must always be entered from a batch file called "BP.BAT"), and make no modifications other than to change its references to subdirectories at the top and bottom of the file. If this is your first use of the program, one of the first screens that appears will contain a series of prompts whose purpose is to find out how your computer system is configured and how you want BillPower to work for you. Period during which no interest will be charged This figure is the number of days after a bill is sent that you will allow a client as a grace period before interest is charged. If you don't intend to charge interest, this figure is irrelevant, and you may ignore the prompt by simply pressing RET. As you set up each case's record, you will have the opportunity to enter a monthly rate at which interest will be charged the client (if no interest is to be charged, you may just enter "0" at that time). When that case's monthly bills are prepared, interest will be charged at that rate for all sums from the previous bill which have still not been paid. HOWEVER, no interest will be charged unless the number of days designated here have elapsed between the invoice date of the previous bill and the invoice date of the new bill being pre- pared. Let us say, for example, that you enter 30 interest-free days here. Let us also presume that the client's balance due on the last bill is $100 and that he has paid only $50 since that bill was sent. You are now preparing the next month's bill. If only 30 days have elapsed between the last bill's invoice date and this one's, no in- terest will be charged on the $50 still owed from last month. If, however, at least 31 days have elapsed, the interest will be charged on the basis of the following calculation: SETTING UP 18 $ 50.00 (still owed) x interest rate for that case x number of months entered between the last bill's and this new one's statement dates. ------------ = interest Lines printed per page on printer Most printers are pre-set for 66 rows, unless you change their default settings. BillPower also assumes a default value of 66, unless you change that assumption here. If you are using standard letter- sized paper, and if your printer uses a spacing of 6 lines to the inch, you do not need to change this value. If you have a laser printer, you should enter "LASER" at this item. Doing so will tell BillPower that your printer will handle all the line counting, itself. Lines from paper top to letterhead bottom If you will not be using letterhead paper, skip this item. If, however, BillPower will be printing statements onto private letterhead paper, it must know how far down the page to begin printing. Measure the distance from the top of the page to the bottom of the letterhead as accurately as possible. Then enter the number of lines (at 6 lines to the inch) that can be printed in that space. For instance, if the distance were 2.2 inches, you would enter "13" (for "13 lines"). Printer Initialization Code You may need to refer to your printer's manual for this data, which is NOT essential for using BillPower. Therefore, if you're new to computing, you may want to skip this item for now (by pressing RET), and come back at some later date (after you've had more exper- ience with your computer and printer). You will almost certainly want reports prepared on your printer to be centered. However, some printers are incapable of centering paper on the platen. If you have one of these printers, it must be sent a special code to make it begin printing each line further to the right than usual. BillPower will send this code if you will tell it here exactly what the code your specific printer expects for a Left Margin change. You might also change fonts (to, perhaps, Elite) by sending a code. SETTING UP 19 Your printer's manual contains the proper code instructions. Make sure that the code you supply is a DECIMAL code, not a HEXADECI- MAL code. Fifteen spaces allows you to enter five 3-digit numbers in sequence. Make sure that each number constituting the code is rep- resented as a 3-digit decimal (eg: 52 should be entered as "052", and 1 should be entered as "001"). The code you enter need not actually fill fifteen spaces if few- er are needed. Assume, for instance, that you have an Epson printer and that you need to move the margin to the right 4 spaces. To do so, you must enter nine digits: "027108052". The "027" translates to the ESC key; "108" translates to "l"; and "052" means a 4-space mar- gin ("053" would be a 5-space margin). Incidentally, what has been described above will probably work just fine for reports. But a mere five decimal codes may not be enough for the potentially elaborate printer formatting you may want to do for bills. To further customize your printing for bills, use EDIT to embed printer control codes at the top of the return address file (M- RETADD.LTR). To do so, you have to enter the actual characters, NOT decimal codes, needed to change the printer's characteristics. If you want to enter a control character, press ^P first. When you press ^P, nothing will appear on the screen, but EDIT will be primed to assume that the NEXT key pressed is a control key combination. Assume, for instance, that you need to embed "ESC Q" in the file. To do so, you would actually enter "^P ESC Q", not just "ESC Q". Note that the ESC key an other control characters may appear as peculiar symbols on your display. You may intersperse different printer format codes at different places in your return address file in order to achieve a variety of fonts on the same bill. You may also place codes into the bill open- ing and closing paragraph files, as well as in each signature block file. The RETADD file will let you do fancy things with bills, but what if you also need more than five decimal codes for non-bill reports? Just use EDIT to create a file called PRNTINIT. If that file exists when you load BillPower, the contents on its first line will over-ride whatever you enter into the Printer Initialization Code section of this CUSTOMIZING routine. What do you enter into PRNTINIT? A single line containing a string of the same kind of printer control codes described above in the discussion of the RETADD file. As you can see, BillPower offers you an enormous range of printer formatting flexibility. But you must know how to use your printer's codes in order to tap into this power. SETTING UP 20 Indent used for client addresses on bills BillPower will normally print a bill's client address at the left margin (column 0). If your paper is centered in the printer when bills are prepared, this positioning should allow the address to show through the window in a standard envelope. If, however, you wish to move the address to the right, you may designate another column. It is recommended that you leave this figure zero until you attempt to prepare bills and determine that you need to change it. To change this indent (or any of these other setup items) at a later date, you need simply select the (^C)ustomize option from the MAIN MENU. Account automatically adjusted for disbursements and receipts Your entry for this item will have effect only if you're using BillPower Plus. BillPower Plus offers simple integrated accounting functions. One way this can be achieved is to allow you to designate the account you want affected whenever you spend or receive money. If you've opened that account with BillPower, the program will automatically withdraw the amount of any disbursement you make from that account, saving you the time of making a separate account-adjusting entry. Likewise, whenever you make a receipt, a deposit to the designated account will automatically occur. Assume that you always want your checking account to be adjusted for disbursements and receipts, and that you have opened such an ac- count in the General Ledger module, assigning it the account number, "CHECK". If you enter "CHECK" at the cursor here, the CHECK account will be the one adjusted for disbursements and receipts. Of course, you should insure that you have previously opened the CHECK account in the General Ledger module. If you make an entry here, every time you enter a receipt or dis- bursement, you'll be afforded the opportunity to enter up to two ac- counts to be automatically adjusted. One of these account will al- ready be filled in (with "CHECK", for example), leaving you one more to enter if you are interested in making a "double entry" to keep your books balanced. If you make NO entry here, you will not be given the chance to enter any account information when you make a receipt or disbursement record. If you like the idea of having the automated double entry option available when you enter disbursements or receipts, but don't want the same account (eg: CHECK) every time, you should enter "NUL" here. "NUL" tells BillPower that you want to make use of the program's doub- SETTING UP 21 le entry facilities, but don't want the SAME account adjusted for ALL disbursements and receipts. See the GENERAL LEDGER section for more details. Minimum time charged on Time Slips If your firm charges clients for a minimum amount of time when- ever work is done in their behalf, enter the number of minutes here. For instance, if you always charge clients for at least a quarter- hour of work whenever you speak to them on the phone or handle any matter for them, you should enter "15" here (a quarter-hour is fif- teen minutes). If you don't have a minimum time that you charge clients, just leave this item as zero. Of course, the entry made here will affect only cases that are to be charged by the hour, not contingency, fixed fee, or monthly retainer cases. Screen Colors You'll see this prompt only if you have a color video board. Press "M", "S", or "B" until the color combination you want appears. Employees and their charge rates Three timekeepers are allowed in BillPower, while BillPower Plus allows fifteen. For each one, you may enter his/her initials and up to 6 hourly rates, which the program will use to compute client charges. Tax on services There is another item you may customize, but it's needed so rare- ly that it's not shown on the CUSTOMIZING screen. This item is a tax on services. If services in your area are taxed, you will want BillPower to automatically compute the tax for you when it prepares bills. To tell BillPower what your local tax on services is, exit the program at your earliest convenience. Then, re-enter it by typing at the DOS prompt, "BILLPOWR x ?.???", where "?.???" is your local tax rate, expressed as a percentage (eg: if your local tax on services is 5.125%, enter "BILLPOWR x 5.215"). You need do this only once; from then, on, Bill- Power should be loaded with the command, "BP" (or "BP MR" for memory- resident service). Note, however, that only those cases to billed "Periodically" will have taxes computed when their bills are prepared. Classifying cases as either "Periodic" or "Occasional" will be dis- cussed in the CASE MODULE section of this documentation. SETTING UP 22 Using a term other than "case" If you wish to substitute another term for "case", you'll need to alter the BP.BAT file with EDIT.EXE (Ctrl-E from the Main Menu). Find the line that says "billpowr" and change it to "billpowr x x x Project", "billpowr x x x Job", or "billpowr x x x File", depending upon which term you wish to take the place of "case". Using 24-hr time and non-dollar monetary symbols BillPower normally uses 12-hr time whenever you enter a timeslip. If you would prefer to use 24-hr time, you'll need to alter the BP.BAT file (see "Using a term other than 'case'", above). The 11th param- eter on the "billpowr" line should be "24hr". Example: "billpowr x x x File x x x x x x 24hr" To use a monetary symbol other than the dollar sign, the 1st parameter should be the three-digit decimal code that your computer recognizes for the desired symbol. If, for instance, you wish to use the letter "R" (ASCII decimal code 082), the "billpowr" line might read, "billpowr 082 x x x x x x x x x 24hr" Using BillPower with desqVIEW Finally, if you use desqVIEW, you should add a line at the bottom of the BP.BAT file, saying "EXIT" Wrapping up the Installation You will next be asked whether you need to change any of the information you have just entered. If you press "Y", you will be taken back to the first prompt to start over again. If you press "N", you will be asked to confirm today's date. If the date dis- played is correct, just press RET. If the date is wrong, you may use the cursor control keys to highlight the proper date and then press RET. NOTE: BillPower is designed to be used on a regular basis. If you indicate that today is a date much different from the last date that the program was used, BillPower will assume that you have made a mistake. The program won't believe you of you tell it that today is 28 or more days later than the date on which it was last used; nor will it accept that today is in a month prior to the month in which it was last used. Thanks to this date checking, SETTING UP 23 you're not likely to make gross errors in entering dates. In addition to using the cursor control keys to enter highlight dates on the pop-up calendar, you may also enter them manually. One of three formats must be used. For an example of each, assume that today is December 1, 1989. You could enter it as "1 DEC 89", "12/01/89", or "120189". Here it should be noted that there are many places in the program where you will be asked to enter a "Mon Yr" (translation: month and year). When you come to such a place, simply enter the first three characters of the month, then enter a space, and finally enter the last two digits of the year. For example, December 1989's "Mon Yr" is "Dec 89". OPENING THE DATA FILES After you have entered the date, BillPower will double-check it and then begin confirming the existence of data files. If this is your first use of BillPower, no data files will exist yet, so you will be asked whether you want to create them. The specific prompt ap- pearing on the screen will be, "[month] files do not exist -- create them?" Answer Yes by pressing "Y", unless, for some reason you do NOT want to create new files for the month. Next, a message will appear, asking, "Do you want to erase any old data from the hard disk?" This message will appear only during each month's FIRST USE of BillPower. Keeping some old files may be useful for referencing data from previous months, but how many old files you preserve depends upon how much hard disk space you are wil- ling to devote to BillPower, and how much you need for other uses. It is recommended that you keep a minimum of a year's-worth of data on the hard disk. If this is your first use of BillPower, there are no old files, and you may, therefore, answer the question by pressing the "N" key (for "No, I do not want to..."). But before you do, please read on, so that you will gain an understanding of what to do when you reach this point in the coming months. Setting up files for a new month Some files used by BillPower keep track of perpetual information which must be consistent from month to month. These perpetual files will be automatically updated by BillPower at the appropriate times. Other files, however, are month-specific. These specialized files will be created "from scratch" each month, and they'll hold that month's services, disbursements, receipts, adjustments and notes. They all have names beginning with the name of the month to which they apply. SETTING UP 24 If you want to clear up some hard disk space by erasing old monthly files, and if you have not already taken care of that matter, press "Y" when asked whether you want to erase some old data. Make sure, however, that you have floppy archive copies of the files about to be erased. You never know when you may need to retrieve some old data which has been deleted from the hard disk. If you have not made the archives AND prepared ALL bills which will draw upon data compiled during the months you are considering deleting, you should NOT delete those months' files. After BillPower has erased whatever files you specified (if any), it will create this month's new files and take you to the MAIN MENU. SETTING UP 25 MAIN MENU The MAIN MENU reflects the structure of the program. Look at it closely. The message at the bottom requests that you press one of the letters in parentheses. If you wish deal with a case (or job/project) simply press "C" to go to the CASE module. Once there, you will be presented with a similar CASE MENU. The menu in each module is simi- lar to those in all the others. To manipulate information within data records, press the appro- priate key indicated in parentheses. For instance, to go to the (R)eceipt file to enter, change, or otherwise manipulate information within one of its records, you would press "R". To enter or manipu- late a (N)ote, press "N". Bills and most of the "enter/manipulate" options shown in the center of the screen have separate sections of these instructions devoted to them; the remaining options are dis- cussed below. UTILIZE UTILITIES This option takes you to the UTILITIES module, where you can do several useful things, such as erasing files and and sorting trans- actions chronologically. Please see the UTILITIES MODULE section for details. CUSTOMIZE THE PROGRAM This option allows you to alter the parameters (such as the text color) you established when you initially entered the program. See the CUSTOMIZING THE PROGRAM section (above) for details. EDIT TEXT FILES This option will take you directly into the EDIT program. There, you can alter many files, including those used for the opening and closing paragraphs on bills, signature blocks, your income-expense categories, your chart of accounts, and your return address. ESC from BILLPOWER This option allows you to exit the program. Upon leaving Bill- Power, you'll be asked whether you wish to copy your data files. You should almost ALWAYS answer affirmatively. Never fail to heed a hint to backup your files. If you do elect to copy your files, you will be taken through a routine similar to that experienced if you were to select the "(B)acking up files" option in the UTILITIES module. See the UTILITIES MODULE section for details. MAIN MENU 26 CASE MODULE In the CASE module, you will manipulate case/client records. You should regard a case/client record as merely a descriptive cover sheet that would go into each case's file folder. This record (or cover sheet) can be inspected at any time to get a quick overview of the case's current status in such areas as its balance due and its aged receivables. Remember that, anytime you want information on bal- ances due or receivables, you should come to the CASE module. MAKE A NEW RECORD If you press "M", you will be asked to give BillPower a Case Num- ber for the new case. After you enter it, you will be taken into the Edit mode, where you can fill in other information pertaining to that case. NOTE: Though you may use ANY case numbering scheme you like, you are strongly encouraged to use one in which the case name consists of the first 4 or 5 letters of the client's last name and the first 2 or 3 letters of his fist name (eg: John Smith's first case would be "SMITJO1". Doing so will make case numbers easier to remember and will also make certain searches for case information proceed more a little more quickly than if you were to use another scheme. The Edit mode's screen displays some information which you cannot change, such as the case's balance. Since the balance is automati- cally updated as each service/fee, disbursement, and receipt entry is made, you may not alter it here. If, for some reason, you want to change this case's total amount due your firm, you must select the "(A)djustment" option in the MAIN MENU. The reason that you are not allowed to make this change directly here is that, if you did so, there would be no permanent record of the change and its reason. Forcing you to make an Adjustment will result in the filing of such a record. For similar reasons, you are also prevented from changing the receivables displayed. Note that one of the items reported is "CrntDue", which represents the amount still due on the last bill that you sent the client, minus any payments that have been received since then. "CrntDue" may well differ from the "Balance" figure, which in- cludes not just the amount due on the last bill, but also ALL the transactions since then (including services/fees, disbursements, re- ceipts, and adjustments). MasterRcrd Number You will note that this number has already been assigned. It is CASE MODULE 27 always initially presumed that a case's master is that case, itself. If you wish to change it, just use the cursor control and delete keys to do so. Once the new masterRcrd number has been entered, BillPower will search for that case to confirm its existence. If it cannot find the masterRcrd, it will tell you so. If it does find the mas- terRcrd, certain common information will be transferred from that case to the new one you are now creating. A subordinate case MUST NOT be entered into the file before the master to which it refers. A masterRcrd must always have been en- tered into the case file BEFORE its subordinates. The reason many professionals prefer to put all matters under a single "master" case is that they want the bills sent to their cli- ents to be completely consolidated. If you have a master with sev- eral subordinates, the bill sent to your client will actually consist of a separate bill for each subordinate case and a summary sheet con- taining the total amount due for all the cases. You may believe that some of your clients will be confused by receiving multiple bills, especially if, as far as they're concerned, all the matters handled by one firm should appear on one consolidated bill, rather than sep- arate bills arriving in the same envelope. Before you begin any cases for a client, you should consider his nature and decide whether you may ultimately need to set up several subordinates under one master, or whether all the work you do for him is appropriate for one case's record. If you are unsure how to pro- ceed, just set up ONE case for him now. Then, if, in the future, you decide that you need to open a case subordinate to the one you orig- inally opened for him, you may do so simply by designating the orig- inal case as the new case's master. However, you may not subsequent- ly open a new case and call it the original's master, since, as men- tioned above, master records must be opened with BillPower BEFORE any of their subordinates. Area of Business Next you will come to the "Area of Business". This must be a number between 1 and 999 corresponding to the business category which most closely describes this particular case's subject matter. You are free to define your category numbers, using any scheme that you wish. BillPower uses these numbers during its hunt routine to search for all cases dealing with similar subjects (if you select the "Area of Busi- ness" Hunt Gates in the Hunt mode). By running such a hunt, you can find, among other things, which areas of business bring in the most money and which areas your firm seems to be concentrating upon. If you do not know the area of business or its number, and if you would like some help, press the help key, F1. You will be shown the contents of the M-LBAREA.DAT file, which contains a listing of all the business