Using RTG Bills Online

Using RTG Bills Online: A Tutorial

Part 1

Introduction: Billing Made Easy
How It Works
How to Start RTG Bills Online
The RTG Bills Menu
How to Leave RTG Bills Online
The Help System

Part 2

Enter a Timekeeper
Enter Another Timekeeper
Enter Billing Rates
Create a Bill Format
Letterhead
Client and Matter Numbers
Enter Clients
Print a Report
Enter a Matter
Set the Standard Matter
Enter More Matters
Enter Shorthand Codes
Enter a Starting Balance
Print a Conversion Bill
Enter a Fee Transaction
Enter an Expense Transaction
Create an Activity Code Table
Use a Code Table
Check Spelling
Enter a Payment
Print a Bill

Part 3

Change a Bill
Reprint a Bill
Historical Bills
Create a Retainer Account
RTG Timer Transactions
Delete the Fake Data
Write Off a Balance Due
Close a Matter and Hide a Client
Delete a Matter
Final Cleanup
What To Do Next

Introduction: Billing Made Easy

RTG Bills Online is a timekeeping and billing application for law firms.

This document will lead you step-by-step through RTG Bills Online. Not every feature will be discussed, but you will enter transactions - a fee, an expense, and a payment - and create a bill.

As we proceed, we will suggest "fake" timekeepers, clients, matters, and transactions for you to enter. When you are finished with this tutorial and you are ready to enter real data for your clients and matters, you can delete the fake data.

How It Works

RTG Bills Online is a subscription service. You pay a monthly fee to access the service over the Internet. There is no software to install on your computers. RTG Bills Online works inside your Web browser. This type of service is often referred to as Software as a Service or SaaS.

RTG offers a free trial, during which prospective subscribers can use RTG Bills Online to decide whether they wish to subscribe. Whether you are currently in the trial period, or you are already a subscriber, RTG Bills Online works in exactly the same way. None of its features are limited during the trial period.

When you signed up for RTG Bills Online, you were asked to choose a user name for the first user, a Supervisor. You should receive an email message from RTG with the user name and a password.

A Supervisor can add or delete users, up to the limit of your subscription. (The limit is three users during the trial period.) A Supervisor can also edit the information for your firm's users, including their full name, email address, and Supervisor status. A Supervisor can make any other user a Supervisor, or remove Supervisor status from any other user.

A Supervisor has access to the Supervisor Menu, which has many options that affect the way that RTG Bills Online works. In this tutorial, we will not cover all the tasks performed by a Supervisor. If you are not a Supervisor, we will assume that a Supervisor has already entered timekeepers, rate tables, and bill formats.

If you are familiar with RTG Bills on a PC, you will find that RTG Bills Online is very similar. A big advantage over the PC version is that you never have to install upgrades. RTG can enhance RTG Bills Online and you will get the benefit of those enhancements without any action on your part. Another advantage is that you can access RTG Bills Online from any Internet-connected PC, regardless of location.

RTG Bills Online creates bills and reports as PDF documents. The PDF viewer in your Web browser will display the bill or report and let you print it to a local printer. If you wish, RTG Bills Online can email your bills directly to the client as email attachments.

How to Start RTG Bills Online

Once you know your user name and password, you can sign in to RTG Bills Online by going to this Web page:

https://app.rtgsoftware.com/timer/signin.htm

Note that this is a secure Web site (https), which means that the data is encrypted as it travels over the Internet between your computer and the RTG server.

You may want to bookmark the Sign In page, or add it to your "favorites" in Microsoft terminology, so you can easily return here.

On the Sign In page, click the link to the Subscriber Agreement and read it, if you have not already done so. It should open in a separate window.

Enter your user name and password, then click the Sign In button. Expect a short delay while your information is verified.

If you are signing in for the first time, you will see the Welcome page. Choose a new password and enter it in the two boxes. Your password may contain letters, numbers, and the underscore character (_). It must be at least six characters. This will be your password from now on, although you can change it if you wish. Click Save to continue.

During the trial period of RTG Bills Online, a message will tell you how many days are left in the trial period. Click Next to proceed.

You may see the Startup Tasks page next. It lists some tasks that must be completed before you can begin entering fees and expenses. Since we will go over these tasks in detail here, we will skip this page. Click the Menu button.

You should see the RTG Bills Menu.

The RTG Bills Menu

After you sign in, you will see the RTG Bills Menu. Near the top of the page are eight buttons: Clients, Matters, Fees, Expenses, Payments, Bills, Reports, and Sign Out. Each button takes you to a new page.

There are two different RTG Bills Menus. The "standard" RTG Bills Menu is a page with many links, all of which are visible at the same time. The "tabbed" RTG Bills Menu has tabs along the left edge and menu choices on the right. Clicking each tab reveals a different set of choices on the right.

While the "tabbed" menu is more elegant, we will use the "standard" menu for this tutorial. If you see the tabbed menu now, click the Links tab. The choices on the right will include Standard RTG Bills Menu, and you should click that item now. From this point forward, we will assume that you are using the standard RTG Bills Menu.

The bottom portion of the RTG Bills Menu contains links for many different functions. Each of the buttons along the top is equivalent to one of the links:

Button	Link
Clients	Edit Clients
Matters	Edit Matters
Fees	Edit Fees
Expenses	Edit Expenses
Payments	Edit Payments & Adjustments
Bills	Bills for Matters
Reports	Standard Reports
Sign Out	Sign Out

How to Leave RTG Bills Online

When you are done using RTG Bills Online, you should sign out by clicking the Sign Out link or the Sign Out button. The Sign Out link is in the Links section of the menu. The Sign Out button is the right-most button at the top of the page.

After a brief delay, you will see the Signed Out page.

For security, we recommend that you sign out when you are finished with RTG Bills Online. If you remain signed in, an unauthorized person could use your computer to access RTG Bills Online. Keep in mind that closing your browser, or a browser tab, does not sign you out.

You cannot stay signed in to RTG Bills Online indefinitely. If you don't sign out, you will be "timed out" after several hours of inactivity.

The Help System

The RTG Bills Online Help System is the primary documentation for the program. Whenever you have a question about RTG Bills Online, the help system should be the first place you look for the answer.

Nearly every page in RTG Bills Online has a Help button or a Help link. When you click the button or the link, a new browser window opens with help information for the current page. This is called context-sensitive help.

