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Print prebills using bill format

Q: How can I print the prebills so they look like the bills?

A: Prebills are designed to let you edit the transactions before printing a bill. You can change and print a prebill as many times as you wish, unlike a bill, which must be canceled before you can change it.

The standard prebill format supplies more information than a typical bill. However, some firms may want the prebill to look just like the bill. With some effort, you can create a custom prebill format that is the same as your bill format. Then you can print prebills instead of bills, until you are ready to actually send a bill to the client.

RTG Bills lets you create a custom prebill format. You tell RTG Bills to use it here:

Bills > Prebills > For Matters > Options

In the Prebill Format frame, select Custom 1 (standard). By copying and renaming some files, we can get RTG Bills to use a standard bill format as its prebill format. You must do this in Windows, outside of RTG Bills.

Go to the Data Location, where the RTG Bills data files are located. That is the location you see when you do this in RTG Bills:

Setup > Database

When RTG Bills is installed on a single computer, not over a network, the Data Location is usually this:

C:\ProgramData\RTG\RTG Bills\

We have instructions for finding this hidden folder:

Can't find database

In a networked installation, though, the Data Location will be a shared folder somewhere on the network.

Once you have found the Data Location, rename the file bill251.rtg to bill251.old. Find the bill format you wish to use for prebills. For example, the file bill01.rtg is bill format 1. Make a copy of that file (Ctrl-C to copy it, Ctrl-V to paste the copy). Rename the copy to bill251.rtg.

In short, you replace bill251.rtg (the Custom 1 prebill format) with a copy of bill01.rtg (your bill format 1). Now the prebills will be created with the same format as bills that use bill format 1.

In order to prevent confusion, the matter name on each prebill will be followed with [PREBILL]. That way you won't see a printed prebill and mistake it for a bill. Ultimately, you must print a bill for each matter so RTG Bills can update the matter balance and mark the transactions as billed.