categories and their corresponding numbers. When you find CASE MODULE 28 the area that fits this case, enter its number and proceed to the next item. See the CATEGORIES, AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM section for instructions on how to change M-LBAREA.DAT's contents. Charging Disbursements "Chrg Dsbrs" is the next item. BillPower initially assumes that you will always charge your clients for each disbursement. When YES appears next to the 'Chrg Dsbrs' item, this assumption will be fol- lowed for this case. If you wish to alter this assumption for this case, press "N" (for NO). If 'Chrg Dsbrs' is NO, no disbursements made for this case will be included on the client's bills, unless, at the time each disbursement is actually entered into the computer, the amount entry is completed with ^C (for CHARGE) instead of the usual RET. If 'Chrg Dsbrs' is YES, all disbursements made for this case WILL be included on the client's bills, unless, at the time each dis- bursement is entered, the amount entry is completed with ^N (for NO charge) instead of the usual RET. Responsible and Originating Employees The "Responsible Employee" is the employee who is chiefly respon- sible for the case. "Orig" is the originating employee. Here, you should enter the ID of the employee who brought the case into the firm. Opening and Closing Dates The date this case is "Opened" is automatically entered by the computer, but you may change it if you need to. When the case is closed, this item is titled, "Closed", and the date shown is that on which the case was closed. See the "Closing and Opening a Case" sec- tion, below. Case Name, Client Name, etc. The "Case Name" is the next item to fill in. Give the case some descriptive name (or "style") and enter it here. Make sure that the Case Name is a presentable one, since it will appear on all bills prepared by BillPower. Do not skip this item. Each case MUST have a case name, a case number and a masterRcrd number. If this record is intended to serve merely as a "client" record, used merely to link other subordinate cases, begin the case name with an asterisk, "*" (eg: "*Smith Matters"). .cp 3 The client's name should be entered with the last name first, followed by a comma, a space, and the rest of the name. For instance, CASE MODULE 29 Mr. & Mrs. John A. Smith should be entered as "Smith, Mr. & Mrs. John A." Remember, LAST names should always be entered first, except in the case of a client which is not a person (eg: IBM Corp), in which case the first name entered should be the name upon which you want to index the case. For instance, The Hartford Group should be entered as "Hartford Group" so that the indexing name is `Hartford', not `The'. The program will index cases by the first initial of the cli- ent's last name. At certain points in the program, you will be able to find some information very quickly if you enter this initial and then press the help key, F1. Remember, the program assumes that the first name entered is the client's last name, and it is with that name's first initial that the indexing is done. Miscellaneous Information You may enter up to four lines of miscellaneous information. This facility is very useful, since you may enter ANYTHING you wish, such as the court, judge, and opposing counsel. At any future time, you may conduct a (H)unt to find all the cases that contain certain miscellaneous data. If, for instance, you included in this Miscellan- eous section a West reference key number, you could later find all your cases that fall into that key number classification. Be as brief as you can here, so that you will have room to fill in lots of data on these four lines. Use abbreviations (eg: "OC:" for "Opposing Coun- sel:", or "WK:" for "West Key Number:" ), and be consistent in your entries from case to case. At various times in the life of a case, you may enter "markers" into the Miscellaneous sections. For instance, if some cases are turned over to a collection agency, you could "mark" each's Miscel- laneous section with some notation, such as "(Clctn)". Then, when- ever you wanted to find ALL such cases quickly, you could conduct a (H)unt for all the cases whose Miscellaneous sections contain the character sequence, "(Clctn)". If you begin the first line with a plus sign ("+"), the top two miscellaneous lines will be included on this case's bills, just below the case number and case name. This feature is useful if, for in- stance, you do lots of work for an insurance company which requires all bills submitted to contain such things as the accident date and claim number (there's more on this in the BILLS section of these in- structions). Beginning the first line with a plus will cause this case's bills to include the first two lines of miscellaneous data. If there are portions of the first two lines that you do NOT want to appear on bills, enclose those portions inside curly brackets, "{" and "}". CASE MODULE 30 Billing Format and Interval The "Billing Format" you wish to use for this case may be any of seven basic choices, ranging from 2 (the format disclosing the least information to the client), through 6 (the most explicit), to 8. Formats 0 and 1 also exist to automatically provide an asterisk at the beginning of certain Description entries, but they are subjects reserved for discussion later. All the formats are similar to one another, though some provide information lacking in others. Each of the formats includes a salutation and signature block, unless you enter a minus after the format number. For example, format "6-" is identical to format "6", except that it does not include a salutation or signature. There's more on this subject in the BILLS section, and examples of the various formats may be found in the Appendix. The "Intvl" is the billing interval, in months. Here, you should enter the number of months between the bills your firm will send out for the case. The number must be from 1 to 6. As examples, you should enter "1" for monthly, "3" for quarterly, and "6" for semiannual, billing. Salutation If you want a salutation (eg: "Dear Mr. Smith:") to appear on this client's bills, enter it here. Methods of Charging Your Clients The "TmKeepr Rate Level" is the hourly rate level (1 to 6) at which you wish this case to be charged to the client. Pressing the F1 key at this item will cause BillPower to show you a listing of the timekeepers and their rates. The timekeepers and rates were discussed earlier in the CUSTOMIZING THE PROGRAM section. If you have an arrangement with your client whereby he is to pay you a certain amount each month until his debt is paid, enter that amount as the "MonthlyPmnt". If the MonthlyPmnt is zero, BillPower will assume that the client is supposed to pay the whole balance shown on each bill. If the MonthlyPmnt item is greater than zero, each bill for this case will contain a statement reminding the client that he need pay no more than the MonthlyPmnt, even though it may be less than the total balance due. Also, if the MonthlyPmnt is greater than zero, BillPower will NOT calculate interest for this case, even though you specify an interest rate, as discussed below. NOTE: Don't confuse a MonthlyPmnt with a Monthly Retainer (described below). The retainer is a regular monthly pay- CASE MODULE 31 ment which is due you, whether or not the client has an outstanding balance at the time a bill is prepared. The MonthlyPmnt is due ONLY if the client has an outstanding balance. The MonthlyPmnt is a payment on a debt, while the retainer is a sum paid to you regularly in order to keep you "on the line", ready to provide services at the drop of a hat. If you want the client to be charged no more than a certain amount per hour, regardless of which employee does work on the case, enter that amount as the "Max Hourly Rate". Whenever work is done for the case, BillPower will calculate the charges based upon the least of a) the Max Hourly Rate or b) the appropriate TmKeepr Rate Level hourly rate for the employee who does the work. If you leave the Max Hourly Rate at zero, this item will be ignored when charges are calculated, and the appropriate TmKeepr Rate Level charge rate for the employee who does the work will be used. If you wish to charge the client interest for any amounts he may owe you, enter the MONTHLY interest rate as the "IntRate". Enter it as a percentage (eg: 1.5% is entered as "1.5", not as ".015"). Dur- ing the billing process, BillPower will calculate simple interest on the last bill's balance remaining unpaid for the number of days you specified when you first set up to use the program (see the CUSTOMIZ- ING THE PROGRAM section). BillPower will also write a service/fee re- cord for that interest, so that you may refer to the interest charge at a later date. That record will be entered into the service/fee file for the EARLIEST month covered by the bill. So, if the bill covers JUN 89 to AUG 89, the interest record for that bill will be put into the JUN 89 service/fee file. Note that interest added to a bill will be included in the balance forwarded upon which the next bill's interest, if any, will be calculated. Also remember that, whenever you want to stop charging interest, you need only (E)dit this case record and enter zero as the interest rate. If you want to charge a flat hourly rate for work done on the case, regardless of who does the work, enter that rate as the "Flat Hourly Rate". If a Flat Hourly Rate is used, that rate will always be used in the program's calculations for this case, no matter who does work on the case. If you wish to charge a fixed fee for this case, enter it next to the "Fixed Fee" item. If there is an entry here, no work done for this case will result in any charges, unless you use ^C to force Bill- Power to calculate a charge for that work (the SERVICES\FEES section will discuss ^C's use). In other words, if you classify this case as a fixed fee case, BillPower will charge the case nothing for services (though disbursements WILL be charged, regardless of whether the case is a fixed fee one, as long as the "Chrg Dsbrs" item above is "YES"), unless you specifically tell it to when you make the service entry. In most cases, you will probably not instruct BillPower to charge the fee until the case is completed. CASE MODULE 32 If you wish to run the case on a contingency, enter the contin- gency rate as the "Cntngnt Percentage". For example, a one-third contingency would be entered as "33.33". If the case is to be managed on a retainer, enter the "Monthly Retainer" to be charged to the client every month. As with the fixed fee and the contingency, BillPower will not charge this case for ser- vices, unless otherwise instructed at the time a service is entered. If you enter a retainer, the "Retainer Limit" on the next line will automatically be filled in (you may, of course, change it to any value you wish). The purpose of the Retainer Limit is to allow you to set a limit on the value of work provided each month under the retainer. Whenever a service or fee is provided which would cause that limit to be exceeded during any given month, a reminder will appear on the screen. You will then have the opportunity to instruct BillPower (by using ^C) to override the presumption against charging the case for that service or fee. In calculating the value of all work done on retainer cases, BillPower assumes that all services would be charged at the standard rate, Rate Level 1. The Retainer Limit has no effect upon disbursements or upon any type of transaction other than a ser- vice or fee. In other words, if you set a Retainer Limit, BillPower will keep track of only the service/fee monthly totals and will inform you only if a service/fee will cause a month's total to exceed the Retainer Limit. Note that BillPower uses the term, "retainer", to mean a recur- ring payment made to the firm each month by the client. Some firms, however, use the term to mean a fixed fee paid in advance by the cli- ent. If a case is to be charged a fixed fee (even though you may call it a "retainer"), it should be entered next to the "Fixed Fee" item, whether or not it is to be paid in advance; if it IS paid in advance, you should, as soon as possible, enter the payment in the RECEIPTS module, or, if appropriate, enter it as a trust account deposit in the GENERAL LEDGER module. If this is a retainer-type case, BillPower will automatically add the retainer to each bill prepared for the case. That way, you won't have to worry about forgetting to make a manual entry for the amount of the retainer. If you'd rather not have the retainer added to each bill automatically, place "DONT-ADD-RETAINER" onto the fourth line of the Miscellaneous section described above. NOTE: The Fixed or Contingent fee that you enter in this CASE module is merely a reminder that you intend to charge such a fee at some future date. Your entry in THIS module will not result in a charge to the client. After all, how can the program know WHEN you wish to charge the fee? When you determine that it is time for you to charge a fee of some sort, you need simply make a fee record in the SERVICES/FEES module. For instance, while you are wor- CASE MODULE 33 king on a contingent fee case, BillPower will not calculate any charges for work done (since it will have no hourly rate at which to do the figuring). When you finally win the case, take a few seconds to manually calculate the re- covery percentage due you and enter that amount as a fee in the SERVICES/FEES module. The next bill that goes out will contain that charge. If you have an agreement with your client, by which you may charge him for work that you do, but by which the total charges for services and fees may not exceed a certain amount, enter that amount as the "Total Srvc/Fee Max". Whenever a service is performed which would cause this Max to be exceeded, the program will adjust the am- ount charged for that service to something (perhaps ZERO) which will keep that client's total bill attributable to services and fees under the specified Total Srvc/Fee Max. You may, of course, override this adjustment at the time the service is entered, if you wish. This Total Srvc/Fee Max has no effect on disbursements or on any type of transaction other than a service or fee. In other words, if you set a Total Srvc/Fee Max, BillPower will keep track of only the service and fee totals and will inform you only if a service/fee will cause the total to exceed the Max. Unusual Fee Arrangements If you have a fee arrangement with your client that does not fall within any of those described above, simply enter it as a Miscellan- eous note. Make sure, however, that, if it involves an hourly fee of any sort, that fee is reflected as either the "TmKeepr Rate Level" or the "Flat Hourly Rate". If you do not do so, BillPower will not auto- matically calculate charges for work done as it is entered into the computer. If, for instance, your deal with the client were that you were to work at $40 an hour AND receive 20% of any recovery, you would enter an hourly rate of 40.00 as the Flat Hourly Rate. You would also make a Miscellaneous note to the effect that you are to receive 20% of the recovery. If you tried to enter 20% next to the "Cntngnt Percen- tage" item, the $40 hourly rate you just entered would disappear, and BillPower would not be able to automatically calculate charges at $40/hour. When the recovery were finally received, you would refer to your miscellaneous note for confirmation of the contingent percentage and manually calculate your fee, yourself. Account Information If the case involves the use of an account, such as a trust or retainer, enter the "Account" number. The balance for the account whose number you enter will be displayed to the right. Each time you make a transaction for that account (in the GENERAL LEDGER module, not here), these balances will be automatically updated. CASE MODULE 34 Please note that this account's transactions will appear on any bills you prepare for the client, unless the account number entered here is preceded by an asterisk. For instance, retainer account R- SMITJO1 should be entered as "*R-SMITJO1" if you do not want its transactions to appear on bills for the case to which that account is attached (here, for illustration, the R-SMITJO1 account is attached to the SMITJO1 case). Periodic/Occasional Billing Whenever you open a new case, you'll be expected to tell Bill- Power whether it is to be billed Periodically or Occasionally. These two methods of billing are described in the "WHAT BILLPOWER WILL DO" section of the INTRODUCTION. You'll make your choice of billing method right after pressing F6 to save a new case to disk. Or you may press the ALT-F9 key at any time while you're filling the new case's information. The currently selected billing method will be shown in the lower right corner of the screen as you press ALT-F9. After a case has been saved, you may subsequently change the billing method by editing the case and pressing ALT-F9. But a case's billing method may be changed only up to the time a first bill is prepared for the case. After that, the case's billing method is "locked in". EDIT/EXAMINE A RECORD The edit mode is useful for two things. The first is, of course, to change data pertaining to a case. The second is to simply examine that case's data. Specifying the Case to be Edited The first thing you will be asked after requesting an (E)dit is the Case Number of the case to be edited. NOTE: If you do not know it and would like some help, press F1, and you will be shown a list of all the cases on the disk. To narrow the search, you should press the FIRST letter of the client's last name just before you press F1. If you precede F1 with a letter, you will be shown only those cases whose client last names begin with that letter. If you wish to edit all cases controlled by a certain Master- Rcrd, just press RET when first asked to enter the case number. You will then be asked to enter the number of the MasterRcrd whose sub- CASE MODULE 35 cases you wish to edit. F1 will also work here as it is described in the preceding paragraph, while pressing RET or ESC will take you back to the MENU. After you enter the MasterRcrd Number, you will be pre- sented with the first case on file whose MasterRcrd Number matches the one you have entered. After you have finished with that case, you may press either F6 or ESC. F6 will cause the next case with that Master- Rcrd Number (if there is one) to appear on the screen, while ESC will abort the procedure and take you back to the MENU, without showing you any other cases. Closing & Opening a case If you wish to close or reopen the case being edited, press ^C (for "Close/Open toggle"), instead of F6. Doing so will cause Bill- Power to ask whether you really wish to use the close/open toggle. If so, press "Y", and the case will be closed (or reopened, if it had already been closed). In addition to establishing a closing date, closing a case is useful to keep it from being billed. You may occasionally have a case which you do not want to omit yet, but which you do not want to bill for a while. If so, you might consider closing it. When you're ready to bill the case again, just open it by pressing ^C while edit- ing the case record. No closed cases will be billed, unless more than nine months have elapsed since their last bills. Recent History (BillPower Plus only) While editing a case record, you may obtain a listing of the ser- vices, receipts, notes, etc., pertaining to that case. If you press ^R, you will be asked to give earliest date whose information is to be found. Just pressing RET will tell BillPower to use a default date approximately 3 months in the past. After BillPower has been given a date, it will begin displaying all the transactions and notes involv- ing that case since that date. If you wish to obtain a printout, press ALT-P just before you enter the date. F2 & F10 Keys Pressing the F2 key will cause BillPower to store the client's name, address and phone number in the computer's electronic memory. The F10 key will cause that same information to be copied from memory to the case record being edited. The ability to copy to and from memory is useful if you have a client to which you have assigned a masterRcrd and several subordinates. If that client changes his ad- dress or phone number, you may make the appropriate changes on the master record and store that information in memory by pressing F2. Then, by simply calling each subordinate record to the screen and pressing F10, the new information will be taken from memory and added CASE MODULE 36 to that record. The process can be automated if you select a Master- Rcrd Number, instead of a Case Number, when you enter the (E)dit mode (if you do this, simply pressing F6, when you are finished editing a record, will take you to the next case assigned to that masterRcrd). HUNT FOR SOME INFO If you press "H" while in the CASES MENU, you will be taken to a Hunt Gates display. Here, you are to select the gates you want to affect the search through the case file. Each Hunt Gate will allow passage of only those records which contain information consistent with the parameter you assign it. For example, if you wanted to find records of all clients who work for a certain company, you would enter a portion of the company name at item D (assuming that you consis- tently used the Addrs1 line for company names). If you wanted to find all cases with a certain masterRcrd number, you would enter a portion of that number at item A. Entering something at both A and D would narrow the search to only those cases whose MasterRcrd Numbers and Addrs1's contained matches for items A and D. A hunt for any item whose entry is alphanumeric (as opposed to strictly numeric) may be made on the basis of partial entries. For instance, if you wished to find all cases whose Addrs1's were either "Smith Enterprises" or "Smith, Inc", you would need to enter only "Smith" at item D. All cases whose Addrs1's contained "Smith" would be shown to you. Included among these cases might be "Jones and Smith, Ltd" and "The John Smith Company". Any case whose Addrs1 con- tained "Smith" would be included. Following the above example, you could also have chosen to search for Addrs1's containing "ith". If you had done so, in addi- tion to all the cases mentioned above, you might also have come ac- ross cases whose Addrs1's were "Ithica Fabricators" and "Lithe Forms, Inc". NOTE: This valuable partial entry feature is contained in the Hunt mode of every BillPower module, except BILLING module (where it's not appropriate). It is applicable to only alphanumeric items (those which may contain either letters or numbers). It does not apply to dates, amounts, and a few other items. NOTE: Suppose you elect to enter "SMITJO" at the Case Number gate. If there were more than one case whose numbers con- tain that sequence of characters, they would all pass through that gate. Hence, SMITJO, SMITJO1, SMITJO2, etc., would all be selected by BillPower for the hunt report. If, however, you wanted only SMITJO to pass through the gates (to the exclusion of SMITJO1 and SMITJO2), you would have CASE MODULE 37 to tell BillPower. You would do this by ending your "SMITJO" entry by pressing the F7 key, instead of the usual RET. If a Case Number gate is set up for an exact match, a note will appear to the right, saying, "* exact *". If no