If you click the Menu Help link on the RTG Bills Menu, in the Links section, a new browser window should open to display the help page for the RTG Bills Menu. If that doesn't happen, there are two possible reasons:

1. The help window may be hidden behind the window that displays the RTG Bills Menu.
2. You may need to turn off the pop-up blocker in your Web browser. Instructions are here:

How to Turn Off the Pop-up Blocker

Near the top of the help window you will see four links: Close, Home, Back, and Search.

As you might expect, the Close link closes the help window. The Home link takes you to the Home Page of the help system, which has links to a Getting Started page, Frequently Asked Questions, Special Topics for RTG Bills, and RTG Bills Reports. Like a browser's Back button, the Back link goes to the previous page.

The Search link goes to the Search Help page, where you can enter words to search for in the help information. Click Go to begin the search. The search results page has links to the help pages that contain all of the words in your search. It also shows how many references there were for each search word. A reference is simply a page that contains the search word.

To exit the help system, just close its window or click the Close link.

Enter a Timekeeper

We are assuming that you have not entered any information into RTG Bills Online yet. Click Edit Timekeepers (in the Tables section) and you will see the Select a Timekeeper page. Click New.

You will see the Add a New Timekeeper page. Type 1 in the box (if it isn't already there) and click Save.

You will see the Edit a Timekeeper page. Type AA for the timekeeper's initials and press Tab. Type the timekeeper's name, Alfred Albertson and press Tab. Type albe for the abbreviation. This is the last four letters of the last name. It is used to put the timekeepers in alphabetical order for certain reports. The Status will say Active, which is correct. Click Save.

Enter Another Timekeeper

Back at the Select a Timekeeper page, click New to create a second timekeeper.

You will see the Add a New Timekeeper page. The software will suggest a timekeeper number of 2, which you can accept by clicking Save.

You will see the Edit a Timekeeper page. Type mm for the timekeeper's initials and press Tab. Type the timekeeper's name, Melanie Monroe, and press Tab. Type monr for the abbreviation. Click Save to save this timekeeper. At the Select a Timekeeper page, click Done to return to the menu.

Enter Billing Rates

Now that we have entered two timekeepers, we will assign hourly billing rates to them. A rate table gives the hourly rate for every timekeeper. Since timekeepers may charge different rates for different clients, you can enter many different rate tables. Any rate table can be assigned to any matter.

On the RTG Bills Menu, under Tables, click Edit Rates. You will see the Select a Rate Table page. Click New. On the Add a New Rate Table page, the Table Number should already by 1. Type the description, New Rates, then click Save.

You will see the Select a Rate page. Click on the first row for timekeeper 1, Alfred Albertson. You will see the Edit a Rate page. Type 150 in the box labeled Hourly Rate. Click Save. You will see Rate Table 1 again, but notice that the list now shows a rate of $150.00 per hour for timekeeper 1.

Click the name of timekeeper 2, Melanie Monroe, in the list. Type 125 for the hourly billing rate of timekeeper 2. Click Save. Now both timekeepers should show a billing rate in the list.

To change the Table Name, click the Edit button. Change the description to read Standard Rates. There are two ways to do this. If the cursor is at the end of the text, you can use the Backspace key to delete the description one letter at a time, then type the new description. Or you can highlight the old description, then type the new one.

When the Table Name is correct, click Save to save it. Click Done, then Done again, to return to the RTG Bills Menu.

Create a Bill Format

Skip this section if you are not a Supervisor.

In the Links section, click the Supervisor Menu link. On the Supervisor Menu, click Edit Bill Formats in the Settings section. Assuming you have no bill formats, click New. You will see the Add a New Bill Format page. Type 1, if it is not already displayed in the Format Number box. In the Description box, type Normal format. Click Save.

You will see the Edit a Bill Format page. Click the Edit General Features button. You will see the General Features for Bills page.

In the Show Currency Symbol section, click the option button labeled On all currency amounts. This puts a dollar sign on every fee and expense transaction amount on the bill (assuming the bill shows the transaction amount, which is optional). Click Save.

At the Edit a Bill Format page, click the Edit Sections button. You will see the Edit Sections for Bills page, which is a tabbed dialog. The Header 1 tab is selected. The choices on this tab determine the appearance of the top of the first page of each bill. Under Firm Name & Address, confirm that the option button Use letterhead design is selected. We will leave the other choices. Click Help if you want further information.

Click the Fees tab. Let's assume your firm has more than one timekeeper, so you want each fee and expense item on the bill to show the timekeeper's initials. Click the Timekeeper initials checkbox (if it is not already checked) under Fields to Show.

Click the Expenses tab. Once again, click the Timekeeper initials checkbox (if it is not already checked) under Fields to Show.

We are finished with our changes to the sections of the bill. Click Save.

You will see the Edit a Bill Format page. To see what the bill will look like, click View Sample Bill. A sample bill is created using (mostly) dummy data. The bill is displayed in a new browser window, using the browser's PDF viewer.

If a new browser window doesn't open, you may need to change your browser's security settings to allow RTG Bills Online to open a pop-up window. As noted earlier, instructions are here:

How to Turn Off the Pop-up Blocker

We haven't created a letterhead yet, so it says Firm Name at the top of the sample bill. We will create a letterhead soon. All the numbers will be 9s. The sample bill shows what each section of a real bill will look like.

Keep in mind that most bills don't have transactions in every section, and sections with no transactions do not print at all. For example, if your firm does not use retainers, then none of the information about retainers will appear on your bills, because you will never have retainer transactions. Similarly, if you never use interest charges, that section of the bill will not appear on your bills.

Note that the sample bill is more than one page, and you can scroll through it as you would any PDF document. The PDF viewer will also let you print the bill or save it as a local file.

The sample bill should reflect the format options just chosen for format 1. The sample fee and expense transactions should have dollar signs in front of the amounts: $9,999.99. Timekeeper initials (either ABA or ZZZ) should appear on each transaction.

Remember that this is dummy data, which is used to show you the bill format. The timekeeper initials will always be ABA and ZZZ, even though the timekeepers we entered earlier had the initials AA and MM.

When you are done examining the sample bill, close the window where it is displayed. You'll see that the main browser window still shows the Edit a Bill Format page.