such note is displayed, then ALL cases whose numbers con- tain matches for the entered character sequence will pass through the gate. If the "* exact *" note is shown, then only the case whose number exactly matches that character sequence will be reported. To find cases applicable to a certain areas of business range, set Gates F and G accordingly. If all your divorce areas were num- bered between 100 and 150, you would set Gate F to "100" and Gate G to "150" if you wanted to look for all your divorce work. To find only a SINGLE area of business, both Gates F and G (that is, both the lowest and the highest area of business to be reported) should be identical. BillPower keeps track of the date that the latest receipt for each case has been received. If you wanted to hunt for all cases whose latest receipt date were before 15 JAN 87, you would select item H and enter "15 JAN 87". The hunt performed would select only those cases for which a receipt had not been received since 15 JAN 87. This gate allows you to find cases that are seriously in arrears. Another check you might want to make of your cases is to find which ones have balances due greater than a certain amount or within a certain range. For instance, if you wanted to find all cases with balances between -100 dollars (that is, a $100 credit) and +100 dol- lars ($100 due you), you would select items I and J and enter "-100" and "100", respectively. If you wanted to find all cases with bal- ances due of over 500 dollars, you would select item J only and enter "500". Any gate that is left blank will be considered to be open, allow- ing ANY record to pass through. In other words, each record will be deemed to meet that gate's criterion, and, assuming that all the other gates' criteria are also met, will be displayed during the hunt. A "0" entered for some of the numeric items will accomplish the same purpose that a blank entry does for text items. To find only retainer cases, or cases which are MasterRcrds, you would select N or O to change that item's assertion from NO to YES (or vice versa). To find only cases which are open or closed, you would select item L or M. Gate Q is a toggle that switches among the various reports available: "Standard", "Receivables", "Client Addresses & Phones, etc,", "Full-Screen Edit", "Labels and Envelopes", and "Letters". To begin the hunt, press F6. For a printout of the hunt, press ALT-P just before you press F6. CASE MODULE 38 Once the Hunting process begins, you will be shown the data for each record conforming to the Hunt gates you have established. If you have chosen a "Receivables" report, you'll get just what you expect: a report of each conforming case's aged receivables. The "Client Addresses & Phones" report will give you an alphabet- ized listing of each client, his address, phone, and miscellaneous information. Remember, pressing ALT-P just before beginning the re- port will cause it to be sent to the printer. If you have chosen a "Standard" report, data for each conforming record will appear on one line. The program will then automatically search for the next conforming record, display it, then look for the next one, and so on. You may make the program pause in its searching by pressing the space bar. Pressing ESC will abort the hunting pro- cess. The "Full-Screen Edit" report isn't really a report; rather, it allows you to view's each conforming record's full summary screen. As each case's record is displayed you can actually edit it as if you were in the (E)dit mode, instead of this (H)unt mode. Of course, only one case's data will be displayed on the screen at a time. Unlike the Standard summaries routine, this one will not search for the next con- forming file unless you press F6 to indicate that you wish to move on. If you want to abort the Hunt routine, press ESC instead of F6. Labels and Envelopes (BillPower Plus only) This option allows you to make mailing labels with clients' names and addresses on them. The labels used must be of the 1" X 4" (or 15/16" X 3-1/2") variety and should be pin-fed into your printer on a continuous sheet. This option will also allow you to print client names and ad- dresses onto envelopes, one at a time. When you enter this option, you will first be asked to designate the left indentation for your label or envelope printing. The de- fault is column 0, but you may enter any column between 0 and 45. The left edge of each printed address will line up at this column on your printer. If you are happy with the current indent setting, just press the RET key. Next, you will be asked whether you want a test pattern printed. If you answer, "Y", you will see a demonstration of how the printing will line up on your labels or envelopes. If you need to reset the indent and print another test pattern, you will be be afforded the opportunity. CASE MODULE 39 Then, you will be asked whether you want BillPower to pause be- tween addresses. If you answer "Y", BillPower will stop after each address is printed and will not proceed until you press the RET key. If you are just printing labels, you will probably not want to pause. But if you are printing envelopes, a pause will necessary, so that you will be able to put each succeeding envelope into the printer. Letters to Clients (BillPower Plus only) This option allows you to prepare many printouts of a short let- ter, each addressed to a different client. BillPower will ask you to enter the name of the file which con- tains the letter. BillPower will then print the same letter for each client meeting the parameters you established with the Hunt Gates. The letter printed by BillPower must have been created with EDIT, and it must reside in the ManageX subdirectory or on another disk en- tirely. You will have to experiment with this module before attemp- ting an actual mass mailing. Just prepare the body of the letter with EDIT. Then use this Letters "report" option to run a single letter. If its format is unsatisfactory, go back to EDIT and make the approp- riate changes. Repeat this procedure until you are happy with the results. Then do the mass mailing. BillPower has the ability to interpret special "tilde" codes in- serted into the text of the letter. If you use EDIT, these codes will be listed when you press the F5 key while creating or editing your letter. Assume that you want to insert the client's name at some point in the letter. To do so, you could place "~D" at the approp- riate spot. Then, when the letter is being prepared by BillPower, "~D" will be translated to the name of whatever client is being ad- dressed. Be sure to set the letter's left margin by placing ".LMx" at the very beginning of the very first line of the letter (where "x" is the column where you want the letter to begin printing on your printer -- typically 8). If you use ".LMx", there should be nothing else on that line of the letter; that is, the actual body of the letter should begin on line 2. Also, set the letter's line length (the maximum num- ber of spaces in each line -- typically 65) by pressing the F4 key. An example file called "OVERDUE.LTR" is supplied with BillPower. It may be modified for use in your office to send dunning letters to cli- ents who are behind in their payments. You might also prepare and keep on hand form letters for such things as welcoming clients and thanking them for their choosing your firm. Custom Reports (BillPower Plus only) If you would like to print a Custom Report, you should press ^Q CASE MODULE 40 (Ctrl-Q), instead of just "Q". When you do, you'll be prompted for the name of the file containing the custom report you want prepared. The report you specify must have already been prepared with EDIT.EXE (^E at the Main Menu). It should contain "tilde codes" (see the "Letters" section above) for elements of data you want printed for each case that meets the parameters you've specified with the Hunt Gates. The typical custom report will consist of a single line con- taining a few tilde codes and little else. OMIT ALL RECORDS TAGGED FOR OMISSION Go ahead and press ^O now, even though you may not have marked any records for omission in the Edit mode. You will at least see how the mode operates. During the omission process, BillPower will look at each record in the file to see whether it is tagged for omission. If so, it will be omitted; if not, it will be saved. There will be a some of disk drive activity, the length of which depends upon how many cases BillPower is tracking. CASE MODULE 41 SERVICES/FEES MODULE MAKE A TIME SLIP OR FEE RECORD If the SERVICES/FEES MENU is being displayed, press "M" to make a record. You will be asked to enter the date of the service whose re- cord you are about to create. All you need to do is use the cursor control keys to highlight the proper date on the calendar that appears. If you wish enter the date manually, be sure to use the pro- per format for entering dates. NOTE: If the date is the same as the last date you entered at the keyboard anywhere in the program, enter "S" (for "same"). If you enter ^T for the date, BillPower will automatically enter both the current date AND the current time into the time slip. Case Number The next item you will have to fill in is a "Case Number". Bill- Power will search the case file for your entry. If such a case does not exist, you will be told so. If it does exist, the first several characters of that case's name will appear to the right. As with en- tering the date, you may shorten your entry here by entering "S" (for "same") if the case number you wish to enter is the same as the last case number you have entered anywhere in the program. If you do not know the case number and would like some help, press F1, and you will be shown a list of all the cases on the disk. To narrow the search, you should press the first letter of the client's last name just before you press F1. If you precede F1 with a letter, you will be shown only those cases whose client last names begin with that letter. Employee If the case you enter exists, the responsible employee will be displayed as the "Employee" on the next line. If the person actually performing the service does not happen to be the employee responsible for the case, you may change this item appropriately. Description You must next fill in a "Description" of the service performed or the type of fee being charged. BillPower has word-wrap ability in this item. Don't bother hitting RET to get down to the next line of the description; when you're at the end of a line, BillPower will aut- SERVICES/FEES MODULE 42 omatically place the cursor at the beginning of the next line. Your total entry may be up to 540 characters, but you should be as brief as possible -- the fewer lines you use in making your entry, the less disk space will be used to store it. Reformatting If, after making changes to the service description, some lines are much too short, you may reformat the entire description by pres- sing F3. Pressing F3 causes extra space at the end of each line to be filled with data from the following line. It results in lines that are about the same length. Long Descriptions If you need more than 540 characters, enter what you can for this record and then make another record for the rest of the ser- vice or fee description. Only one of the records created for the same service or fee description may include Time or AMOUNT entries. If more than one record for the same service or fee contains Time or TOTAL entries, the client may be charged more than once for that ser- vice or fee. Abbreviations Description entries may be shortened (and disk space saved) through the use of abbreviations or office codes (such codes are con- tained in a file that can be accessed with EDIT -- see the CATEGORIES, AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM section for details). To enter a service code, simply type it and end it with a backslash. Assume, for example, that the code for "Office Conference with" were "OC". If you wished to enter an office conference with Mr. Smith, you could enter either "Office Conference with Mr. Smith" or "OC\Mr. Smith". If you entered the latter, you could be saving time by typing fewer charac- ters and also saving disk space. BillPower would know what "OC\" means. If you subsequently prepared a bill containing the service description, "OC\Mr. Smith", BillPower would actually type out "Office Conference with Mr. Smith". If, when you enter a backslash, the computer's beeper sounds, you have entered a code or abbreviation which does not exist. Try again. If you need to see a listing of the acceptable codes, press the help key, F1. Private Notes If you wish to enter something for your records but do not want it to appear on any bills prepared by BillPower, you may en- SERVICES/FEES MODULE 43 close it in curly brackets. If the service description were "OC\Mr. Smith {and his wife}", the bill containing that descrip- tion would show only "Office Call with Mr. Smith". If, for some reason, you want NONE of your description to appear on the bill, you could enclose the entire description in curly brackets. Asterisk Suppression Another way to prevent the ENTIRE description from appearing on bills is to begin the description with an asterisk. A des- cription, "*OC\Mr. Smith", would not appear on a bill at all. The advantage of using the asterisk, instead of the curly brac- kets, is that the asterisk will prevent nearly EVERYTHING on the service record from appearing on any bill. In addition to the description, the time spent and employee who did the service will also be suppressed at bill-printing time. The only thing from that service/fee record that will appear on a bill will be the amount charged, and even that item will appear only indirectly, as part of the total charges for the month. Who would want to use asterisk-suppression? The answer is, those professionals who don't like to itemize their bills, but prefer instead to send bills containing brief summaries of work done during each month. If you are one of these people, you could make sure that each service description entered during the month is preceded with an asterisk. Then, at the end of the month, you could make a service entry containing a summary of the work done that month (this entry, of course, would NOT contain an asterisk, because you would not want it to be suppressed). The bill subsequently prepared would show this end-of-month-summary and the total amount charged for services that month, but no in- dividual service descriptions would appear (because they were preceded with asterisks). If you are one who prefers end-of- month summaries to itemized service descriptions, you should elect to use Billing Format #1 when you set up the record for each case (in the CASE module, of course). Format #1 is identi- cal to #2 (the least detailed), except that format #1 automati- cally precedes each service description with an asterisk at the time the service description is entered into a record. The only difference between a record whose Service or Fee Description entry begins with an asterisk and one whose doesn't is that the asterisk will prevent that record from being reflec- ted on bills which are printed for actual mailing to clients. Pre-bills will not be affected by the asterisk (or by curly brac- kets). NOTE: Remember that, even though the bill mailed to your client will not contain any description preceded by an as- terisk, the bill's total WILL account for whatever amount SERVICES/FEES MODULE 44 is charged for each service. Since the client may not see the descriptions for all the services for which he is being charged, he may think that the total amount reflected on the bill is incorrect. Therefore, you should insure that whatever end-of-month summaries you use adequately explain the charges. Time Entries and Total Charge Next, enter the "Time Began". This is the time at which perfor- mance of the service noted above began. If you wish, you may use "P" for "PM" and "A" for "AM". Under this scheme, 10:05 AM would be en- tered as "1005A" and 2:34 PM would be entered as "234P" (colons aren't needed). Alternatively, you may enter times with neither a "P" nor an "A", in which case BillPower will assume that any time bet- ween 12:00 and 6:59 is "PM", while anything between 7:00 and 11:59 is "AM". If you want BillPower to pick up the computer's system time, just enter ^T, instead of the time. The first time you enter ^T, the "stopwatch" will begin running -- entering ^T again will stop it. You may enter ^T (to start and stop it) at any Time item or at the Service Performer or Case Number item. Note that the stopwatch may be started and stopped only once per time slip. If a FEE, rather than a service, was entered above, DO NOT enter any times, since times should be used only to reflect the period dur- ing which SERVICES are performed. Also, if this record is merely a continuation of the preceding record, do not enter any times if you already entered such times in the preceding record. "Time Ended" is the time at which performance of the service noted above ended. If you do not wish to enter a Time Began or a Time Ended, but would prefer to enter just the Time Spent, simply press RET for each item you do not wish to enter. Once the beginning and ending times have been entered, the "Time Spent" on the service will be automatically calculated. This will be multiplied by the Service Performer's hourly rate (or the Max Hour- ly Rate for the case, if applicable, whichever is less) and displayed as the AMOUNT. If, for some reason, you wish to reflect an amount of time different from what was calculated by the program, (or if you skipped the Time Began and Time Ended items) you may enter it at the "Time Spent" line. If you wish to charge an amount different from what BillPower has calculated, you may enter any amount you wish at the "AMOUNT" line. If you want to record the time spent on the service, but do not wish to charge the case anything for that service, complete the Time Began, Time Ended, or Time Spent entry with a ^N (for "no charge"), instead of RET. Doing so will cause "NC" to appear at the end of the SERVICES/FEES MODULE 45 "Time Spent" line. If the case for which you are entering a service is a fixed fee, contingent, or retainer case, BillPower will automatically assume that you do not want to charge the case for time spent on specific ser- vices. If you wish to overrule this assumption, finish your time entries with ^C (for "charge this time"), instead of RET. Charging rate Whenever you make any changes to a service/fee record, the hour- ly rate at which services will be charged is re-figured. A series of default rates are used by the program to arrive at the appropriate rate for a particular service. If you wish to enter a special rate for this service, you may do so here. If you subsequently come back to edit this record, the rate may change back to one of the defaults if you make ANY CORRECTIONS AT ALL to the record. Therefore, when- ever you edit/examine a service/fee record, be sure to double-check the rate before you move on with F6. Next Time Slip To save the service record and move on, press F6. BillPower will then automatically take you to another time slip/fee entry record to be filled out. If you do not need to make any more entries, just press F6 again. Deferred Billing (BillPower Plus only) If you wish to indefinitely defer billing this Time Slip or Fee record, press F7 when the cursor is at one of the top items on the screen. Doing so will cause the billing process to skip over this record. The record will be automatically "un-tagged" and forwarded to a later month's file when you do a chronological sort (in the ^Utilities module) of this month's files. Then, when you get ready to do that later month's bills, you should first do a set of pre-bills. As you review the pre-bills, you may elect once again to defer this record until a still later month. To do so, you'll have to come back to this SERVICES module, edit this record, and press F7 to tag it again for further deferral. See the Deferred Billing section. "TO DATE: ..." information If you're doing a time slip or fee record for a case, some of that case's data will be summarized at the bottom of the screen. The "Srvc/Fees" figure is the total services and fees charged to that case until now (not including the current entry). Also shown are the SERVICES/FEES MODULE 46 total hours and the value of those hours (at the primary billing rate of the responsible employee). "Balance" is the case's current bal- ance due, including all transactions, except the one you're now en- tering. "CrntDue" is the amount still due on the last bill sent to the client. "LastBill" is the date of the last bill sent to the client. EDIT A TIME SLIP OR FEE RECORD When you choose to (E)dit a record, you will be asked the "Mon Yr of file to edit". Here, you should enter the month and year (eg: NOV 87) during which the record (or records) you wish to edit were entered. If the month to be searched happens to be the current month, just press RET. The next prompt will be "Case Number". Here, you should enter the number of the case whose transaction you wish to find. If you know the exact transaction record number to be edited, you may just press RET, without entering a case. Finally, BillPower asks for the "Record Number to Begin Search". If you just press RET without entering a record number, BillPower will show you each time slip or fee record whose case and month of entry are the same as those you entered above. The search will begin at the first record in the file. To go from each record to the next, press F6. To abort the search through the records press ESC. If, however, you DO enter a record number, BillPower will skip all the records before that one, which will be the first shown to you. If it happens to be the ONLY one you want to look at, press ESC when you have finished with it (ESC causes a search to abort, remember?). If you enter no "Mon Yr", case, or record number, the Edit mode will abort (unless there happens to be a transaction entered during the current month which does not apply to a particular case number). When you have finished editing/examining a record, press F6 to store it and to move on to the next record for the date you have de- signated (assuming that you have not designated a record number, in which case, only one record would be edited). Pressing ESC will cause BillPower to store the record and then to leave the Edit mode without going on to the next record. HUNT FOR INFORMATION The Hunt Gates in this module work just like those in the CASES module. The only difference is that you have a different selection of gates that you may define. Gate Q toggles among the various types of reports available: SERVICES/FEES MODULE 47 Standard, Income-Expense, Balance Sheet, Employee Productivity, and Full Screen Edit. Gates L through P tell BillPower which types of transactions to include in the hunt. Even though you're in the SERVICES/FEES module, the hunt you do here can include Disbursements, Receipts, and/or Ad- justments. If you wish, you can even prevent services/fees from being included. Just switch the appropriate gates to "YES" or "NO". ZIP TO A TIME SLIP As you go through a day, you will often find yourself working on several cases simultaneously. As you perform a task for each, you should enter it onto a time slip. Of course, you may make out a sep- arate time slip for each task performed. But, alternatively, you may add each new service performed for a case to the first time slip opened that day for that case. If your preference is to keep adding to the first time slip, you may use this (Z)ip function to find that record quickly when you need to make an addition. After pressing `Z', you will be shown a list of up to twenty cases with which you have dealt during the day. Press the letter corresponding to the one whose time slip you need to amend. When the time slip appears, add to it as you wish. If you want to begin the automatic timer, press ^T; to stop the timer, press ^T again (or press F6 or esc). When the auto timer stops, the dollar value of this most recent time block will be added to the time slip's previous total. Thus, every time you zip to a time slip during the day, you may keep adding to the total time and dollar amount by simply pressing ^T when you begin and end your entry. This auto timer fea- ture is most useful if you keep BillPower in memory at all times through the use of a multi-tasking program like Software Carousel or DESQview. If you want don't have one of those two programs, and you want the ability to have a time slip timed automatically while you work on other things, you should get a copy of RAMdesk. This program, described elsewhere in the documentation, can act as a pop-up entry vehicle for BillPower and/or TickleX (Integra's scheduler). One of RAMdesk's many features is a module in which you can time your work. SERVICES/FEES MODULE 48 DISBURSEMENTS MODULE The DISBURSEMENTS module is used for ALL firm disbursements, whether or not they apply to particular clients or cases. Office supply purchases and employee salary payments, for example, should be recorded in this module, as should all your expenses for the SMITJO1 case. Anytime the firm transfers some of its money to someone else (or to someone else's account) for ANY reason, that transfer is a disbursement which should be entered here. MAKE A DISBURSEMENT Press "M" to make a record. You will be asked to enter the date of the disbursement whose record you are about to create. Be sure to use the proper format for entering dates, or use "S" (for "same", rem- ember?). BillPower will then take you into the Edit mode, so that you can enter the new record's data. You may do so in the manner described in this manual's preceding sections in their discussions of making and editing records. NOTE: In the (M)ake mode, you may save time by entering "S" (for "same as last entry") for almost any item, such as the Case Number. "S" will cause the Case Number, etc., from the last record entered to be entered again. Most of the items to be filled in are comparable to those dis- cussed previously in the SERVICES/FEES section. There are, however, a few new items with which you need to be familiar. Category If you wish to later be able to sort your disbursements by cate- gory, enter the category number (1 to 9999) here. If you are in doubt about the appropriate category number, press F1 for a listing. If the list does not have the category you wish, remember that you may modify it with EDIT to suit your individual needs (see the CATEGORIES, AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM section). If the category you enter does not exist, BillPower will tell you; otherwise, a description of the category will appear at the bottom of the screen. Payee or Creditor At the "Payee" item, you should enter the name of the person or DISBURSEMENTS MODULE 49 company from whom you made the purchase or to whom you made the pay- ment. You will have to be brief here, since your entry is limited to only a few characters. If the disbursement is a simple advance made directly to a client, enter the client's name here if you did not al- ready enter it as part of the Description just entered. AMOUNT Next, enter the "AMOUNT". If you do not know what this amount should be, just enter zero; you can always come back to this record at a later date to enter the correct amount when it becomes known. An example of this situation would be a long distance telephone call which you want to enter now, but for which you will not know the charges until you receive the telephone bill in a few weeks. If you enter an amount of zero now, you may subsequently change it by using the Edit mode. If you want the record to reflect the amount you paid, but do not wish to charge the client for the disbursement, complete the "Amount Paid/Owed" with a ^N (for "no charge"), instead of RET. Do- ing so will cause "NC" to appear at the end of the entry. Check Number If you are paying for the disbursement with a check, you may enter the check number. This is the number of the check (from the firm's account) with which the disbursement is being paid. If you have already entered a check number during this batch of disbursement entries, you may just enter "N" (for "next"), and the check number will be automatically assigned. EDIT A DISBURSEMENT The editing procedures have been covered under "(M)ake a dis- bursement", above. For a discussion of how to find a specific record, refer to the section on editing a time slip or fee in the SERVICES/FEES module section. DISBURSEMENTS MODULE 50 RECEIPTS MODULE The RECEIPTS module is where you enter payments made to you or your firm. There are few significant differences between this mod- ule's operation and any other module's. If you need help with any of this module's features, please refer to descriptions of comparable ones in the previous sections of these instructions. Two items unique to this module are the `Advance' items shown in the (M)ake and (E)dit modes. An advance is a sum paid to the client or on his behalf. Whenever a disbursement is made on behalf of a case in the DISBURSEMENTS module, BillPower considers it an `Advance' to be paid back by the client. If you are in the (M)ake mode, BillPower will show you the current outstanding advances and suggest an amount to apply toward them. The program will initially assume that you wish to pay advances before you pay anything else, but you may alter this assumption by entering whatever you like, as long as it does not exceed the amount of the receipt already entered. Whatever portion of the receipt you do not allocate toward repayment of advances will be assumed to be for other portions of the client's total balance owed to you, such as services, fees, and adjustments. RECEIPTS MODULE 51 ADJUSTMENT MODULE This module is used to enter write-offs and other bill-refining adjustments. Adjustments are entries which you want to be included in bills, but which do not fall under any of the more specific clas- sifications recognized by BillPower (services/fees, receipts, and dis- bursements). To enter the ADJUSTMENT module, press "A" while you are in the MAIN MENU. When the ADJUSTMENT MENU appears, select "M" to create the adjustment record. You will be asked the adjustment's effective date, and then you will be shown a screen of items to be filled in. All are self- explanatory, with the exception of "(W)rite-off or (C)harge". If the adjustment amount is to be subtracted from a client's bill, you should press "W", since your intention is write it off. If, instead, you wish to add to your client's debt, press "C", since you intend to charge him more than he would otherwise owe. ADJUSTMENT MODULE 52 GENERAL LEDGER MODULE The GENERAL LEDGER module is for maintaining the various accounts for which your firm is responsible. Checking, Trust, and Escrow ac- counts are examples. This module allows you to completely integrate a chart of accounts into the billing program. Though it will track both "debit" and "credit" accounts, the de- fault mode for this module provides simple single-entry functionality. Double-entry accounting, an option available with BillPower Plus, is triggered by making an entry at the "Account automatically adjusted for disbursements and receipts" item in the CUSTOMIZING routine (ac- cessed by tapping ^C at the menu -- see the SETTING UP section for details). Use of the program for double-entry accounting will be dis- cussed later. OPEN A NEW ACCOUNT To open an account, select the (O)pen option from the menu. First, you will be asked to enter an account number. The number you assign an account will have a direct bearing upon how easily you are able to extract information from BillPower's files. Please see the NUMBERING SYSTEM PROPOSAL section. Next, you will have to enter a descriptive name for the account, and you will be asked to designate whether this is to be a (C)redit or a (D)ebit account. Any account that would appear as an ASSET on a balance sheet should be entered as a Debit account. An account that will appear as a LIABILITY on the balance sheet is a Credit account. If you are unsure of your new account's classification, enter "-"; otherwise, enter "C" or "D". BillPower will then ask whether the new account will be used to hold retainer funds for a case. If not, answer `N'. If you answer `Y', you will be asked to enter the Balance (if any) you would like to maintain in the account, as well as a minimum acceptable balance. The first figure is the balance you would like to maintain in the account (preferably an amount to which your client has agreed). The minimum acceptable balance, on the other hand, is the point at which you will want to ask your client to replenish this retainer account. Assume, for instance, that the account's desired balance is $1000 and that its minimum acceptable balance is $500. As you do work for your client, you will be withdrawing money from this retainer account. At some point, you will want to ask your client to replenish the account to the desired balance of $1000. This threshold is reached when the ac- count's balance is below $500. Whenever a bill is sent to the client, BillPower will check the account balance. If it is below the minimum acceptable balance of $500, the bill will contain a request for the amount needed to bring the account's funds up to the Desired Balance of $1000. If the account balance is over the minimum acceptable bal- GENERAL LEDGER MODULE 53 ance when the bill is prepared, no such request will be made. Before this section is closed, it should be mentioned that, once an account is given an Account Number, that number may not be changed. The descriptive name and all other attributes may be edited, but the Account NUMBER will be permanent. If you were allowed to subsequently change the Account Number, previously-entered transactions involving that account would be left in "limbo", since they would still be linked to the OLD Account Number. MAKE A TRANSACTION ENTRY This straigtforward process is similar to that in the DISBURSE- MENTS module. However, the "Check Number" item is a little different. The last item to be filled in is the "Check Number". If the transaction is for a deposit, just enter "D". If it is for a with- drawal without the issuance of a check, enter "W". If it is for a withdrawal accompanied by the issuance of a check, enter the number of the check with which the withdrawal from the account will be made. Do not enter a check number if the transaction is a deposit (for example, if you are depositing a client's check into an account, do not enter the client's check number here -- enter "D", for "Deposit"). The check number must not be greater than 30000. Since BillPower will try to prevent your withdrawing more from the account than is presently contained therein, always be sure to enter a deposit for an account before you attempt any withdrawals. If you wish, you may use the same check number on several trans- action records. You might want to do so if you will be using the same check to pay for several different categories of expenses. If such is the case, make a separate account transaction for each cate- gory and use the same check number for all the transaction records. HUNTING FOR SOME INFORMATION The (H)unt routine is similar to those found elsewhere in Bill- Power. Near the end of each hunt will be a listing of the TOTAL DEBITS and TOTAL CREDITS reported during the hunt. In arriving at these tot- als, BillPower considers all deposits to debit accounts and all withdra- wals from credit accounts to be DEBITS, while all withdrawals from debit accounts and all deposits to credit accounts are considered to be CREDITS. Deposits and withdrawals from "-" accounts are treated as if they involved debit accounts. Also reported is the DIFFERENCE bet- ween the total debits and the total credits. This difference is use- ful if you are doing double-entry bookkeeping, and you need to see at a glance whether the total debits and credits balance. If the DIFFER- ENCE is not zero, then a double-entry error may have been made during GENERAL LEDGER MODULE 54 the period specified in the Hunt Gates. Remember, this section of the report shows the totals of only those transactions which meet the par- ameters set by your Hunt Gates. The total balance for each account is given in the Account Balances section, described below. The very last thing shown in a hunt will be a listing of the current account balances. If a balance is enclosed inside left and right carets, "<" and ">", it is a Credit account balance. For repor- ting purposes only, BillPower treats Credit accounts as negative Debit accounts. Hence, Credit account balances that are negative will be ADDED to the total, while positive ones will be SUBTRACTED. This is where to quickly find whether your books are properly balanced: if the account balance totals are not zero, your books are out of balance. OMITTING ACCOUNTS Accounts are omitted by selecting the (^O)mit option in the AC- COUNTS MENU. The two-step omission process is similar to that found in the CASES module, but the tagging takes place directly from the menu, not in the Edit mode. ORGANIZING YOUR BOOKS Setting up your chart of accounts involves: 1) opening the ac- counts in this GENERAL LEDGER module; and 2) designating your income and expense categories by entering them into the M-LBCODE.DAT file (see the CATEGORIES, AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM section of these instructions). NOTE: You may optionally open your accounts with the EDIT program (^E at the main menu). But be careful if you so. Remember that BillPower does not allow you to change the number of an account, since doing so may leave in "limbo" some transactions made for that account before the change. Because the EDIT program makes it easy for you to change an account's number, you must be on your guard not to do so. It is recommended that you use EDIT only to set up your chart of accounts initially. Thereafter, if you need to change something, use the editing functions found in this GENERAL LEDGER module. After initially estab- lishing the chart of accounts, use EDIT only if you need to change the order in which the accounts appear in the chart of accounts. GENERAL LEDGER MODULE 55 Accounts vs. Categories Remember that BillPower draws a clear distinction between an ac- count and an income/expense category. An account is an actual body of money. It is the value of an account that is affected by a re- ceipt or expenditure. A category, on the other hand, is, just as name implies, simply a type of expense or income. Though the TRANSACTION involving a cate- gory may AFFECT an account's balance, the category is not, itself, an account (body of money). For instance, a rent payment might fall into an expense category called "rent", but the actual body of money affec- ted is probably the "checking" account. Though BillPower will, for any period of time, report the total value of transactions involving each income and expense category, it does not permanently collect those figures into an "account". Which categories (not accounts) should you open? If you're un- sure, just stick with those already contained in the sample income- expense file (M-LBCODE.DAT) provided with BillPower. Use EDIT (^E in the MAIN MENU) to examine/edit this file. Which accounts (not categories) should you open? Basically, the decision is yours. If you're unsure, you might consider using these as an absolute minimum: ACCOUNT NUMBER DESCRIPTIVE NAME CREDIT or DEBIT ------------------------------------------------------- CHECK CHECKING ACCOUNT Debit EQUITY GENERAL EQUITY Credit As the need arises, also open escrow and retainer accounts. Give each client's retainer/escrow a unique number and name. Since the funds in such accounts are not yours, you might consider them to be neither CREDIT not DEBIT. If such is the case, choose "-" as the CREDIT/DEBIT category (signifying neither). DOUBLE ENTRY ACCOUNTING If you've customized the program properly, you'll be afforded the double entry option. If you opt for double entry, you must be abso- lutely sure that you understand the concept completely. If you don't, you'll just be wasting your time and possibly ruining your books. With this option in effect, you will be allowed to make balancing account entries whenever you enter a disbursement, receipt or General Ledger transaction. This option will save you considerable time that would otherwise have been spent making duplicate account-adjustment entries. Your bookkeeping will be automated like never before. GENERAL LEDGER MODULE 56 The double-entry option is just that: an OPTION. If it's not in effect, you won't be able to enter balancing account information when you enter transactions. But even with the option in effect, it's still just an option. You MAY enter balancing account information, but you don't have to. Thus, BillPower provides you with a great deal of flexibility. But this flexibility may also allow you to make mis- takes that will cause your books to go out of balance. The program checks for non-balancing entries only if you've specified TWO accounts to be adjusted for a specific transaction. If you specify only a sin- gle account, BillPower assumes that you're not interested in double entry for the current transaction. With the double entry option in effect, entering a single dis- bursement or receipt will result in the simultaneous entry of up to two General Ledger account transactions and the updating of the ba- lances in those accounts. Designating the accounts to adjust If the double entry option is in effect, you will notice that two additional items appear on each disbursement and receipt entry screen: Affected G/L account 1 Affected G/L account 2 BillPower expects you to fill in one or both of these items if you want the program to automatically adjust its General Ledger accounts when you complete entering the transaction. For each of these, you should fill in an account number preceded by a "+" or "-" (eg: "+CHECK" or "-CHECK"). A "+" indicates that the amount of the transaction you're entering should be ADDED to the balance in the specified account, while "-" indicates that the sum should be SUBTRACTED. BillPower won't accept an entry that does not begin with a "+" or "-". Automating the process What's described in the section above will save you the time that might otherwise be spent making one or two separate General Ledger entries after you finish entering a disbursement or receipt. But things could be further streamlined if BillPower knew the accounts to adjust without your having to tell it every time you enter a transac- tion. With a little planning, you can achieve this automation. The first thing you need to do is to decide which of your General Ledger accounts is the one you will usually want affected whenever you do a disbursement or receipt. In all probability, it will be your firm's checking account. Assuming that this account has already been GENERAL LEDGER MODULE 57 assigned a number and has also been opened with BillPower, you should enter that account number at the "Account automatically adjusted..." prompt in the CUSTOMIZING routine. If the account that you've specified for automatic adjustment is not called "NUL", that the program will assume that you want that account updated EVERY time you make a disbursement or receipt. At the time you make each entry, however, you may override this assumption if you like. If "NUL" is what you've specified in the CUSTOMIZING rou- tine, then BillPower will make no assumption at all about which account you want adjusted for each disbursement and receipt. Instead, you'll have to fill in the account number "from scratch" each time you enter a disbursement or receipt. The other account The discussion in the section above concerned only one account, the one that you will nearly always want to update whenever you enter a receipt or disbursement. If you're interested in keeping your books balanced, however, you'll also want to fill in a second account num- ber. Unlike the first account, the second will vary from transaction to transaction, depending upon the category into which the transaction falls. You'll have to be pretty competent with double-entry accoun- ting if you want to be sure to tell BillPower the proper account to update. As you enter each disbursement or receipt, you'll have to decide what the balancing G/L entries should be. This thought pro- cess, of course, takes time and exposes the system to the possibility that you may occasionally make a careless decision. But BillPower offers you an alternative that will save even more time and reduce the potential for error: designating the balancing account entries well in advance, when you initially set up the program. Before reading further, you should first review the ABBREVIATIONS and CATEGORIES, AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM section, found later in these instructions. The discussion of ABBREVIATIONS and CATEGORIES describes three items that may appear on each line within the M-LBCODE.DAT file, used by BillPower to store income and expense category information. But there is a fourth item that may also be entered on each line that des- cribes an income or expense category. This fourth item is the G/L account that you want to adjust every time you enter a transaction involving that line's category. The fourth item begins in column 43 (use the TAB key to align the cursor properly). The item consists of an account number preceded by a "+" or "-" (eg: "+EQUITY" or "-EQUITY"). A "+" indicates that you want to ADD to the account whenever a transaction involving this cate- gory is made, while a "-" indicates that you want to SUBTRACT. Be GENERAL LEDGER MODULE 58 ABSOLUTELY SURE that you precede each account number with a "+" or a "-", that each account you specify has previously been opened with BillPower, and that you align everything properly in the file. Remember that the account numbers you place into the M-LBCODE.DAT file are for the secondary (or "balancing") G/L transactions made automatically when you enter a disbursement or receipt. The primary G/L transaction will be determined by your previous entry in the CUS- TOMIZING routine (the "Account automatically adjusted..." item). The primary account is the one that BillPower ALWAYS assumes you want ad- justed whenever you enter a disbursement or receipt. The secondary account is the one that will balance your books after the adjustment to the primary account is made. The primary account is not affected by the category into which a receipt or disbursement entry falls. The secondary account, however, will always be dependent upon the income- expense category. The primary and secondary accounts you set in the CUSTOMIZING routine and in the M-LBCODE.DAT