Letterhead

Skip this section if you are not a Supervisor. We assume you are now at the Edit a Bill Format page.

RTG Bills Online can produce a letterhead design for your bills. We will demonstrate the procedure for creating your own design. Our example will use only one font, Helvetica. Naturally, you can choose another font if you wish. However, you can only use the fonts that RTG Bills Online provides, because the bills are created on the RTG server. You cannot use the fonts on your computer.

First, we will set font 3 to Helvetica. Click the Select Fonts button on the Edit a Bill Format page. You will see the Fonts for Bills page. In Step 1, click option 3. In Step 2, select Helvetica from the dropdown list. You will see a sample of that font. In Step 3, click Apply. The list in Step 1 will change to show that font 3 is now Helvetica.

Fonts 3, 4, 5, and 6 are generally available for use in your letterhead designs. However, a well-designed letterhead rarely uses more than two fonts. We will use only one, Helvetica, and enhance it with bold and italic attributes. Click Save.

Click the Edit Letterhead button on the Edit a Bill Format page. You will see the Letterhead for Bills page. Click the Edit Text button. You will see the Design Letterhead: Edit Text page.

This page shows four boxes where you can enter text. The position of each box shows where the text will appear on the page. Text in the top center box will appear centered on the page. If it says Firm Name now, click in the box and change it. Delete Firm Name and type in your firm's name.

Put the cursor at the start of the firm's name and press Enter to create a blank line above it, then move the cursor back up to the empty line. Type Law Offices Of, if that is appropriate. Type your address below the firm name. Click Save.

At the Letterhead for Bills page again, click Choose Fonts. You will see the Design Letterhead: Choose Fonts page. Each line of text you entered previously is shown on a separate line here. You can change the features of each line separately.

Change the Font for each line to 3 - Helvetica. For the first line, Law Offices Of, change the Size to 12. Uncheck the Bold box and check the Italic box.

We'll assume the next line is your firm's name. Change the Size to 18. Check the Bold box.

For each address line, change the Size to 8. Click Save.

To see what you have so far, click the View Letterhead button. As with the sample bill we created earlier, a new browser window will open to show the letterhead as a PDF document. Close that window.

The address lines will look better if they are all caps, so click Edit Text and change them to all capital letters. Click Save when you have done that. Click View Letterhead to see how it looks now. You can print the page to see how it looks on paper, if you wish. The printed letterhead will look much smoother because printers use more dots per inch than the screen does. Close the letterhead window when you are done.

Let's put a line under the firm name to separate it from the address lines. Click the Choose Graphics button. You will see the Design Letterhead: Choose Graphics page. Click the Show Line checkbox to check it. For After Text Line, choose the line containing your firm name from the dropdown list. Change the Length to 1.5 and set the Spacing to 2. Click Save.

Click View Letterhead to see the results again. Close that window.

We will now demonstrate some further enhancements, which you may or may not want to include in your letterhead. We'll add two attorney names on the left side of the letterhead and the telephone and fax numbers on the right side.

On the Letterhead for Bills page, click Edit Text. In the left-hand box, enter the attorney names in all caps, one per line. In the right-hand box, enter the telephone number on one line and the fax number on the next line. Type the word FAX, all caps, in front of the fax number. Click Save.

Click the Choose Fonts button. Now you will see the text, separated into three areas. Area 1 was entered previously. Areas 2 and 4 are new. For each line of areas 2 and 4, change the Font to 3 - Helvetica and change the Size to 8. Click Save.

Use the View Letterhead button to see the results, then close that window. On the Letterhead for Bills page, click Done. On the Edit a Bill Format page, click View Sample Bill to see the sample bill with the letterhead design. Close the PDF viewer window.

If you are satisfied with the results, click Done on the Edit a Bill Format page. On the Select a Bill Format page, click Done to return to the menu.

We are done with the Supervisor Menu for now, so click the RTG Bills Menu link.

Client and Matter Numbers

RTG Bills Online uses numbers to uniquely identify each client and matter. Client numbers can range from 1 to 999999. Each client will have one or more matters (which some firms call cases or files). RTG Bills Online uses a second number, the case number, to identify the matters belonging to each client. Case numbers also can range from 1 to 999999.

A typical matter number would be 1234-2. The client number is 1234, which could mean you had done work for 1,233 other clients prior to this one. The case number is 2, which could mean it is the second matter for this client.

Although many firms use the term file instead of matter, we have avoided that word because it has several possible meanings. A file could be a folder containing paper documents, or it could refer to information stored on a computer's hard disk.

Enter Clients

Click the Clients button. You will see the Select a Client page. Click New.

You will see the Add a New Client page. The program will suggest a client number of 1 (assuming there are no clients already entered). Click Save to accept this suggestion.

You will see the Edit a Client page. Notice that the Client Number is displayed, but the color of the box indicates that you cannot change it. The cursor is in the Client Name box. Type ABC Manufacturing, Inc. and press Tab.

Frequently, the mailing address will begin with the client name, so RTG Bills copies the client name into the Mailing Address field. Type the remainder of the mailing address:

9876 Main Street
Greenwich, CT 06899

After each line, press the Enter key on the keyboard. When the address is complete, press Tab until the cursor moves to the Abbreviation box. Or you can click the mouse in the Abbreviation box.

Notice that RTG Bills copied the beginning of the Client Name here, removing punctuation and changing letters to all caps. RTG Bills tries to guess an appropriate abbreviation, but it won't be perfect every time. The Abbreviation should put the client in the desired alphabetical order.

If the contents of the Abbreviation box are selected, anything you type will replace the current contents of the box. To leave it as is, press Tab. To change it, type a new Abbreviation.

For the phone number, type 310-555-1212 and press Tab. For the fax number, type 310-555-1222 and press Tab.

Click Save to save this client.

You will see the Select a Client page again. We want to enter another client, so click New again. Click Save to accept the client number of 2 (again, assuming there were no clients entered before we started).

Type the client name, GTR Software, and press Tab. Type the client address under the name:

3001 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 22
Santa Monica, CA 90478

RTG Bills didn't recognize that the client name is the name of a company. Change the Abbreviation to GTR SOFTWARE.

For the phone number, type 310-555-2121 and press Tab. Click Save to save this client.

You will see the Select a Client page again. Only client 2 is shown, because the list always begins with the client you have just edited. Click the Top button to see both clients. Click Done to leave this page and return to the menu.