file will provide BillPower with as- sumptions about which accounts you want to update whenever you enter an disbursement or receipt. It will act upon these assumptions, un- less you override them at the time you make the actual transaction entries. This degree of flexibility is unique to BillPower. GENERAL LEDGER MODULE 59 BILLS When doing bills, BillPower, unlike some other programs, does not automatically include all unbilled items in its statements and then "dump" them from the system. Instead, BillPower prepares bills for certain TIME PERIODS (one month, two months, three months, etc.). Both unbilled transactions AND transactions already billed (if any) will be included in BillPower's statements. Of course, transactions already billed will be included only if you are RE-DOING bills that have previously been submitted for a certain period. The client will never be charged more than once for the same item, but he may see it a second time if you RE-DO a bill covering the month in which that item was entered. If, for instance, you do March's bill at the beginning of March and again at the end of March, the same items which appeared on the first bill will appear on the second, but the client won't be charged a second time for them. The second bill will simply be re- capping the transactions previously included in the original bill, as well as including transactions that have occurred subsequent to the first bill's preparation. This different method of billing allows BillPower to keep ALL transactions in its data base, even those that have been billed, un- til YOU want to eliminate them. BillPower won't arbitrarily erase them. Thus, you have the flexibility to re-prepare bills many times, even months after their original preparation. And, since the trans- actions are not automatically erased by BillPower, those items may be included in any reports you may wish to prepare at any time in the future. A consequence of providing you such unprecedented flexibility is that, under certain circumstances, BillPower may not include all the transactions you might expect in its bills. This will occur if, dur- ing THIS month, you are preparing bills for LAST month, and you erron- eously expect transactions entered for THIS month to be included. Remember, this month's transactions will appear only when THIS month's bills are done (preferably at the beginning of the next month). If you want to insure that THIS month's entries are included in the bills you prepare now, you should do bills for THIS month, not last month. Doing bills for this month will force BillPower to auto- matically include LAST month's entries in the bills, AS LONG AS you have not already prepared last month's bills (if you HAVE already done last month's bills, this month's will contain transactions entered for the current month only). BILLS 60 OVERVIEW COMPOSITION OF A BILL A bill consists of six parts: 1 a return address; 2 a client name, address and salutation, drawn from the appropriate case's record at the time of the bill's preparation; 3 an opening statement; 4 a basic data section drawn from transaction data at the time of the bill's preparation; 5 a closing statement; and 6 a signature block. These components are printed, one after the other onto each client's statement. The format of the statements permits the use of 8-1/2" by 11" paper, single sheets or form-feed. Almost any modern printer may be used. All statements should be printed at a pitch of 10 characters per inch. BILLING FORMATS You select each case's billing format by (M)aking or (E)diting that case's record (in the CASE module). The seven formats are all similar to each other, differing mainly in the amount of service/fee information provided. Format 2 is the least informative, while for- mat 6 is the most. There is also format 1, which is essentially similar to format 2, but which automatically inserts an asterisk before each service description entry, so that the service will not be described on the bill. At the time that each service description is entered, this asterisk may be erased if you want the service to be shown on the bill. Remember, asterisks prevent everything but the amount from showing on the bill (and the amount is reflected only indirectly, in the totals). Format 0 is identical to 1, except that, in addition to automatically inserting an asterisk before each SERVICE description entry, the program will also precede all DISBURSEMENT, RECEIPT, and ADJUSTMENT descriptions with asterisks. Each format includes a salutation and signature block, unless the format number ends with a minus. For example, "6-" would not include a salutation and signature block, while format "6" would. It is suggested that, before you do any actual billings, you test each billing format, to see which you prefer. Do a FICTIONAL client's bill for the current month (be sure you've entered some fic- BILLS 61 tional services, disbursements, and receipts). Then go to the CASE module and (E)dit that client's case, in order to change the bil- ling format. Then do another bill. Repeat the process until you have collected several printouts of the different billing formats (2 through 8, and 2- through 8-). File them for future reference. Do- ing these practice bills will also allow you to see how you like your return address, opening & closing paragraphs, and signature blocks. RETURN ADDRESS The return address must be contained in a file called "M- RETADD.LTR", and it must be located on the hard disk. Whenever Bill- Power prepares a bill, it will find this file and print it onto the statement. This file should, of course, contain the firm's return address. It should be created with EDIT before you try to prepare any statements. If it is not on the disk when a statement is prepared, no return address will be printed. If you plan to use letterhead sta- tionery, erase M-RETADD.LTR from the hard disk and make sure that you have entered the correct figure for the number of "Lines from paper top to letterhead printing bottom" in the MAIN MENU's (^C)ustomize routine. After the return address (if such a file exists) is printed, BillPower will print the statement date (selected by you at the time the statements are prepared), followed by the client's name, address, and salutation (as stored in the Case record of the case for which the statement is being prepared). The statement date will begin in the same column as the top line of the return address, if the return add- ress file exists; otherwise, it will appear at the left margin. If the format chosen for the case whose bill is being prepared ends with a minus (eg: "6-"), then no salutation will be printed. Between the client address and the salutation will appear a short reference ("RE:") section, which will include the case Number and case Name. Also included will be portions of the case record's Miscellaneous data IF the first line of that data begins with a plus sign (see the Miscellaneous discussion in the CASE MODULE section). OPENING STATEMENT Next comes the opening portion of the bill, which should include any remarks you wish to precede the details of the statement. An example would be, Following is a summary of the services we have recently rendered in your behalf. The opening portion must be in a file named "M-BLOPEN.LTR". M- BLOPEN.LTR is included with the BillPower program as an example. You may modify it with EDIT to suit your purposes. BILLS 62 If you do not want an opening paragraph printed on your state- ments, erase the "M-BLOPEN.LTR" file from your hard disk. After the opening portion is printed, BillPower will print the statement details. This part of the statement consists of a listing of all services, fees, disbursements, income, etc., pertaining to the case whose statement is being prepared for a certain month. If you are keeping a retainer or other account for the client, that account's recent activities will be listed next. If you don't want account information to appear on the bill, you should make sure that the account number, as entered at the bottom of the case's edit screen (in the CASES module), begins with an asterisk. OPTIONAL GENERAL OPENING If you'd like a single file to handle ALL the items appearing before a bill's transaction itemization section, use EDIT.EXE to create a file called GENERAL.OPN. If this file exists at the time a bill is prepared, BillPower will not even look for the return address or opening paragraph files (M-RETADD.LTR and M-BLOPEN.LTR). Instead, it will copy GENERAL.OPN into the top of the bill. GENERAL.OPN will contain tilde codes for a client's name, add- ress, case number, salutation, etc. A listing of the codes will be shown to you if you press the F5 key while you're creating or editing this file. For instance, the bill's date may be placed anywhere if you use it's code, ~M. Any text or codes you place into GENERAL.OPN will appear above the itemization section of each bill subsequently prepared by BillPower. CLOSING STATEMENT The closing portion of the bill should include any remarks you wish to follow the details of the statement. An example would be, Please promptly pay any amount shown above as being due this firm. Thank you. The file containing the closing statement for a bill with a bal- ance owed is "M-BLOWED.LTR". The file used for a bill with a zero or credit balance is "M-BLCRDT.LTR". These files are included with the BillPower program as examples. You may modify them with EDIT to suit your purposes. If you do not want a closing paragraph printed on your state- ments, erase the appropriate ".LTR" files from your hard disk. BILLS 63 SIGNATURE BLOCK The signature block portion of the bill also requires a file created by EDIT. The file name must be "M-SGNxxx.LTR", where "xxx" are the initials of a timekeeper. For example, Fred W. Tanner's sig- nature block file would be "M-SGNFWT.LTR", while Jerry Formy's would be "M-SGNJF.LTR". The initials used must be consistent with those found in the ^CUSTOMIZE module (in which you entered each timekeeper's initials and up to six hourly rates). "M-SGNSS.LTR" (for employee Sam Snort) is included with the program as an example. If you do not want a signature block printed on your statements, erase the appropriate "M-SGNxxx.LTR" files from your hard disk. SUMMARY SHEET If a master record has any subordinates, the bills for the mas- ter and its subordinates will be prepared, one after the other, be- fore bills for any other cases are done. After each master's series of bills is printed, a summary sheet for all its cases will also be printed. It will list the amount due (or credit) for each case as- signed to the master and will show a grand total. You may either append this sheet to the back of all the bills sent to the client whose master and subordinates have just been prepared, or you may use it as a cover sheet for those bills. PREPARING A BILL When you enter the BILLING module, a set of Hunt Gates will appear. BillPower initially assumes that you intend to send prebills to the screen, but you may change this assumption, if you wish, by al- tering Gates J and L. Gate K allows you to designate whether you want to bill cases set up for Periodic Billing, Occasional Billing, or both. The default is "Periodic" because it is those cases you will most frequently want to bill during a mass billing. An actual bill is one that you actually intend to send to a client. Prebills, on the other hand, are intended to be used inter- nally within your office. They are based upon billing format 6 (the most informative), but they also contain some extra information not found in their Actual Bill counterparts, such as the record number of each transaction included in the statements. You may use this record number to quickly locate any record that needs to be altered before an BILLS 64 Actual Mailing takes place. If, for instance, disbursement record 34 contains erroneous information, you may change it by editing that re- cord in the DISBURSEMENTS module. Date of Statement and Month Billed Gate H should show the statement date you wish to appear on each actual bill prepared. You should also make sure that Gate I accurate- ly reflects the "Mon Yr" of the month whose bills you wish to pre- pare. For example, if you are preparing January 1990's bill, Gate I should show, "JAN 90". NOTE pertaining to cases set up for Periodic billing: If some of the cases whose bills you will be preparing have billing intervals of more than one month, those bills will be prepared only if they are due during the month specified above. Therefore, be sure that the month you specify is in the LATEST month which you want included in the bills prepared. If a case is due to be billed during that month, the bill will cover ALL months since that case's last bill was sent. If the last bill was prepared during the middle of the month whose bills you now want prepared, the new bill will cover that entire month (not just the portion of the month which was not already billed), as well as subsequent months. If a bill is not due for a case whose billing interval is greater than one month, that case will be skipped for billing purposes, and no bill will be prepared. Case skip- ping occurs only in the "Actual Bill" billing mode. Pre- billing statements, however, may be prepared for any case, for any month, at any time. You may also force BillPower to prepare a case's Actual Bill if you designate its Case Number on the billing Hunt Gates screen. Try not to prepare a case's bill for a particular month if there is any likelihood that more work will be done for that case during that month, unless that case is set up for Occasional (as opposed to Periodic) billing. For example, resist sending the January bills on 19 January if you are likely to do any more work during January. If you were to provide some services between the 19th and the 31st, you would have to re-prepare January's bills in order to advise your cli- ents of those services. Those services will NOT appear on your Feb- ruary bills if January has already been billed (though January ser- vices WILL appear on February bills if January has NOT been billed yet). The only exception to this advice against billing for partial months is that you may consider such a bill for a particular case if BILLS 65 you will not be doing any more work for that case during that month (as would be true if the case were completed) or if that case were set up for Occasional (not Periodic) billing. It is recommended that you establish a routine whereby you regu- larly prepare each month's bills at the beginning of the following month (ie: send January's bills sometime in early February). If you stick to this routine, your billing will run easily, without your hav- ing to worry about the various caveats contained in this discussion. If you resist the temptation to alter this routine in what you might consider "special" circumstances, you will keep your billing proce- dures uncomplicated and smooth. In those few instances when you MUST prepare a bill at an unusual time, you can feel confident that Bill- Power will follow your wishes. But, for the sake of keeping your in- ternal office procedures as simple as possible, strive to do ALL your billing one time each month. Other Hunt Gates The other Hunt Gates allow you to select the cases for which you want bills prepared. For example, to bill only those cases whose last payments were received before 22 January 1989, select item D and enter "22 JAN 89". However, the first time you do your billing each month, you should do a "MASS BILLING" by leaving Hunt Gates A to G exactly as they are initially set. Only by going through this MASS BILLING can you insure that ALL case due to be billed actually WILL be billed. When the Hunt Gates initially appear, they will be set to make BillPower prepare a bill for EVERY Periodic case due for a bill. A case is considered due if: 1) the number of months established as its Billing Interval (in the CASES module) have elapsed since the last bill was sent; and 2a) that case has had some activity since its last bill was sent, or 2b) you are due some money for that case. A case will also be billed, even if no activity has occurred since a case's last bill, if nine or more months have elapsed since that bill was sent or if more than a couple of months have passed since that case was opened. IF YOU WANT ALL CASES DUE BILLS TO ACTUALLY HAVE BILLS PREPARED, DO NOT CHANGE THE HUNT GATES THAT INITIALLY APPEAR. ALWAYS MAKE A PRACTICE OF PREPARING BILLS FOR ALL CASES DUE THEM AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH. If the program ever prepares a bill that you didn't specifi- cally request, it will be because that case is in danger of exceeding nine months without having been billed. First Case to be Prepared After you press F6 to begin the hunt, you may be asked to des- BILLS 66 ignate which MasterRcrd's bills are to be prepared first. BillPower initially assumes that you want to start with the first one in the file, but you may change this assumption by entering the masterRcrd Number of the case with which you wish to begin. In most cases, you should simply press RET to ignore the prompt (and allow BillPower to stick with its first-case assumption). But occasionally, you will want to start somewhere other than at the beginning of the file. Setting the Print Mode and Aligning the Paper You will next be asked whether the printer is turned on. If you want the bills displayed on the screen, answer with an "N"; otherwise, answer "Y". If you answer affirmatively, you will be given the op- portunity to select the print mode, using the buttons on the face of your printer (assuming your printer has this feature). If your are happy with the default printer settings, or if you have given Bill- Power (in the CUSTOMIZING THE PROGRAM section) a series of codes to send the printer before preparing bills, you may wish to ignore this item. Next, you should align the paper in the printer. Make sure that the print head is one inch below the top of the first sheet of paper. Even if you are using letterhead, you must follow this instruction (one inch below the PAPER TOP, not below the letterhead). If you are using letterhead, though, you should have told BillPower (in the CUS- TOMIZING routine) how many lines there are to the bottom of the let- terhead printing. Cases set for Occasional Billing When BillPower encounters a case set up for billing under the Occasional method, it will first ask itself whether the case has been billed previously. If not, a first bill will be printed. If a bill has been prepared previously, the screen will clear and BillPower will offer you the opportunity to designate which period you wish to bill. You may elect to prepare a new bill for only those transactions falling after the last date billed, or you may elect to re-prepare any of up to ten prior bills. To prepare a brand new bill, just tap RET. To re-prepare a prior bill, use the arrow keys to specify the earliest date you want to appear on the bill about to be prepared. BillPower will identify which of the earlier bills you wish to prepare by comparing the date you specify to the earliest date covered by each bill. Then, you'll be asked whether the bill about to be prepared is to span only the original bill's period, or whether you want this to be a special bill that covers everything from the beginning date you specified, through TODAY. BILLS 67 PRE-BILLS The top of a pre-bill will show selected items reflecting the case's current status. Such items include the current balance, which may differ from the final balance shown at the bottom of the bill (since the end of the month being billed will probably be earlier than the current date). The pre-bill will also contain a reference to the record number of each item reflected thereon. If you need to change an item, you will know exactly which record to edit before the actual bill is sent. The bottom of the pre-bill may contain a reminder ("Apply ... ___") to apply funds in the client's account to his debt. The remin- der may also be to the effect that you should consider charging the client the agreed upon fixed or contingent fee or to charge the client interest. If you wish to apply the funds about which you are being reminded, put a check mark in the blank space, so that your secretary will know that an appropriate record needs to be entered before the Actual Bills are prepared. For instance, if it were now time to charge the client the agreed-upon fixed fee, you would check "Apply Fixed Fee ___". Your secretary would then know that she has to make a service/fee entry for that case in the amount of the fixed fee before the Actual Bill for that case is prepared; otherwise, the fixed fee will not be charged. A pre-bill will show ALL the pertinent data for each transac- tion, even though the actual bill prepared for the same case may be prepared in a less detailed format and may have some information sup- pressed or expanded. Abbreviations MAY appear as such on pre-bills, but actual bills will spell out the items being abbreviated. Actual bills will not show items intended to be hidden, such as items whose descriptions begin with asterisks, but pre-bills will show them. The pre-bill is not intended to be a perfect reflection of the actual bill, but rather an informative tool to help you review what has been done during the period being billed. DEFERRED BILLING As you screen the items on a pre-bill, you may select some for editing, some for omission, and some for deferred billing. If you select a transaction for deferred billing, you may call the pertinent record to the screen in the appropriate Edit mode and press F7. Pres- sing F7 will result in that record's being skipped during actual bil- ling for the month in which the transaction took place. After the actual billing takes place, you will have the opportunity to forward the record to the current month's file, so that it will be picked up during the next billing cycle (unless, of course, it is again tagged for deferral when the current month is billed). BILLS 68 If the month you're billing now IS the current month, you won't be able to forward the deferred transactions to a future month's files, since they don't exist yet. Therefore, you must be sure to go through a SORT (in the ^Utilities module) for this month before you do bills for any future months. The act of chronologically sorting any month's records automatically forwards deferred items to the current month. This should present you no problems, since you will probably want to conduct a sort just before you do billing, anyway. STATEMENT RE-PREPARATION You should avoid having a bill prepared for a month preceding one for which another bill has already been prepared. For example, if February's bill has already been prepared, and you subsequently have January's prepared again, you will also have to re-prepare Feb- ruary's. The reason for this is that the beginning balance for the bill already prepared for February will have been based upon the en- ding balance for the January bill already prepared. If you were now to go back and change January's bill, the January ending balance might not be the same as it had been before. Therefore, the begin- ning balance for the February bill already prepared might no longer be accurate. Only if you prepare February's (and any other succeed- ing month's) bill again, will all beginning and ending balances be- come consistent again. "UPDATED