Print A Report

Now we will print a report. At the RTG Bills Menu, click the Reports button. You will see the Select a Report page. Make sure that Standard reports is selected at the top. In the list, click on Client List (Alphabetical), then click the View button.

You will see the Select a Client Range page. Click All Clients, then click Next.

After a brief delay, you will see the report, which is displayed in the RTG Viewer. The report will show the two clients you entered previously. The clients are in order according to their abbreviations.

The RTG Viewer has buttons to move through multiple-page reports: First, Last, Previous, and Next. It also lets you search for text in a report with the Find and Find Next buttons. Click Help for further details.

Most reports let you edit the contents from within the RTG Viewer. To see this, put the cursor over the first client's name and click the mouse. You will see the Edit a Client page, where you can change the client information. Since we don't need to change anything now, click the Cancel button to return to the report. Click Done to leave the RTG Viewer.

You are back at the Select a Report page. Once again, click on Client List (Alphabetical), but this time click the PDF button instead of the View button. At the Select a Client Range page, click the Next button.

After a brief delay, a new browser window should open to display the report as a PDF document. Although you cannot edit the clients from this window, you can use the features of the PDF viewer in your Web browser to print the document or save it to a disk file.

This is how reports and bills are printed. RTG Bills Online creates a PDF document and displays it in a Web browser window so you can print it.

Click the close button on the browser window that is displaying the report. The main browser window is again showing the Select a Report page. Click the Done button to return to the RTG Bills Menu.

Let's review what we have done. The Reports button lets you select a report, which you can see in the RTG Viewer, where you can edit the contents, or in the PDF viewer of your browser, where you can print or save the report.

Enter A Matter

Click the Matters button. You will see the Enter a Matter Number page. We don't have any matters yet, so click the New button. You will see the Select a Client page. If client 1 is not visible, click the Top button, which goes to the top of the client list.

Notice that as you move the mouse pointer over the table, the row under the cursor is highlighted. That's the row that will be selected if you click the mouse button. Click on the row in the table where client 1 is displayed.

You will see the Add a New Matter page. We haven't entered any matters for client 1 yet, so the Case Number should be 1. Click Save to accept the suggested case number of 1.

You will see the Edit a Matter page, which is a tabbed dialog box. For the matter name, type Product liability re 1984 widget production and press Tab. Press Delete to remove the abbreviation, then press Tab. Notice that the abbreviation is automatically filled in. You can change it if you wish.

We want to illustrate how the Matter Address can be used to put an attention line in the mailing address for this matter. Click the Copy From Client button. Click inside the Matter Address box and use the mouse or the arrow keys to move the cursor just before the street number. You can use the Home key to go to the beginning of a line and the End key to go to the end of a line. Type Attn: John Smith and press Enter. The mailing address on the bill will show the client name, the attention line, the street address, and the city, state, and zip.

Click the Billing tab. The Billing Cycle should say Month. This means you intend to bill this matter monthly if there is activity or an outstanding balance.

The Rate Table and the Bill Format should each contain a 1. We assume the rate table and bill format were created by the Supervisor.

For the Responsible Timekeeper, click the List button. You will see the Select a Timekeeper page. Click the row that displays timekeeper 2. You are back at the Edit a Matter page and the Billing tab, but notice that the timekeeper number has been filled in.

Verify that What to Bill has the option Both fees and expenses selected. If it does not, click the small down arrow and click on that option.

We will skip the other tabs. You may wish to look at each tab to see what options it contains.

We are done with this matter. Click Save. At the Enter a Matter Number page, click the Done button to return to the menu.

Set the Standard Matter

Often you will have several matters with the same, or nearly the same, matter information. You can enter the first such matter and set it as the standard matter. Subsequent matters will take many of the values from the standard matter.

On the RTG Bills Menu, click the Set the Standard Matter link in the Personal Settings section. You will see the Set the Standard Matter page. In the Matter box, type 1-1 and click the Save button.

You do not have to use this feature. If you wish, you can click the None button instead of entering a matter number. The values for new matters will be set to default values.

Enter More Matters

Previously, we used the Matters button to create a new matter. Now, click the Edit Matters link in the Tables section instead. The effect is the same. As before, you will see the Enter a Matter Number page. Click New.

From the list of clients on the Select a Client page, click on client 1. You will see the Add a New Matter page. It should suggest a case number of 2. Click Save to accept this suggestion.

You will see the Edit a Matter page and the Matter Number will show 1-2. Type Review corporate records in the Matter Name box and press Tab. Type an abbreviation. Click Save.

Now we will enter a matter for client 2. At the Enter a Matter Number page, click New. Click on client 2 to select it. Click Save to accept case number 1. Type Distribution arrangement with XYZ Distributors as the Matter Name and press Tab. Type an Abbreviation. Click Save.

You will see the Enter a Matter Number page. You could click New to select a different client and create more matters. For now, click Done.

Before we proceed, we will note another way to create new matters. Click Edit Clients from the Tables section of the menu page. Click on client 2. You will see the Edit a Client page, but notice the buttons at the bottom. You can create a new matter or edit existing matters from this page. Click the Matters button. You will see the Select a Matter page. Here you can edit any matter for this client, or click the New button to create a new matter for the client.

We don't actually want to create any more matters now. So click Cancel on the Select a Matter page, which returns you to the Edit a Client page. Click Cancel there to return to the Select a Client page. Finally, click Done to return to the RTG Bills Menu.

This is an extreme example of going through several layers of pages and then backing out of them again. There is a better way. Let's try the whole process again, adding one more page:

Edit Clients -> Select a Client
client 2 -> Edit a Client
Matters -> Select a Matter
New -> Add a New Matter

Instead of clicking the various Cancel and Done buttons, click the RTG logo at the top right of the page. It takes you back to the menu immediately.

Enter Shorthand Codes

Click the link, Edit Shorthand Codes, in the Personal Settings section of the RTG Bills Menu. You will see the Select a Shorthand Code page.

As you enter the descriptions for fee and expense items, you may find that certain sentences or phrases are needed again and again. To save time, you can use shorthand codes. Each shorthand code can be two, three, four, or five characters. Whenever you type the code into a description, followed by a space or punctuation mark, the code is replaced by the full phrase.