COPY" BILLS BillPower will sometimes prepare statements that contain the nota- tion, "**** UPDATED COPY ****". The reason is that, after having prepared an (A)ctual statement for a case, you have subsequently altered the transaction data base upon which that statement was foun- ded. Assume, for instance, that, on February 20, you prepare a JAN89-FEB89 bill for the SMITJO1 case. Then, on February 26, you enter a new service for that case. When BillPower takes in that new service, it will realize that the bill already prepared for February (the JAN89-FEB89 bill) will need to be redone, to reflect the new February entry. Therefore, the next time you do a bill for SMITJO1, that bill will automatically include the period JAN89-FEB89, so that the client will be informed of the change. NOTE: Even if you waited until May to prepare the next bill, January and February would be included in that bill. Bill- Power would automatically set the period of that bill to "FEB89-MAY89", thus insuring inclusion the new transaction. To help keep the client from becoming confused at receiving a second bill covering a period for which a bill has already been received, the phrase, "UPDATED COPY", will be printed on the statement. BILLS 69 CUSTOMIZED BILL FORMATS If you like, you may develop your own billing formats. Each will consist of three files (developed with EDIT.EXE). The first will contain your return address, date, client's address, salutation and opening paragraph. The second will contain the format for the bill's transaction itemization. The third will contain your closing para- graph, signature block, etc. Your three files will contain tilde codes, so that BillPower will know where to substitute what data from the case and transaction files. Most of the tilde codes may be seen if you press the F5 key when using EDIT.EXE to create each file. All three files are named after the format number you wish to assign to the data they contain. For instance, if the three files were for billing format 15, they would be named, "15.OPN", "15.ITM", and "15.CLS", respectively. Note that the first file must end with ".OPN", the second with ".ITM", and the third with ".CLS". BillPower comes with three example files for billing format 11. As you might guess, they are called "11.OPN", "11.ITM", and "11.CLS". You should use those files as models for whatever billing formats you develop. The ITM file you set up must be IDENTICAL in general layout to the 11.ITM file. Every line beginning with a left curly bracket, "{", must be preserved. The only items you may change are on the lines immediately following those beginning with curly brackets. It would be a good idea to copy 11.ITM into your new ITM file when you first begin setting it up. After the 11.ITM file has been copied into the new ITM file, you may then modify it to suit your needs. To copy any file into a new file, go to the top line of the new file and press Ctrl-K, followed by "R"; then, name the file you wish to copy. BILLS 70 NOTE MODULE (BillPower Plus only) This module is useful for making generalized notes or entering memos applicable to your cases. You could, for instance, make a memo concerning a conversation you have had with Mr. Smith or concerning some research that you have done for the SMITJO1 case. To enter the Note module, press "N" while most any other menu is being displayed. Each note record consists of the entry date, the case which the note concerns, and up to 17 lines of information. Since they consume a considerable amount of disk space, you should be a brief as possible when you prepare notes. In order to save space, BillPower will omit any blank lines that exist in a note when it is saved to disk. If you absolutely need to have a blank line, you may force BillPower to keep it by making the line consist of over 70 blank spaces. You will note that one Hunt Gate allows you to hunt by a charac- ter sequence contained in the first line of the note, while another gate allows a search for the character sequence in ANY of the note's 17 lines. Since hunting through one line is faster than searching through 17, the hunt will go more quickly if you select Gate C (1st line) than if you select Gate B (any line). If you consistently put the most likely indexing words (such as Key numbers or the parties in- volved in meetings or conversations) on the first line of your notes, subsequent hunts for those words can be run faster by selecting Gate C. You should use Gate B only if you aren't sure of the lines on which your character sequences appear. NOTE MODULE 71 PEOPLE MODULE (BillPower Plus only) This module is designed to hold the name, address, phone number, and various miscellaneous data for each person you encounter in the course of your business. If you diligently enter the appropriate information for everyone involved with each case (client, accountant, attorney, consultant, witness, etc.), you will be able to run conf- licts of interest searches through your data. This module is also useful if you need to quickly find someone's telephone number or ad- dress or if you need to be quickly refreshed on your impression of someone you met many months (or years) ago. When you (M)ake an entry in this module, you will be expected to enter various items of information. One item is the case with which the person is associated. If this person is not necessarily associ- ated with a case (but being entered just for purposes of future ref- erence), you do not have to fill in this case item. Another item is the category into which this person falls. You may establish your own scheme of one- to eight-character categories (eg: `Jdg' for "judge"). This information will be helpful in con- flicts searches. If there are items of information that you think should be kept on record, but which are not specifically listed on the Edit screen, you may enter them in the generalized "Notes" section. To find a telephone number quickly, just enter the PEOPLE module, press `E' (for `Edit'), and then enter the last and first names of the person whose number you need. You might save some time by not enter- ing the first name. If you omit the first name, BillPower will find EVERY person with the last name you entered. If the first one found isn't the right one, press F6 to move on to the next, and the next, and so on. Entering only a last name may well work for "Zappa, Frank" (because there are so few Zappas), but may slow you down for "Smith, Fred" (since ALL Smiths would be found, one after the other). The (H)unt routine is similar to those found elsewhere in the program. Note that the maximum number of people this module can track is 4000. If this maximum is ever reached, you will be able to enter no more data until you have omitted some of the names. The (^O)mit rou- tine allows you to automatically omit all names associated with cases which have long since been omitted from the disk (you don't need to keep records of those people for conflicts searches if you are no longer handling the cases which involved them). Of course, as in other modules, you may also specify an individual record for omission by pressing ^O when that record is being Edited. But you will prob- ably find it most convenient to do a "mass" omission of ALL the per- sons associated with cases that have, themselves, been omitted. PEOPLE MODULE 72 In the (^O)mit routine, the only records that will be omitted will be those: 1) which have been specifically tagged for omission; or 2) which were entered into the People file before a date you will be asked to specify AND which are associated with cases that have been omitted. If a name was entered into the people file after the date you specify OR if it is associated with a case which is still active, that name will NOT be omitted, unless you have previously tagged it for omission. PEOPLE MODULE 73 UTILITIES MODULE You may enter the Utilities module from the MAIN MENU by pres- sing ^U. Once in the module, you will be able to choose from among the options discussed below. BACK UP DATA FILES If you wish to make backup or archive copies of your current data files, select this option. BillPower relies upon the backup program ("BACKUP.COM or BACKUP.EXE") that was supplied with your computer. Therefore, make sure that this program is in the ManageX directory or in your computer's "path". Since you may have to use more than one disk for the backup, you will have to keep track of the order in which the disks are used for backing up. Therefore, be sure that you have labeled your backup disks something like, "BillPower Jan89-Aug89 Data Backup (Even days) #1, "BillPower Jan89-Aug89 Data Backup (Even days) #2", "BillPower Jan89-Aug89 Data Backup (Odd days) #1", "BillPower Jan89-Aug89 Data Backup (Odd days) #2", etc. The computer will tell you when to change disks, if it is necessary to do so. Note that the backup disk labels include the months whose data is contained on the disks. This infor- mation may be extremely helpful after you have placed the backup disks into archive status. If, sometime in the future, you want to find the most recent archive files a certain month's transaction data, you need only look at the labels on the disks to determine which were made at the latest date. If the message, "Bad command or file name", appears on the screen, you failed to copy the BACKUP program into the ManageX direc- tory. Just exit BillPower, copy the BACKUP program into the ManageX directory, re-enter BillPower, and try this option again. If you feel confident enough with DOS, you may elect not to have BillPower do your backing up, but to do it yourself. You might save some time and disk space if you do the copying directly in DOS. The files you need to copy each day are: 1) those whose names begin with "M-" and end with ".LB?"; and 2) those whose names begin with "MonYr*" and end with ".LB?", where "MonYr" is the current Month and Year (eg: "DEC87"). Assume, for example, that the current month were December 1989. To copy all the latest data files, copy all the "DEC89*.LB?" files and all the "M-*.LB?" files to the backup disk. Remember never to enter a new month without having prepared archive copies of the previous month's data. RESTORE BACKUP FILES FROM BACKUP DISK If something happens to harm your hard disk, you will need to copy your data files from one of your backups by selecting this op- UTILITIES MODULE 74 tion. BillPower relies upon the restore program ("RESTORE.COM or RES- TORE.EXE") that was supplied with your computer. Therefore, make sure that this program is in the ManageX directory or in your computer's "path". You will be asked whether you wish to "Restore (A)ll the files on the floppy, or only (M)onthly transaction files". If you answer "A", then all the files on the backup floppy will be copied to your hard disk. These files include not only the monthly transaction (service/fee, disbursement, receipt, and account), but also such per- ennial files as the case and employee files. If you are restoring files from a backup disk other than the current month's, the peren- nial files will not be current, and it is doubtful that you will want to copy them. They will take the place of the current case and em- ployee files if they are restored from an old backup. If you are restoring from the current month's backup disk(s), you probably will not mind if the perennial files are copied along with the monthly transaction files. If you are restoring files because your primary files have been damaged, you will ALMOST CERTAINLY want the perennial files to be restored. To restore ALL the files on the backup disk(s), including the perennial files, answer "A". If you want only a certain month's transaction data restored, answer "M". You would select "M" if, for instance, you had previous- ly erased a past month's transaction data from your hard disk and now needed to add it again, so that a report you desire could include that month. If you answer "M", you will be asked to enter the "Mon Yr" of the month whose transaction data you wish to restore. For example, if you wanted to add December 1989's data, you would enter "DEC89". Since you are restoring data files to a hard disk, you may have to insert several backup disks into the backup disk drive, one after the other. Make sure that you insert backup disk #1 when you are told to, and follow the instructions on the screen. The computer will tell you when to change disks, if it is necessary to do so. If the message, "Bad command or file name", appears on the screen, you failed to copy the RESTORE program into the ManageX direc- tory. Just exit BillPower, copy the RESTORE program into the ManageX directory, re-enter BillPower, and try this option again. NOTE: Never restore files piecemeal. In other words, when you need to fix files that have been damaged, you must res- tore ALL the files from your last backup. Don't attempt to restore only a few, because inconsistencies between the current files and those that have been restored from a re- cent backup will distort your data. UTILITIES MODULE 75 SORT TRANSACTIONS CHRONOLOGICALLY Occasionally, the transactions (such as time slips, disbursement and account records) that you enter will not be in chronological or- der. For instance, you may enter a time slip for 20 January after you have already entered one for 25 January. If you do not place the records into chronological order, the bills you produce will reflect out-of-order transactions. This causes no problems other than making your bills a little less logical than would be the case if they were in chronological order. If you would like to place your records into the right order before you send out your bills, select this option by pressing "S". After you enter the month whose records you wish to sort chronologi- cally, BillPower will take care of the matter for you. The process will be slow, so you will not want to do this too often -- once at the end of each month will suffice. If you need to sort more than one month's transactions, you will have to select this option more than once (one time for each month). ERASE DATA FILES This option allows you to erase old data files for a past month or year. The data files are those service, disbursement, receipt, and account transaction files which are maintained each month. Re- member that you will want to keep your hard disk from accumulating too many old files that needlessly take up disk space. Every couple of months you should consider erasing the old files from the hard disk. To erase such files, use this option. You will be asked to enter the "Mon Yr of monthly (or Yr of yearly) files to erase". If you want to erase only one month's files, enter the "Mon Yr" of that month. For instance, if you wanted to erase March 1989's files from the hard disk, you would enter, "MAR89". To erase all the files for an entire year, enter the "Yr". For example, to erase all of 1989's files, you would enter, "89". You should not erase files for a month or year unless ALL bills for ALL cases have been prepared for that month or year. If the data for the pertinent months has been erased from the hard disk, the pro- gram will "hang up" when it attempts to prepare a bill covering those months. Ideally, you should try to keep as much data on the hard disk as you think you are likely ever to need on short notice. That may amount to one, two, or three year's-worth. You are, of course, limited by the size of your hard disk, and the uses to which you put your computer. Data that is so old that you probably won't need it very frequently should be archived on backup diskettes and erased from the hard disk, thus freeing space for current data. UTILITIES MODULE 76 Of course, you should NEVER, NEVER erase any files unless you have made archive backup copies of them. CASE RE-INDEXING If you ever try to edit a case, and BillPower can't seem to find it, the problem may be that the case file's index has been corrupted. There are many possible reasons for this problem, ranging from power surges and unreliable hardware to faulty software and memory-resident program interference. To re-index the case file, simply choose this option. Your ac- count and people files will also be indexed, along with your cases. If you wish, you may have the program also check for duplicate case numbers (BillPower shouldn't allow you to enter two cases with the same case number, but it may if the index is faulty at the time you enter the second one). Such checking will slow down the re- indexing operation, so use it only if you think you need to. When the re-indexing is complete, press ESC. You should then be able to edit any case you wish. If the problem still isn't fixed, however, you'll have to select the (R)estore option, discussed above. TRANSACTION RE-INDEXING If you notice that certain transactions are not appearing on bills as they should (or if you're unable to edit those transactions), your transaction file's index may have become corrupted. There are many possible reasons for this problem, ranging from power surges and unreliable hardware to faulty software and memory-resident program interference. To re-index the transaction file, choose this option. You'll have to tell BillPower the "Mon Yr" whose transactions you want in- dexed. After indexing that "Mon Yr", you may designate another, and another, etc., until all the files you wish have been re-indexed. When you're done, press ESC to return to the MAIN MENU. If, after all that, you notice that the correct transactions are still not appearing on your bills, you'll have to select the (R)estore option, discussed above. UTILITIES MODULE 77 CATEGORIES, AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM CATEGORIES & ABBREVIATIONS The M-LBCODE.DAT file contains three types of information, all conforming to the same general format. It holds a listing of each 1) service code, 2) income category, and 3) expense category. Each line in the file consists of an abbreviation (from 1 to 3 characters long) and a description of what the abbreviation means. Other option- al items are also included, as described below. You are encouraged to change this file with EDIT, so that it fits your needs exactly. Go to EDIT (to examine M-LBCODE.DAT) by pressing ^E when the MAIN MENU is displayed. When the EDIT menu is on the screen, press `E' (for "Expense/Income/Service" file) to modify M-LBCODE.DAT. The file may have a total of up to 200 lines. The items in each line must be lined up EXACTLY, and each line must end with a carriage RETurn. The abbreviation may be from one to three characters in length and must begin in column 1. A description of what is being abbreviated should begin in column 6, 7, 8 or 9, and may extend to column 30. The TAB key will help you align your data. You may have blank lines which contain no information, and you may have lines containing headings, but you may have no more than 200 lines. Income/Expense Category Numbers If you are using a line for an income or expense description, the third item (beginning at column 33) may be the income or expense category, and the first item (the abbreviation) may be left blank if you wish. The category may be any number between 1 and 9999. Do not use zero. Begin your category entry at column 33. If it is an income category, begin the entry with "I-"; if it is an expense category, begin it with "E-". For example, an income category is represented by "I-1001", while "E-2054" represents an expense category. Do NOT use the same numbers for both expense and income categories. For ins- tance, do not designate both these categories: I-2054 and E-2054. And DO NOT USE FRACTIONS to designate categories -- only WHOLE numbers are allowed. Optional Category Levels There may be up to four levels of income and expense categories. The first is the income-expense distinction mentioned above ("E-" for expense, "I-" for income). The next level is designated by a descrip- tion (the second item in each line, remember?) containing ONLY capital letters. The level following that one must have at least one letter CATEGORIES 78 of the description capitalized, but NOT ALL the letters. And the last level must not have ANY capitalized letters. Take a look at the sam- ple M-LBCODE.DAT file provided with BillPower to see examples of these category levels. Optional Service Rates If a line is being used for a SERVICE, rather than a disbursement or receipt, the fourth item (beginning at column 43) may be a charge rate for that service. You may enter a TmKeepr Hourly Rate Level by entering "L" and the number of the rate level at which the service will be charged. For example, to charge the service at each emplo- yee's rate level 1, enter "L1" at column 43. To charge a FLAT rate, rather than a TmKeepr rate LEVEL, enter an hourly rate, preceded by a "$". For example, if the service (such as a long distance call sur- charge) is to be charged at $30 per hour, regardless of who does the work on it, enter "$30" at column 43. If a line has a charge rate at the end, that rate will be charged for any service whose Description (entered in the SERVICES/FEES module) BEGINS with the corresponding abbreviation. To charge a FIXED AMOUNT for the service, rather than merely an hourly rate, enter that amount, preceded by a "T". The charge rates/amounts contained in this file take precedence over any that would otherwise apply to a rendered service IF (and only if) the service Description BEGINS with the abbreviation to which the charge rate applies. AREAS OF BUSINESS The M-LBAREA.DAT file supplied with BillPower contains a listing of the areas of business. You should edit this file to fit your needs. It should consist of no more than 24 lines (make sure that no blank lines remain at the end of the file). Each line may be up to 77 characters long. Unlike the M-LBCODE.DAT file, you are not required to line up certain information within M-LBAREA.DAT. You may arrange the file any way you want, as long as the 24 X 77 limits mentioned above are not violated. NUMBERING SYSTEM PROPOSAL The best numbering system is one that allows you to easily re- member each case or account number. It is recommended that such a number consist of the first four or five letters from the client's last name and the first two or three letters from his first. Under this system, the case number for the first case you handle for John Smith would be SMITJO1. The second case for Mr. Smith would be SMIT- JO2. Also decide upon a consistent pattern for numbering your ac- counts. It is recommended that you begin the number of each account AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM 79 belonging to the same class of accounts with the same short alphanu- meric sequence. For instance, you could begin all accounts pertain- ing to the firm's assets with "A-" (eg: "A-BIGSOFA"). You could start the numbers of all accounts payable with "P-" (eg: "P-AT&T"). All client accounts (such as trusts and retainers) could begin with "C-" (eg: "C-SMITJO1"), and so, on. If you follow a consistent pattern in numbering accounts, you will be able to sort through your records during (H)unts for particu- lar categories of accounts. To find all records pertaining to ANY asset, for instance, you would define the Account Number Hunt Gate as "A-". When you pressed F6 to begin the hunt, BillPower would find all records pertaining to the A-BIGSOFA, A-TYPWRT#1, A-CHAIR#1, etc., ac- counts, but it would not find anything on the C-SMITJO1 account. Of course, if you had carelessly named a client account something like "C-SMITPA-1", it would also be picked up in the hunt for physical as- set account information, since it would also contain the character sequence, "A-". Try to limit the use of hyphens and other delimiters (such as "/",":", and ",") to character sequences at the beginning of account numbers. You may establish sub-categories of accounts. If, for instance, you wanted furniture to be a sub-category of assets ("A-", remember?), you could begin all such accounts with "FA-" (where "F" is for "fur- niture" and "A" is for "assets"). Equipment might be in the "EA-" category. A hunt for all accounts containing "A-" would find FA-BIG- SOFA, FA-CHAIR, EA-TYPWRT#1, and A-GENERAL, among others (since each of those "numbers" contains "A-"). But if you wanted to hunt for only "FA-" accounts, then only the FA-BIGSOFA and FA-CHAIR accounts would be found. AREAS OF BUSINESS, NUMBERING SYSTEM 80 USING BILLPOWER WITH OLD CASES AND ACCOUNTS If you intend to use BillPower with cases or accounts that were opened before you obtained BillPower, you will have to enter their data into BillPower's files. You should set up the records for these accounts and cases in the same manner as for your new ones. Likewise, you should enter transactions just as you do with your new ones. Treat them in every respect in the manner that you treat your new ac- counts and cases, except as described below. Normally, when BillPower prepares a bill, it will include a bal- ance brought forward from the preceding month. However, when you FIRST BEGIN using the program, its data base will contain no infor- mation about what the balance was at the end of the last month (or ANY information at all, for that matter). The first transaction you enter for each case, therefore, should be the balance brought forward from your manual (or old computer) system. If the client owes you money, you should enter the amount as a SERVICE; if you owe him money, it should be an ADJUSTMENT (of the "write-off" variety). In either case, the service/adjustment's description should be something like, "Balance prior to computerized billing." The first bill prepared will contain this entry, instead of the usual "balance-forward" line (which will be found on subsequent bills). NOTE: Under no circumstances should a transaction entry for any case be dated more than three months prior to the actual date you entered that CASE into BillPower's data base. Previously-opened accounts also need to be opened with BillPower. Go to the GENERAL LEDGER module and (M)ake a deposit for each such ac- count. The deposit should be in the amount of the current account balance. That's all there is to it. If, for some reason, there is a negative balance in an account, you will have to enter it as a with- drawal (instead of a deposit). OLD CASES AND ACCOUNTS 81 MESSAGES Following are many of the messages which BillPower may give you. Only the least obvious messages are included, and they are arranged, as well as possible, in alphabetical order. "Aborting because [hard disk] is full" There is no more room on the hard disk for the information that BillPower is attempting to write to it. Therefore, the attempt to write that data has been aborted. Whatever new record or file data has just been prepared has been lost because there is no place to store it. Your problem is that you have too much information on the hard disk. The solution is to remove that information which is no longer needed. More likely, you have allowed a build-up of unneeded data which should have been omitted long ago. Look through your case records. Do you really need to continue tracking all of them? If not, omit those you no longer need to follow. Of course, you should make sure that you have archive copies of all data before you omit them. Also check your accounts and employee records, omitting those which are no longer needed. If you feel that you cannot omit any BillPower data, you should exit the program and review files kept on the hard disk's other sub- directories. Perhaps some of those files can be transferred to arch- ive floppies and then deleted from the hard disk. "Acceptable master record [number] does not exist" You have attempted to assign, as a masterRcrd, a case which does not exist on the hard disk. Before you subordinate any case to a masterRcrd, you must first have created the master. If you are attempting to set up a "client" record, it will act as its OWN master. Therefore, its masterRcrd and Case Number must be identical. Then, when you set up that master's subordinate cases, each will have its own individual CASE number, but you will assign each a masterRcrd number identical to THIS record's masterRcrd num- ber. "Cannot prepare such an early bill for [case name]" You are attempting to re-prepare a bill that was originally pre- pared quite long ago. BillPower does not have enough stored informa- tion to allow you to do so. Generally, you may re-prepare a bill MESSAGES 82 that was originally sent as long as about a year ago, but this factor may vary, depending upon how many times you have prepared Actual Mailings for the case. You may not re-prepare the bill. Just press RET to skip over the case and proceed. This message will sometimes appear if you attempt to prepare a case's bill for a period earlier than the earliest data available for that case. The message will also sometimes appear if you attempt to prepare a bill for a period beginning more than about 10 months ago. BillPower will not prepare such old bills. "Case not on disk ... " There are three possible causes of this message. The first is that the case number you have just entered cannot be found on the hard disk. If you inadvertently typed in the wrong number, you should re-designate the case. The second possible cause of the message is that a transaction has been encountered which refers to a case not on the disk. This is probably a case which has been omitted from the CASES file, but which still has transactions which have not been omitted. Just press RET. The third cause is that you are trying to enter a disbursement, receipt or time slip for a MasterRcrd whose name begins with "*". Such masterRcrds are meant to act not as cases but as mere "client records". Enter the transaction for one of the masterRcrd's subordinate cases. "Corrupted data" Something has damaged the database since the last time a data integrity check was done (probably yesterday). You'd be wise to res- tore data from day-before-yesterday's backup (since yesterday after- noon's is probably just a copy of files that were somehow corrupted yesterday). If, after restoring that data, BillPower still finds cor- rupted records, you should fall back to the next-most-recent backup, and so on. As a last resort (if restoring fails), you may wish to select the Indexing option in the ^Utilities module. Anytime you want to check your data again, just go to BillPower's Menu and press ^Y. "Desired Account Balance: ... Actual Balance: ... " You have made an entry which has brought the retainer account balance below the Minimum Acceptable Balance set when you opened the MESSAGES 83 account. BillPower is just reminding you of this fact. You might want to request that your client send a payment to bring the account's balance up to the Desired level. If no such payment is made before the next bill, BillPower will automatically include such a request on the bill. "Disk Error" An error occurred while the program was accessing the disk. The nature of the problem will be found in the second-to-last set of par- entheses. You may need to "pack" or "optimize" your hard disk's files with a program such as "Disk Optimizer", "Vopt", "PC Tools", or "Mace Utilities". Or you may have a serious hardware problem requiring the eventual replacement or re-formatting of your hard disk. This may be your first warning of an eventual hard disk "crash". "End of file reached..." This message means that the end of the file through which a search is being conducted has been reached. If you were looking for a particular record, and it did not show up before the file end was reached, double-check your parameters (or gates) for the search. Make sure that you are checking the appropriate date range and that you are in the appropriate module. If you are searching for a speci- fic record in either the ADJUSTMENT or the RECEIPTS module, and you cannot locate it, try the other module (adjustment and receipt re- cords are kept in the same file). "First MasterRcrd to be processed (if not the first one in the file)" This message occurs whenever you are preparing bills for ALL cases in the file. You would normally elect to begin the bill prep- aration with the first case in the file. To do so, just press RET. If, however, you wish to start with a case other than the first one, you may enter its MasterRcrd Number here. This feature is handy if your printer has malfunctioned in the middle of bill preparation. When the problem is fixed, and you are ready to resume the bill pre- paration, you would not want to start all over. You would just enter the case number of the case where the malfunction occurred, and Bill- Power would begin the bill preparation with that case (or with its masterRcrd). "If [case number's] balance from the last bill is not..." It's been more than nine months since this case was last billed (if, indeed, it's ever been billed at all). As a result, BillPower may have lost the case's balance to be brought forward from the last bill (if any). Here, you are being asked to enter the balance due that was shown on the last bill sent to the client. If the case has MESSAGES 84 not been billed before, just enter "0.00". After your entry, Bill- Power will prepare the bill, using whatever you've entered as the bal- ance brought forward. "If there are any cases subordinate to this one..." You should not omit a master that has a subordinate case. To do so could cause those subordinates to be overlooked in some searches through the case file. If you are not SURE that there are NOT subordinates to the case you are trying to omit, answer "Y", and the omit tagging routine will be aborted. You may then find out whether there really are such sub- ordinate cases by (H)unting for all cases with the masterRcrd number in question. If you still want to omit that master record, you should first assign a different masterRcrd number to its subordinates (in which case the FIRST of the present master record's subordinates must be the new master). "Improbable date, since..." Today's date cannot fall before the month in which fell the last date that BillPower was used. It also cannot fall beyond 28 days fol- lowing the last date used. To allow such anomalies could cause Bill- Power's file updating procedure to produce errors. You must insure that files are created for every month that BillPower has been in use. If more than 28 days really HAVE elapsed since the last use, you should first enter a date falling within that 28-day period. This will allow files for that month to be created and updated, even though you may not intend to make entries into them. "[date] is an unacceptable date" You have used the wrong format for a date entry, or the date you have entered is out of BillPower's acceptable range. Try using the "Da Mon Yr" format (eg: enter 15 December 1987 as "15 Dec 87") or the "Mon Yr" format ("Dec 87"). "Master record [number] does not exist" The case you have specified for this service or fee refers to a masterRcrd which does not exist. You have probably omitted that mas- terRcrd from the hard disk. Do not continue with this service or fee entry until you find out what happened to that masterRcrd. Just press F6 and then go to the Case (E)dit mode to see if you can find the case number specified as being missing. If you cannot find it, you will have to (M)ake it or change the reference to it in each case record which refers to it as a master. MESSAGES 85 "Mis-linked data..." Each morning, BillPower checks the integrity of your databases' indices. This message occurs if problems are found. The first thing you should do is to go to the ^Utilities module and choose the option to index your (C)ases. When that routine is finished, go back to the ^Utilities module and choose the option to index your (T)ransactions for the current month. Then, go to the Main Menu and press ^Y to run another data integrity check. If, after all this, there's still a problem, you'll need to restore data from day-before-yesterday's backup (since yesterday af- ternoon's probably is just a copy of the corrupted data). Just go to the ^Utilities module and select the Restore option. After data has been restored, return to the Main Menu and run another data integrity check by pressing ^Y again. If the problem persists, you'll have to restore from an earlier set of backup disks (aren't you glad you keep a minimum of four rotating sets of backup disks!). If, after all this, you STILL have problems, it's time to suspect a hard disk or other hardware problem (if you aren't already thinking about that). You may have to resign yourself to re-entering a sig- nificant part (if not all) of your database after your computer has been fixed. "month is wrong" You have entered a date containing a month which is out of BillPower's range. Make sure that you use only the first three let- ters of the month's name. Alternatively, you have entered a date for a month whose files are not open. Go back to a menu and again start the procedure which resulted in the message. "No Paper writing device PRN" This message is from DOS, not BillPower. Make sure that your printer has paper and that it is set to print. Then press "R" (for Retry). "No such code" This message is caused for one of two reasons. First, you may have just entered a backslash, which causes BillPower to look for an abbreviation. If an abbreviation matching the characters just pre- ceding the backslash is not found, this message will occur. MESSAGES 86 Second, you may have entered an expense or income code that does not exist. "Printer not ready" Either your printer is not "on line" and ready to receive data, or you're out of paper. "Retainer limit ... Billable+NonBillable this month ..." This note reminds you that this service or fee will cause the total service/fee charges for the month to exceed the monthly re- tainer limit set in this case's record. Since the limit has been exceeded, you are free to charge the client for your work. If you wish to charge the case for this transaction, you should enter the amount to be charged and finish the entry with a ^C (for 'charge') instead of the usual RET. "Runtime Error 20_" The program encountered a memory problem and had to abort. Per- haps you have insufficient memory to run the program (512K should be enough). Or, you may be running some memory-resident programs that consume memory or otherwise cause memory conflicts with primary app- lications. Or, you may need to add a line to your root directory's CONFIG.SYS file that says, "FILES=40". Finally, your computer may have a faulty bank of memory chips or a parity error that causes the usable memory to "top out" at a low byte count. "See Statement Re-preparation Instructions" You must re-prepare bills for months subsequent to the month just billed. See "Statement Re-preparation" in the BILLS section of these instructions. "Serious Error" The nature of the problem will be found in the second-to-last set of parentheses, while the location of the problem should be found in the last set. "(T)ag an account for omission, or (O)mit tagged accounts" You have pressed ^O while in the TRUST MENU. BillPower now needs to know whether you wish to tag a single account for future omission MESSAGES 87 or whether you wish to actually omit all the accounts previously tagged for omission. "That ID is not assigned" You have attempted to designate an ID number that has not been assigned to an employee. Make sure that your employee file contains an employee with that ID. "That record is not in [MonYr] [record type] file" You have designated a record number greater than the largest one in the file. "The accounts you want adjusted don't balance" You have indicated that you want two accounts to be adjusted when this record is saved. But doing so would force your account out of balance. If you're depositing money to a Credit account, you must either withdraw the same amount fom another Credit account or deposit that amount to a Debit account. If you're withdrawing money from a Debit account, you must either deposit it to another Debit account, or withdraw that amount from a Credit account. You MUST understand the basic concepts of double-entry accounting if you're attempting to make two account entries at once. "The entry just made is too old..." You have just made an entry which would require updating bills for which BillPower no longer holds pertinent information. You should restore the record to its condition just before the entry was made. If the entry was a mere change to a record that already existed, go to the (E)dit mode and change it back. If the entry was a new trans- action, omit it. This message will probably appear again after you have taken the corrective action, and you may ignore it then. If you want a bill to reflect the change you are here being asked to eliminate, you should enter the transaction during the cur- rent month, not a past one. "The master record cannot, itself, have a masterRcrd" You have attempted to assign to a case a masterRcrd which, it- self, looks to yet another record as its master. This is not al- lowed. A record which is, itself, subordinate to another may not be a masterRcrd. MESSAGES 88 "This item cannot be changed..." Certain items may not be changed in the Hunt mode. Try making the change in the Edit mode. Even in the edit mode, though, there may be an item that cannot be changed, in which case the only re- course is to negate the effect of that record by (^O)mitting it and then (M)aking a new one with the proper data. In particular, you may never change a Case Number in the CASES MODULE. To allow you to do so would potentially leave "in limbo" several transactions (services, disbursements, etc.) that had been linked to that case. "This record was created along with..." The transaction reflected in this record was made automatically at the same time another transaction was made. You may not edit this record directly, since doing so could cause an imbalance among all the records created along with it. The only way to effect a change here is to edit the record cited in the message. When THAT record is changed, all the records originally created along with it will also be updated accordingly. Bear in mind that the original record may have been created in the Disbursements, Receipts, or Adjustments module (despite the fact that you may now in the General Ledger module). If so, you'll have to go to the appropriate module to edit it. Just ask yourself what sort of entry the original was. If it was a receipt, you won't find that entry's record in any module other than the Receipts module. The same goes for disbursements and adjustments. "TO DATE: Srvc/Fees ..." This message appears at the bottom of the screen when entering a service or fee. You are being told some of the TOTALS accumulated TO DATE (not including the record presently being entered) for this case. This status report may be useful for determining whether you wish to charge the client for the service you are currently entering. "Too little room on disk..." You have too little disk space remaining to allow for the crea- tion of a scratch file during the CASE record (^O)mit routine. Del- ete some unneeded files from the disk before trying to enter the pro- gram again. The hard disk must have free disk space of an amount somewhat greater than the size of your M--CASES.LBF file. MESSAGES 89 "Too many accounts; omit unneeded ones -- press RET" The account you are attempting to create would take the total number of accounts over the maximum which BillPower can follow. You should press RET and then tag for omission all accounts which are no longer active. Then you should (^O)mit the tagged accounts from the GENERAL LEDGER MENU. "Too many records in [file type] file" The record you are attempting to create would take the total number of records of that type over the maximum which BillPower can follow. Alternatively, you would have too little disk space after creating the record to allow for the creation of a scratch file dur- ing the CASE record (^O)mit routine. "Too Many Users" An attempt has been made to use BillPower with more users than are allowed by your registration. This message may also occur if one or more users have exited BillPower in an unusual manner (as would be the case, for instance, if power to a computer was lost). If this is the case, you must first make sure that no computer on the net is using BillPower. Then, load BillPower on the server computer and press ALT-1 at the main menu. After this is done, each station may then log into the program as usual. "Total Srvc/Fee Max: ... To date: ... This charge adjusted to..." The service or fee you have just entered brings the total ser- vices and fees charged to this case over the "Total Srvc/Fee Max" established in the this case's record. In order to prevent this max- imum from being exceeded, BillPower has adjusted the charge for this service or fee to the greatest amount which will not cause the max- imum to be violated. If you wish to override the program's automatic protection against accidental overcharging, you may do so by entering the amount you wish to charge and ending the entry with a ^C (for 'charge') instead of the usual RET. If you wish to change the "Total Srvc/Fee Max" for this case, you will have to go to the CASE module and edit this case's record. "Waiting on..." If BillPower has been invoked for use on a LAN, this message oc- curs if you try to use a function that may potentially change the data base and if someone else is already conducting a file-changing opera- MESSAGES 90 tion. BillPower will wait until the other person has finished before letting you "in" (and, therefore, locking everyone else "out"). If you can't afford to wait, you may press the ESC key. In rare in- stances (eg: power has been lost to one of the computers on the LAN), BillPower will give you this message erroneously. If you wish, you may FORCE BillPower to let you access the desired function if you press (Ctrl-F) while this message is being displayed. Before you do, however, make absolutely SURE that everyone else on the LAN is at the main menu (or not using BillPower at all), or else DATA MAY BE LOST! "Write fault error writing device PRN -- Abort, Retry, Ignore" This message is given by DOS, not by BillPower. You are being told that the computer is trying to send something to the printer, but that the printer, for some reason is not accepting it. You are offered the three choices of Aborting, Retrying, and Ignoring. Insure that your printer is on, that paper is inserted, and that it is properly set to print. Then press "R" (for Retry). The compu- ter will again try to send the data to the printer. If the same mes- sage reappears, recheck your printer setup and press "R" again. Use the Ignore and Abort options only as a last resort, since they may result in the program's aborting. "You must re-do [case number] bills ..." Subsequent to your having prepared the cited case's bill for a particular period, you have changed some transaction data which would affect that period's bill (as well as bills for subsequent periods). You must, therefore, re-prepare a bill for all periods whose balances might be affected by the change(s). BEGIN WITH THE BILL FOR THE MONTH WHOSE DATE IS MENTIONED IN THE MESSAGE, AND DO EACH SUCCESSIVE MONTH (or other regular billing period) IN TURN. Of course, if you have not already sent bills for those periods, you may ignore this prompt. "You want to use the open/close toggle?" You have pressed ^C while in the Case Edit mode. ^C opens or closes a case. If you intended to press ^C, and you want to open or close the case, press the "Y" key; otherwise, press "N", and BillPower will store that case's information as it now stands and take you back to the CASE MENU. MESSAGES 91 BILLPOWER ON A LOCAL AREA NETWORK When invoked for use on a LAN, the program utilizes file locking to prevent two users from simultaneously attempting to change infor- mation in the data base. Though only one user at a time can Make or Edit a record, any user can Hunt through the data base for information at almost any time (unless he's doing a Full-Screen-Edit-type hunt, which allows records to be edited). If your LAN defaults to the assumtion that you want it to auto- matically lock files for you, you may have problems with BillPower. BillPower, not your LAN, must decide when to lock which files. Make sure that your LAN is configured to give ALL users complete access to ALL files in the server's MANAGEX directory. Make sure that ALL prog- ram and data files are "sharable" (eg: immediately after installing the program onto a Novell workstation, enter "FLAG *.