We will add a few shorthand codes. Click New. You will see the Add a New Shorthand Code page. Type tc and click Save.

You will see the Edit a Shorthand Code page. The text *new code*, in the With box, should be highlighted. To replace it, type Telephone conference with client and click Save.

You will see the Select a Shorthand Code page again. Notice that the new code TC has been added to the list. Although you entered the code in lower-case, RTG Bills Online always displays it in upper-case.

Click New again. Type tcw and click Save. In the With box, type Telephone conference with. Click Save. In a fee description, you could type TCW, a space, and the client's name.

Click New again. Type mtg and click Save. In the With box, type Meeting with client concerning and click Save.

Click New again. Type cnv and click Save. In the With box, type Conversion balance and click Save. We will use this code later. Click Done to leave this page and return to the menu.

Enter A Starting Balance

When you create a new matter, the balance due for the matter is automatically set to zero. The balance due increases when you bill fees and expenses and it decreases when you receive payments.

When you first use RTG Bills, however, you need to enter your existing matters and the amount owed for each one. Here we will describe how to do that. Let's assume that there is a balance due for matter 1-1 of $1500 in fees and $95.32 in expenses. RTG Bills always keeps fee and expense amounts separate.

Click the Payments button. You will see the Select a Payment or Adjustment Item page.

If the Matter box does not contain 1-1, click the Recent button. You will see a list of recently-chosen matters. Click on the row containing matter 1-1. The list will disappear and the Matter box should now contain 1-1.

You must choose a conversion date. This is the date you have chosen for conversion to RTG Bills. The balance due that we are about to enter is the balance due as of the conversion date, according to the previous billing system. Let's assume our conversion date is 4/30/16.

Click New. You will see the Enter a New Payment Item page. The date shown will be today's date, but you should enter the conversion date instead. Type 4/30/16.

The matter number should be 1-1, which is correct.

In the Description box, type cnv and press Enter. The text Conversion balance will appear. This is a shorthand code that we entered earlier.

The Type is a dropdown list. Initially, Payment is selected. Click the dropdown list and click on Adjustment instead. You will notice that the page changes to reflect this choice.

The Automatic Allocation box is checked. Click the box to uncheck it. This will allow you to enter values in the Fees and Expenses boxes.

For the fee amount, type -1500 and press Tab. Be sure to put a minus sign in front of the number. As the hint on the page says, the minus sign means this amount will increase the balance due. For the expense amount, type -95.32 and press Tab.

If the client owes interest or taxes on this matter, you can enter them here. We will leave them as zero. Do not enter an excess amount here.

Click the Save button to save this adjustment. A message tells you that the item has been saved. Click OK.

Note:
If the matter has a retainer balance, you must create a matter-level retainer account for this matter. You can do that by choosing Edit Retainer Accounts from the RTG Bills Menu, then clicking the New button. After the retainer account has been created, you should come back to this point, create a separate Retainer transaction, and enter the current retainer balance (without a minus sign). We will discuss retainers in a later section.

The Enter a New Payment Item page is now ready for you to enter another transaction. Notice that the date shown is the same as the previous transaction, so you only need to enter it the first time when you have several transactions for the same date. This would certainly be true when you are entering starting balances, because they should all have the same conversion date.

We will not enter any more starting balances, so click the RTG logo at the top of the page to return to the RTG Bills Menu.

Print a Conversion Bill

You probably don't want your bills to show the conversion balance as a separate entry. They should, instead, show a previous balance plus any subsequent activity. We use a little trick to accomplish this: print a bill for the matter before any further entries are made, but do not send that bill to the client. That is what we will do now for matter 1-1.

Click the Bills button and you will see the Bills for Matters page. Click One Matter, and type in 1-1 for the matter number if it is not already there. Under Cutoff Dates, type the conversion date, 4/30/16, for the fees and expenses cutoff date. Click Copy Date to copy that date into the payments and adjustments box. Click View.

After a pause, the RTG Viewer will display the bill. Notice that the Previous balance is zero and the Total now due is $1,595.32. Click Done to exit the Viewer. All the settings on the Bills for Matters page will be unchanged.

The View button gave us a preview of the bill. To actually create a bill, click the PDF button. A message box tells you that you are about to create one bill. Click Yes. Some processing will occur, then you will see a new browser window that displays the bill in the browser's PDF viewer.

From the PDF viewer, you can save the bill to a local hard disk, or you can print it on a local printer. These are the standard options that are available for any PDF document. You may want to print the bill now to see how that works, then close the window that is displaying the bill.

The original browser window is still showing the Bills for Matters page. Click the Done button, or click the RTG logo, to return to the RTG Bills Menu.

Now that you have printed a bill, RTG Bills assumes that it is correct and that you will send it to the client. There is no separate step to finalize the bill. If something is wrong with the bill, you can cancel it, make changes, and create it again.

This bill, however, is unusual because it will not go to the client. It serves as a record of the initial balance you entered into RTG Bills. The next time you create a bill for matter 1-1, it will show a previous balance of $1,595.32, which is what you want the client to see.

When you enter actual starting balances into RTG Bills, you do not have to create one matter at a time. You can enter an adjustment transaction for each matter, then create the bills for all matters at once.

Enter a Fee Transaction

Now that you have entered the starting balance and printed a "conversion" bill, you are ready to enter unbilled fees and expenses for matter 1-1. Some fees and expenses might be before the cutoff date, others might be after it. The important point is that they are unbilled, which means they are not reflected in the starting balance of $1500 for fees and $95.32 for expenses. Therefore, we want them to appear on the next bill.

Click the Fees button. The Matter should already be 1-1, but if it is not, type 1-1 and press Tab. Click New to create a new fee transaction. You will see the Enter a New Fee Item page.

In the Timekeeper box, type mm and press Tab. You will see the timekeeper's name, Melanie Monroe. You can enter the timekeeper's number or the timekeeper's initials (upper-case or lower-case), whichever you find more convenient.

For the Date, type 4/15/16. This is a transaction that occurred before the cutoff date, but it was not billed by the previous billing system, so we must enter it and bill it.

In the Description box, type Office conference with J. Josephs re widget design and production methods.

For the Type, Hourly Rate is selected already, so no change is required.

In the Hours Reported box, type 1:30 and press Tab. Note that the number of hours changes to 1.50. You can enter either hours and minutes (1:30) as we did, or a decimal number of hours (1.5). Either way, it is stored as a decimal number of hours with two decimal places (1.50).

Notice that the Hours To Bill box contains the number you entered into the Hours Reported box. Usually you want to bill the number of hours that were reported (sometimes called the hours worked), so RTG Bills Online fills it in for you. You can, if you choose, write down the number of hours by entering a smaller number, or write up the number of hours by entering a larger number.

The Writedown button makes it easy to write down the hours by a specific percentage. You can also choose whether this change should appear as a discount on the bill.

The Hours To Bill, Hourly Rate, and Status have all been filled in for you.

In order to find the hourly rate, RTG Bills first looks at the matter to see which rate table to use. Then it looks at the rate table to find the hourly rate for this timekeeper. For this transaction, it used rate table 1 and found an hourly rate of $125 for Melanie Monroe.

The Amount Reported was calculated by multiplying the Hours Reported by the Hourly Rate. The Amount To Bill was calculated by multiplying the Hours To Bill by the Hourly Rate. You cannot change either dollar amount directly. You can, however, change the Hours Reported, Hours To Bill, or Hourly Rate.

The Status shows that Bill is selected. It means that you want this transaction to appear on the next bill for this matter. If, for some reason, you do not want to bill this transaction until a later date, you can select Hold instead. It is your responsibility to change the Status from Hold to Bill again when you want to bill the transaction.

Click Save to save this transaction. A message box confirms that the transaction has been saved. Click OK.

Enter an Expense Transaction

You can now enter another transaction. The Timekeeper, Date, and Matter are copied from the previous transaction, so you do not need to enter them again if they are the same. In the Description box, type Photocopies.

For the Type, Hourly Rate is selected. Select Unit Cost instead by clicking the downward-pointing arrow and clicking on Unit Cost.

Notice that the page has changed. The first box under Type is now labeled Quantity Reported. Type 125 and press Tab. The number 125 is automatically copied into the Quantity To Bill box. In other words, we are charging the client for 125 copies.

We want to charge 20 cents per page, so type .2 in the Unit Cost box and press Tab. Notice that the Amount Reported and Amount To Bill are calculated automatically.

Click the Save button to save this transaction. As before, a message box confirms that the transaction has been saved. Click OK.

Before we go on, we want to mention a feature that we did not use. If you always charge the same amount per page for photocopies, you can define an activity code for photocopies. We will discuss this next.

We don't want to enter any more transactions now, so click Cancel.

You will see the Select a Fee Item page. Notice that the fee transaction you just entered is in the list. This is a list of fees only, so the expense transaction is not shown here.

Try checking and unchecking the Show Timekeeper checkbox. You will see that, when it is checked, the timekeeper initials appear in the list after the date and before the hours. If your firm has more than one timekeeper, it may be useful to display the initials.

Click Done to leave this page and return to the menu.

At the RTG Bills Menu, click the Expenses button. The Select an Expense Item page will show the expense transaction that you entered. Click the New button to display the Enter a New Expense Item page.

To reduce clutter, fees and expenses are displayed separately. However, when you click the New button, you can change the Type to any of the four transaction types: Hourly Rate, Fixed Fee, Expense, or Unit Cost.

Click the RTG logo to return to the menu.

Create an Activity Code Table

We will demonstrate how easy it is to enter a photocopy charge when a code table is used. First we need to set it up properly.

From the RTG Bills Menu, choose Edit Codes from the Tables section. You will see the Select a Code Table page. Initially, there are no code tables. Click New.

You will see the Add a New Code Table page. Enter a Table Number of 1 and a Table Name of Activity codes. Leave the Code Type as Activity Codes. Click Save.

You will see the Select a Code page. Now we will enter three codes. Click New. At the Add a New Code page, type copy in the Code box, then click Save.

You will see the Edit an Activity Code page. For the Description, type Photocopies. Check the Insert this text box. Change the Type to Unit Cost. Do not check the Summarize on bills box. For the Amount, enter 0.20, meaning $0.20 per copy. Click Save.

At the Select a Code page, once again click New. Type fax as the Code and click Save.

You will see the Edit an Activity Code page. This code will be similar to the COPY code. For the Description, type Fax charges. Check the Insert this text box. Change the Type to Unit Cost. Do not check the Summarize on bills box. For the Amount, enter 1.00, meaning $1.00 per page. Click Save.

We need one more code. At the Select a Code page, click New. Type dhrs as the Code and click Save.

You will see the Edit an Activity Code page. For the Description, type Discounted hours. Do not check the Insert this text box. Change the Type to Hourly Rate. Check the Show writedown as discount box. Click Save.

The Select a Code page now shows the three codes we have entered. We are done here, so click the RTG logo to return to the RTG Bills Menu.

A code table contains codes. You can assign different code tables to different matters. It is more common, however, to use one code table for all matters. We want to make code table 1 the standard code table for all matters. A Supervisor must do this. If you are not a Supervisor, it may have been done already.

If you are a Supervisor, click Supervisor Menu in the Links section. Click Edit Options in the Settings section of the Supervisor Menu. You will see the Edit Options page. In the Standard activity table box, type 1. The Standard task table box should contain a zero, which means that we do not want to use task codes. Click Save at the bottom of the page. We are done with the Supervisor Menu. Click the link to the RTG Bills Menu in the Links section.

Use a Code Table

We are ready to enter a transaction. Click the Expenses button. Click New. Enter the timekeeper (mm), date (4/15/16), and matter (1-1) as before.

If the standard activity table has been set, there is now an Activity box above the Description. Click in the box, type copy, and press Tab. Several things will happen. The description Photocopies appears next to the activity code and also in the Description box. The transaction Type is set to Unit Cost. The Unit Cost box contains the per-page charge, 0.20, and the color of the box indicates that it cannot be changed.

Click in the Quantity Reported box, type 125, and press Tab. As before, the dollar amounts are calculated automatically.

Now that the standard activity code table is set to 1, every transaction will show the Activity box. You can create activity codes for both fees and expenses. However, RTG Bills never forces you to enter an activity code.

Note:
If you plan to create electronic bills with RTG E-Bills, you will probably be required to enter an expense code (in the Activity box) for every expense transaction and both an activity code and a task code for every fee transaction. Most e-bill formats require these codes.