* S" at the DOS prompt in the directory containing BillPower). Also make sure that each workstation's CONFIG.SYS file contains a line that says, "FILES=40". The fact that your server may have such a line in it's CONFIG.SYS file may do your workstations no good whatso- ever. IMPORTANT: If you're a REGISTERED user (keep reading if you're not), you must have a copy of BillPower that's been prepared for the maximum number of users you intend to have on the LAN. If you use a non-LAN version (or a LAN version that's not prepared for as many users as you actually have on the net), the program may appear to work properly in most ins- tances, but you'll be running the risk of losing data. If the number of users on your net ever increases beyond the number for which you're registered, you must be sure to up- date your registration and install a copy of the program de- signed for more users. If you forget to do so, you may lose data. Therefore, it's a good idea to register, not necessar- ily for the number of users you presently have, but for the maximum number you anticipate may eventually be on the net. A copy of the program should be installed on each workstation in the net. This is done by placing the registered diskette into the workstation's drive A and entering "A:INSTALL A: C:" (assuming that the workstation's hard disk is drive C). If a workstation lacks its own hard disk, you may create a dir- ectory for that station on the server's hard disk, directly off the root. Then, install the program into the station's private directory. To do so, log into the new directory, place the BillPower diskette into drive A, and copy the UPGRD.EXE file, if it exists, to the new directory. Then, enter "A:BPP1", which will cause some file to be extracted from an archive into the new directory. Follow that with "A:BPP2" and "A:BPPMISC". When you've finished extracting files, and 92 if you're a registered user, enter "UPGRD" and type in your serial number. In case you'd prefer to maintain a SINGLE copy of the program on the system, as opposed to multiple copies for all the workstaions, that subject will be discussed shortly. Basically, you'll just run the normal install routine (eg: "INSTALL A: F:") to load the program into MANAGEX directory on the server. But you'll still need to main- tain a dedicated directory for each workstation from which that work- station will access the program. Read on. Each workstaion will need its own BP.BAT file. Start with the one provided with BillPower and insert an extra line near the top, just above below the line that reads, "cls". This extra line should direct the workstation station to look to the server subdirectory con- taining BillPower's data. Assume, for instance, that the server's hard disk is referred to as drive "F" and that drive "F" has a "MAN- AGEX" directory containing all of the BillPower data files used by the LAN's stations. In this case, the line to insert into the station's BP.BAT file would be: cd F:\MANAGEX Each workstation's BP.BAT file also needs to reflect both its own user's ID and that of the program's main user (that is, the person chiefly responsible for maintaining the data base). Find the line in the BP.BAT file that begins with, "billpowr". After the word "billpowr", you need to add eight parameters, each separated by a space. The first four may already have been set (see the SETTING UP section of these instructions), but if they're not, just substitute an "x" for each one. The fifth parameter should be a 1- to 3-letter ID of the main user. The sixth parameter should be a 1- to 3-letter ID for this specific station's user. For example, if Jane Jones is the program's main user, the fifth parameter following "billpowr" in each station's BP.BAT file might be "JJ". If the user of a specific work- station is Allen W. Bosley, that station's BP.BAT file might specify "AB" at the sixth parameter. That station's BP.BAT file might, there- fore, have a line that reads, "BILLPOWR x x x x JJ AWB" IMPORTANT: Make absolutely sure that each station's BP.BAT file contains the SAME fifth parameter following "BILLPOWR" (since the main terminal doesn't change). Also ensure that no two stations have the same sixth parameter (since each individual station is DIFFERENT). If you violate either rule, you run the risk of losing data, despite the fact the program may appear to be operating properly. Once you set up each sta- tion's BP.BAT file, you might want to write-protect it, to prevent it's being changed by a user. 93 The seventh parameter tells the program which of the server directories will hold its data base. If, for instance, a given sta- tion refers to that directory as F:\MANAGEX, the seventh parameter should be "F:\MANAGEX" (eg: "BILLPOWR x x x x JJ AWB F:\MANAGEX"). The eighth parameter following "billpowr" should be the drive and directory from which the workstation will be running BillPower. For example, BILLPOWR x x x x JJ AWB F:\MANAGEX C:\MANAGEX tells the program that this workstaion's "home" directory is MANAGEX on drive C. It also specifies the MANAGEX directory on drive F as the data-holding area. If you wish to load only a SINGLE copy of the program onto the server (as opposed to separate copies in each workstation's subdirec- tory), make sure that it's placed into the same directory that will hold the common database (hopefully, a MANAGEX directory). Install the program from the distribution diskette directly into the common database directory, not into each workstation's "home" directory. Copy the BP.BAT file into each workstation's directory and then erase it from the common database directory. Next, go to each workstation's directory and modify the BP.BAT file as described earlier. Each work- station's BP.BAT file should contain a line similar to the one shown above, but you need to stretch it out to eleven parameters, the elev- enth of which must be "1". Examples: BILLPOWR x x x x JJ AWB F:\MANAGEX F:\AWB x x 1 BILLPOWR x x x x JJ AWB F:\MANAGEX F:\AWB x mr 1 Finally, if you're using only a SINGLE copy of the program on the server, add a few lines at the bottom of the BP.BAT file that cause the computer to log back into the workstation's "home" direc- tory just before exiting. Example: F: CD\AWB CLS Note that the screen colors, printer, and other Customization items will be identical for all workstations that access a common copy of the program in the database directory. Those workstations that re- quire different customizations should have separate copies of the program installed in their "home" directories, and their BP.BAT files should NOT contain an eleventh parameter of "1". NOTE: No directory path name used with BillPower may exceed eight characters in length. 94 The BP.BAT file may also contain references to other programs: INPUT, EXPORT. You need to make sure that each of these references is followed by parameters identical to those that follow "billpowr". Examples: if not exist util.bat input x x x x JJ AWB F:\MANAGEX F:\AWB x x 1 billpowr x x x x JJ AWB F:\MANAGEX F:\AWB x x 1 export x x x x JJ AWB F:\MANAGEX F:\AWB x x 1 After you've customized each station's BP.BAT file, you'll find that the program works much as it does as single-user software. The main differences are that: 1) BillPower will occasionally delay a user's entering something, as it waits for another user to finish some process that could potentially change the data base; and 2) only the main (primary user's) terminal will be able to perform certain func- tions (such as ^Editing with EDIT). 95 POP-UP BILLPOWER You may find it convenient to have BillPower available at all times. Let's say that you're using your word processor and get a call from a client who's inquiring about his current balance due. Normal- ly, you'd have to save your document, exit the word processor, and then load BillPower. Then, when you're done with BillPower, you have to exit it, load your word processor, find your document and continue with what you were doing before the phone call. Wouldn't it be convenient if you could just press a couple of keys to call up BillPower, even when you're in the middle of using your word processor? Well, you can, as long as you follow the ins- tructions contained in this section. BillPower must first be loaded into memory, where it will linger in the background until you press a "hot-key" combination to call it to the screen. When you do so, whatever the computer was just doing will be suspended and placed into the background, while BillPower is brought to the screen. When you've taken care of your BillPower busi- ness, press the ESC key. Doing so will force BillPower back into the background (where it will lurk until you press the hot-key again), while your prior work will pop back into the foreground (onto the screen). To prime BillPower for pop-up (memory-resident) service, simply enter "BP MR", instead of just "BP", at the DOS prompt. If that doesn't work, you'll need to copy the BP.BAT to a file called BPMR.BAT and modify the new file. BP.BAT should be used for standard use, while BPMR.BAT will be used for invoking BillPower as a pop-up. Now, find the line in BPMR.BAT that starts with "billpowr". The tenth parameter following "billpowr" should be "mr". If you need to "pad" the line with any other parameters, make each of them an "x". Ex- amples: billpowr x x x x JJ AWB F:\MANAGEX F:\AWB x mr billpowr x x x x x x x x x mr Each example shows the use of dummy "x" parameters. If BillPower is loaded in this fashion, it will automatically abort and display a message that informs you of the hot-key combina- tion needed to call it to the foreground. By default, the hot-key is ALT-B. But you may change the hot-key by adding to the 10th parameter a different combination, using the "MR-X-$YYZZ" format. The "X" in this format is the key you wish to use in combination with the ALT or CTRL key. "YY" sould be "08" if you plan to use the ALT-key, or "04" if you prefer a CTRL-key combination. "ZZ" is the scan code for the letter you've designated with "X". Selected scan codes follow: KEY SCAN KEY SCAN KEY SCAN KEY SCAN KEY SCAN Q 10 W 11 E 12 R 13 T 14 96 Y 15 U 16 I 17 O 18 P 19 A 1E S 1F D 20 F 21 G 22 H 23 J 24 K 25 L 26 Z 2C X 2D C 2E V 2F B 30 N 31 For example, to designate ALT-S as the hot-key combination, the tenth parameter would be "MR-S-$081F", while CTRL-V would be selected by using "MR-V-$042F". Normally, BillPower requires about 420 Kilobytes of RAM. When it's just waiting in the background, however, all it consumes is about 7 Kilobytes. That leaves most of your computer's memory for use by other programs. TUNING UP PERFORMANCE As mentioned above, BillPower is a large program that would con- sume about 420K of memory if the entire software were kept in memory waiting for you to press the hotkey. But that would leave you with 420K less memory to run your other applications. Therefore, efforts have been made to reduce the memory required by the program when it's lurking in the background. On the assumption that memory is more pre- cious to most users than is time, BillPower has been optimized to use as little memory as possible, even though that means that it might take a little longer for it to respond when you press its hotkey. Rather than keep BillPower's entire code in memory when you're using another program, only a small "kernal" is maintained in RAM. When you press the hotkey, your current application is saved to disk or EMS (LIM-specification expanded memory), and then BillPower is loaded from disk or EMS. When you temporarily exit BillPower, it is then saved, while your former application is re-loaded. The memory- swapping that takes place whenever you enter or exit BillPower will take time. How much swapping time is required depends upon whether the swapping is between RAM and your hard disk or between RAM and other memory. If BillPower recognizes that you have sufficient EMS memory available (420K), such memory will automatically be used, minimizing swap time significantly. If no EMS is recognized, the program will assume that you want it to swap to the disk directory from which Bill- Power was loaded. If you have EMS and BillPower does not recognize it, please don't call to report it; there are several incompatible EMS schemes floating around, and BillPower can't recognize them all. If you don't have EMS, but do have a extended memory, you might want to set up a large RAM disk and tell BillPower to use it for swap- ping. That'll speed things up quite a bit. Make sure that the RAM disk you use will be used for NOTHING other than BillPower, TickleX, and/or RAMdesk. How big a RAM disk do you need? If you're using it just for 97 BillPower, it should be at least 825K. Add another 800K if you also want to install TickleX as a pop-up, and yet another 320K if you use RAMdesk. To tell BillPower which RAM disk to use, you'll need to alter the BP.BAT (or BPMR.BAT) file. Place the RAM disk designation at the third parameter on the "billpowr" line. Example: billpowr x x e: x x x x x x mr tells BillPower to use drive E as the swap drive. Remember that you use the designated RAM disk for NOTHING other than RAMdesk, BillPower and TickleX program swapping. And, if you're using the program on a LAN, make sure than no two workstations access the same RAM disk. VERY IMPORTANT !!! When used as a pop-up, BillPower will not automatically remind you to back up your data files each day, as it does when you use it on a stand-alone basis. It is EXTREMELY important that you back up your data files EVERY DAY to floppy disks. Rotate among several sets of backup disks; don't back up to the same disks every day. Use even- and odd-day, as well as week-end and month-end, disk sets. For your convenience, you might want to use the BACK.BAT (or REST.BAT) to back up to (or restore from) diskettes. To back up your data, just go to the MANAGEX directory and enter "BACK C: A:" at the DOS prompt. To restore, enter "REST A: C:" instead. ALSO IMPORTANT: As mentioned above, if you don't have sufficient EMS memory and haven't designated a RAM disk, BillPower will swap to the hard disk. When swapping to the hard disk, the program creates and uses two hid- den files, "BPSWP.___" and "BPAPPSWP.___". Normally, you won't have any problems with disk swapping. But if, after having loaded Bill- Power, you use other programs that cause your available hard disk space to drop below 850 kilobytes, you may get a "FATAL SWAP ERROR" when you try to pop into BillPower. If that happens, you'll have to re-boot your machine, probably losing whatever you'd been working on when you pressed the hot key. The lesson here is that you should not try using the program as a pop-up unless you're sure that you'll never come close to running out of space on whatever drive the program will be using for swapping. 98 Pre-Bill STATEMENT for DEC 87 Smith v. Williams (SMITJO1) Responsible: SS Client: John F. Smith BilIntvl: 1 Accnt Bal: 500.00 FixedFee: 0.00 Balance: 205.63 LastBill: 5 JAN 87 Cntngncy: 0% IntrRate: 1.50 Rcd Date Description of Transaction Timekeeper Rate TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 29 DEC 87 Initial Office Conference w/Mr. 1.25h SS 100.00 125.00 Smith. 2 29 DEC 87 Drafted the complaint. 1.34h SS 100.00 133.33 6 29 DEC 87 Telephone Conference with Mr. 0.40h SS 100.00 40.00 Williams' brother in Boston. 4 29 DEC 87 Long Distance Call to Mr. 7.30 Williams' brother in Boston. 5 29 DEC 87 PAYMNT -- Initial pmnt to firm < 100.00> -------- TOTAL SERVICES/FEES 298.33 TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS 7.30 TOTAL RECEIPTS/ADJUSTMENTS <100.00> AMOUNT DUE FOR THIS MATTER: $ 205.63 ** THE TOP TWO LINES OF THIS REPORT CONSIST OF SELECTED INFORMATION FROM THE CASE FILE. THESE ITEMS ARE IDENTICAL TO SIMILARLY TITLED ONES CONTAINED IN THE CASE MODULE'S EDIT SCREEN. THE Balance ITEM, FOR INSTANCE, IS THE CURRENT OUT- STANDING BALANCE, NOT A SPECIAL MONTHLY FIGURE CALCULATED JUST FOR THIS REPORT. APPENDICES 99 Billing Format 2 Figby and Snort 97 Blackstone Road Walleye, GA 30678 January 5, 1988 John F. Smith 123 Hoover Street White Palace, NJ 10001 RE: STATEMENT for DEC 87 Smith v. Williams (SMITJO1) Dear Mr. Smith: Following is a review of our most recent services made in your behalf. Initial Office Conference w/Mr. Smith. Drafted the complaint. Telephone Conference with Mr. Williams' brother in Boston. Long Distance Call to Mr. Williams' brother in Boston. PAYMNT -- Initial pmnt to firm -------- TOTAL SERVICES/FEES 298.33 TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS 7.30 TOTAL RECEIPTS/ADJUSTMENTS <100.00> AMOUNT DUE FOR THIS MATTER: $ 205.63 Please pay, within ten days, whatever is shown as being due. Sincerely, Samuel Snort APPENDICES 100 Billing Format 3- Figby and Snort 97 Blackstone Road Walleye, GA 30678 January 5, 1988 John F. Smith 123 Hoover Street White Palace, NJ 10001 RE: STATEMENT for DEC 87 Smith v. Williams (SMITJO1) Following is a review of our most recent services made in your behalf. 29 DEC 87 Initial Office Conference w/Mr. Smith. 29 DEC 87 Drafted the complaint. 29 DEC 87 Telephone Conference with Mr. Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 Long Distance Call to Mr. Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 PAYMNT -- Initial pmnt to firm -------- TOTAL SERVICES/FEES 298.33 TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS 7.30 TOTAL RECEIPTS/ADJUSTMENTS <100.00> AMOUNT DUE FOR THIS MATTER: $ 205.63 ** THIS FORMAT (3-) IS IDENTICAL TO FORMAT 3, EXCEPT THAT NO SALUTATION OR SIGNATURE BLOCK APPEARS. APPENDICES 101 Billing Format 4- Figby and Snort 97 Blackstone Road Walleye, GA 30678 January 5, 1988 John F. Smith 123 Hoover Street White Palace, NJ 10001 RE: STATEMENT for DEC 87 Smith v. Williams (SMITJO1) Following is a review of our most recent services made in your behalf. 29 DEC 87 Initial Office Conference w/Mr. 1.25h Smith. 29 DEC 87 Drafted the complaint. 1.34h 29 DEC 87 Telephone Conference with Mr. 0.40h Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 Long Distance Call to Mr. Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 PAYMNT -- Initial pmnt to firm -------- TOTAL SERVICES/FEES 298.33 TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS 7.30 TOTAL RECEIPTS/ADJUSTMENTS <100.00> AMOUNT DUE FOR THIS MATTER: $ 205.63 Please pay, within ten days, whatever is shown as being due. APPENDICES 102 Billing Format 5- Figby and Snort 97 Blackstone Road Walleye, GA 30678 January 5, 1988 John F. Smith 123 Hoover Street White Palace, NJ 10001 RE: STATEMENT for DEC 87 Smith v. Williams (SMITJO1) Following is a review of our most recent services made in your behalf. Date Description of Transaction TimeKeeper TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 DEC 87 Initial Office Conference w/Mr. 1.25h SS Smith. 29 DEC 87 Drafted the complaint. 1.34h SS 29 DEC 87 Telephone Conference with Mr. 0.40h SS Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 Long Distance Call to Mr. Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 PAYMNT -- Initial pmnt to firm -------- TOTAL SERVICES/FEES 298.33 TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS 7.30 TOTAL RECEIPTS/ADJUSTMENTS <100.00> AMOUNT DUE FOR THIS MATTER: $ 205.63 APPENDICES 103 Billing Format 6- Figby and Snort 97 Blackstone Road Walleye, GA 30678 January 5, 1988 John F. Smith 123 Hoover Street White Palace, NJ 10001 RE: STATEMENT for DEC 87 Smith v. Williams (SMITJO1) Following is a review of our most recent services made in your behalf. Date Description TimeKeeper Rate TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 DEC 87 Initial Office Conference w/Mr. 1.25h SS 100.00 125.00 Smith. 29 DEC 87 Drafted the complaint. 1.34h SS 100.00 133.33 29 DEC 87 Telephone Conference with Mr. 0.40h SS 100.00 40.00 Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 Long Distance Call to Mr. 7.30 Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 PAYMNT -- Initial pmnt to firm < 100.00> -------- TOTAL SERVICES/FEES 298.33 TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS 7.30 TOTAL RECEIPTS/ADJUSTMENTS <100.00> AMOUNT DUE FOR THIS MATTER: $ 205.63 APPENDICES 104 Billing Format 7- Figby and Snort 97 Blackstone Road Walleye, GA 30678 January 5, 1988 John F. Smith 123 Hoover Street White Palace, NJ 10001 RE: STATEMENT for DEC 87 Smith v. Williams (SMITJO1) Following is a review of our most recent services made in your behalf. 29 DEC 87 Initial Office Conference w/Mr. 1.25h 125.00 Smith. 29 DEC 87 Drafted the complaint. 1.34h 133.33 29 DEC 87 Telephone Conference with Mr. 0.40h 40.00 Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 Long Distance Call to Mr. 7.30 Williams' brother in Boston. 29 DEC 87 PAYMNT -- Initial pmnt to firm < 100.00> -------- TOTAL SERVICES/FEES 298.33 TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS 7.30 TOTAL RECEIPTS/ADJUSTMENTS <100.00> AMOUNT DUE FOR THIS MATTER: $ 205.63 Please pay, within ten days, whatever is shown as being due. APPENDICES 105 Billing Format 8- Figby and Snort 97 Blackstone Road Walleye, GA 30678 January 5, 1988 John F. Smith 123 Hoover Street White Palace, NJ 10001 RE: STATEMENT for DEC 87 Smith v. Williams (SMITJO1) Following is a review of our most recent services made in your behalf. 29 DEC 87 Initial Office Conference w/Mr. Smith 125.00 29 DEC 87 Drafted the complaint. 133.33 29 DEC 87 Telephone Conference with Mr. Williams' brother in 40.00 Boston. 29 DEC 87 Long Distance Call to Mr. Williams' brother in 7.30 Boston. 29 DEC 87 PAYMNT -- Initial pmnt to firm < 100.00> -------- TOTAL SERVICES/FEES 298.33 TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS 7.30 TOTAL RECEIPTS/ADJUSTMENTS <100.00> AMOUNT DUE FOR THIS MATTER: $ 205.63 Please pay, within ten days, whatever is shown as being due. APPENDICES 106