Click in the Activity box. The word COPY will be highlighted. Press the Delete key to delete the code. Press Tab. When the Activity box is empty, it no longer controls the transaction type. The Type is still set to Unit Cost, but you can change it. Similarly, the Unit Cost is still set to 0.20, but you can change it.

The activity codes are meant as a convenience. They can supply a standard phrase for the description and a dollar amount for an expense, a unit cost, or a fixed fee. You can always leave the Activity box empty if you do not want to use a code. And if you do not like the codes at all, you can change the Standard code table back to zero and the Activity box will disappear.

We don't really want to enter this transaction, since it is identical to the previous one. Click Cancel. Click Yes in response to the question, "Discard this item?". Click Done to leave the Select an Expense Item page.

Check Spelling

RTG Bills Online can check an individual transaction, all unbilled fees and expenses, or all unbilled payments and adjustments. We will demonstrate the procedure by checking a single transaction. To check many transactions at once, choose Check Spelling of Fees & Expenses or Check Spelling of Payments & Adjustments from the Transactions section of the menu.

Click the Fees button. You will see the Select a Fee Item page. Make sure the Matter is 1-1. The fee we entered earlier should be in the list. The date was 4/15/16, the timekeeper is MM (if you have Show Timekeeper checked), and the description begins Office conference with . . .. Click this item to edit it.

You will see the Edit a Fee Item page. Click in the Description box and put the cursor at the end of the text. Type a space and then type oops.

Click the Check button to check the spelling of this description. You should see the Correct Spelling page.

On the Correct Spelling page, the Not found box contains the first word that was not in the dictionary: Josephs. This is a person's last name, and we will assume it is spelled correctly. Like most last names, it isn't in the dictionary. Click Skip All to skip over this word every time it appears.

The page now displays another word it could not find. The word oops is not in the dictionary (most slang words aren't included). We'll fix this in a moment.

For each word that is not found in the dictionary, the Correct Spelling page appears and the Not found box contains the word. If the word is correct, such as a person's last name, you can either skip it or add it to the dictionary. Click Skip to skip over the word or click Skip All to skip every occurrence of the word. Click Add to add the word to the dictionary.

Use Skip or Skip All when the spell checker questions something that you don't want to change, but you don't want to add it to the dictionary either. For example, arbitrary combinations of letters and numbers are treated as errors. So A5 will always be questioned, even though it may be correct in this description.

For a person's last name, if you don't want to add it to the dictionary, we recommend Skip All so that it won't appear as an error every time it occurs. That's what we did for the name Josephs.

If you do need to change the word, look in the Replace with box. Often it will contain a suggested replacement for the unknown word. If it is the correct word, click Replace to fix the incorrect word or Replace All to fix every occurrence of the incorrect word.

If the suggested replacement is the wrong word, look in the Suggestions list for other possible replacements. When you click on a word in this list, it will appear in the Replace with box. Then click Replace or Replace All to fix the incorrect word.

If none of the suggested words are correct, or there are no suggestions, you can click Copy and the incorrect word will be copied into the Replace with box. Now you can edit the word without having to re-type it. This is most useful for correcting typos. You can also type the correct word directly into the Replace with box. In either case, click Replace or Replace All to fix the description.

Sometimes you may want to edit the description directly. We'll do that now. Click Edit and delete the word oops. Click Save. The spell checker will re-check the entire description for errors. If there are no other errors, you will see the Edit a Fee Item page again.

Click Save, then Done, to return to the RTG Bills Menu.

Spell Checker Hints

1. Help
If you forget how to use the Correct Spelling page, click Help when it appears and a complete description will be shown in the Help window.

2. Abbreviations
If you are in the habit of using many abbreviations in your descriptions, the spell checker will find many errors. To prevent that from happening, we suggest that you define your abbreviations as shorthand codes so they will be converted to the full word as you enter the text. For example, if you use clt to mean client, just define CLT as a shorthand code and it will be expanded to "client" as you type.

3. All caps
Do you type with the Caps Lock on? If you do, the spell checker won't work. It accepts any "word" consisting of all capital letters, so it will never find a misspelling.

Enter a Payment

Click the Payments button. You will see the Select a Payment or Adjustment Item page. Click New.

You will see the Enter a New Payment Item page. For the Date, type 4/29/16. Again we are assuming this payment was not entered into the previous billing system, even though the date is before the cutoff date of 4/30/16.

If the Matter is not already 1-1, type 1-1 and press Tab.

Let's suppose you want every payment to have the same description on the bill. We will create a shorthand code so we don't have to type the same text every time. Click the Codes button. A list of the shorthand codes will appear. Click the first line, which says Edit shorthand codes. You will see the Select a Shorthand Code page. Click the New button.

You will see the Add a New Shorthand Code page. Type pmt and click Save. You will see the Edit a Shorthand Code page. In the With box, type Payment - Thank you. Click Save.

You will see the Select a Shorthand Code page again. The new entry, PMT, will be in the list of codes. Click Done to return to the Enter a New Payment Item page.

Now you can type pmt in the Description box and press Enter. The code is replaced by the text, Payment - Thank you. This code will be available from now on.

The transaction Type should already be set to Payment.

Notice that, under Balance Due, you see the conversion balance, $1500 for fees and $95.32 for expenses. The fee and expense we entered earlier are not included, because they have not been billed yet.

The Automatic Allocation checkbox should be checked. Click in the Total box and type 1595.32. The payment will be allocated to fees, expenses, interest, and taxes when the bill is printed.

Sometimes a client may pay you before you bill them. Perhaps they called and asked how much they owed, and you viewed a bill to get the total due on the next bill. In our example, we have entered two transactions that will make the total due equal to $1,807.82. Click in the Total box, type 1807.82 and press Tab. RTG Bills Online will accept this amount even though the payment exceeds the amount due.

At the time of billing, if the payment is more than the amount due, the excess is considered an unapplied payment. A separate total of unapplied payments is kept for each matter, to be applied when there is a balance due.

At any time you can specify the allocation yourself. Just click on the Automatic Allocation checkbox to remove the check. Now you can enter any amount you wish in the Fees, Expenses, Interest, Taxes, and Excess boxes.

Before we save this payment transaction, let's go back to the most common situation. Click the Automatic Allocation checkbox so that it is checked. Click in the Total box and type 1595.32. Click Save & Done to save the transaction and return to the Select a Payment or Adjustment Item page. The payment we just entered is now in the list. Click Done to return to the menu.

Print a Bill

Click the Bills button. You will see the Bills for Matters page. Select One Matter. Enter the matter number 1-1 if it is not already there. Both cutoff dates may be 4/30/2016 as before. If they are different, change them back. Click View.

Instead of a bill, you will see a Results page that explains why no bills were created. The reason is that you cannot print another bill for matter 1-1 with the same cutoff date as before. Click Continue.

Why wasn't the bill created? There is a good reason for this, although it is a bit difficult to explain.

Imagine that you have 50 bills to print for the month of April. You set the cutoff date to 4/30/16 and you print all the bills. When you look over the bills, you find errors in five bills. This is easy to fix. You cancel each of those five bills (using the menu choice Cancel Bills) and you fix the problems, perhaps by adding, changing, or deleting some transactions. Now you are ready to print them again. Click the Bills button and select All Matters. The cutoff date is the same as before, 4/30/16.

When you click View or PDF, only the five bills you changed will print, not all 50. You don't have to print them one at a time, putting in the matter number for each one. RTG Bills knows that you printed the other 45 bills with this cutoff date, so it skips them. It only prints the five you canceled.

A similar situation can arise when you are printing the conversion bills. Suppose you have 100 matters with previous balances. You have to enter an adjustment and print a bill for each matter. Suppose you enter adjustments for 10 matters and you want to print the bills to verify that you are entering the balances correctly. You click the Bills button and select All Matters. The cutoff date is 4/30/16. You click the PDF button to create bills and you print the PDF document on your printer. Ten bills are created.

Everything looks good so you enter adjustments for 20 more matters and create bills. Again you select All Matters and the same cutoff date. You click PDF to create the bills. Only the bills for the 20 newly-entered adjustments are created. RTG Bills knows not to create bills for the first 10 matters, because it has printed their bills already with this cutoff date. Each time you enter a batch of bills, you can select All Matters and only the new ones will print. You don't need to print them one at a time, or specify a range of matter numbers, or use any other tricks.

To sum it up, once you print a matter's bill with a given cutoff date, it won't print again.

However, if you need a copy of a bill, you can choose Reprint Bills from the menu and print a bill as many times as you want. Each copy will be the same as the original. What you can't do is print a bill twice with the same cutoff date if the two bills would be different.

To pick up where we left off, you should see the Bills for Matters page. The cutoff dates are both 4/30/16. Click the small calendar button next to the Fees and expenses through date. A calendar pops up to show April 2016. Click the > button to go to the next month, May 2016. Click 1 to choose May 1. The calendar will disappear and the date, 5/1/2016, will be in the box. Click Copy Date so the second cutoff date is also 5/1/2016.

Click View. This time, a bill is created. The Billing Summary will show the previous balance of $1,595.32, a payment of $1,595.32, new charges of $212.50, and a total now due of $212.50. Click Done at the top or bottom of the page to leave the Viewer.

You can view a bill as many times as you wish. It is only the PDF button that actually creates a bill and makes it permanent, and even then it is only semi-permanent because you can cancel the bill if you need to change it.

To print this bill, verify that One Matter is selected, the matter number is 1-1, and the Cutoff Dates are both 5/1/2016. Click the PDF button.

A message box tells you what bills you are about to print. We have found that people sometimes print All Matters when they intend to print One Matter. Although the message doesn't prevent that, it does give you a chance to confirm what RTG Bills is about to do. Click Yes to create the bill. After some processing, you will see a new browser window which contains the PDF document. Print the document on your printer, then close that window.

The main browser window shows the Bills for Matters page. Click Done to return to the menu.

Recall that bill format 1 determines the appearance of this bill. Notice that the Billing Summary shows a single column, even though you have seen that fee and expense amounts are kept separate inside RTG Bills Online. Also notice that the timekeeper's initials appear after the date on each fee and expense transaction. This, too, is determined by the bill format. A Supervisor can change the bill format to fit the needs of your firm.

Change a Bill

If you see a mistake in a transaction after you print a bill, here is how you can fix it:

Cancel the bill using the menu choice Cancel Bills in the Bills section.
Change the transaction by clicking the Fees, Expenses, or Payments button.
Print the bill again by clicking the Bills button.

Even if the problem with the bill is just the formatting, still you must cancel the bill in order to change it.

Suppose you want to remove the timekeeper's initials from the bill. You can change bill format 1 to do this if you are a Supervisor. Keep in mind that this change applies to all matters that use bill format 1 (which could well be all your matters if you only use one bill format).

First we will cancel the bill. Choose Cancel Bills from the Bills section of the RTG Bills Menu. Verify that One Matter is selected and the matter number is 1-1. Click Cancel Bills. A message box describes what you are about to do. Click Yes. After some processing, a message appears on the page to show the number of canceled bills. Click Done to return to the menu.

Click the Supervisor Menu link in the Links section. Of course, to do this you must be a Supervisor in RTG Bills Online. If you are not, you won't have the link on your menu.

Choose Edit Bill Formats on the Supervisor Menu in the Settings section. You will see the Select a Bill Format page. Format 1 should be in the list of bill formats. Click on that row.

On the Edit a Bill Format page, click the Edit Sections button. You will see the Edit Sections for Bills tabbed dialog. Click the Fees tab. Click the Timekeeper initials checkbox to remove the check.

Click the Expenses tab. Once again, click the Timekeeper initials checkbox to remove the check.

We are finished with our changes. Click Save to leave the tabbed dialog. You will see the Edit a Bill Format page again. Click Done. At the Select a Bill Format page, click Done again.

You are back at the Supervisor Menu. Click the RTG Bills Menu link in the Links section.

Click the Bills button. Verify that One Matter is selected and the matter number is 1-1. Set both cutoff dates to 5/1/2016. Click PDF. Click Yes to create the bill.

Look at the bill in the PDF viewer. The fee and expense transactions no longer show the timekeeper initials. You can print the bill, if you wish. Close the PDF window.

The main browser window shows the Bills for Matters page. Click Done to return to the menu.

Reprint a Bill

To make a second copy of a bill, or to replace a bill that was damaged by the printer, choose Reprint Bills from the Reprint section of the menu. On the Reprint Bills page, choose One Matter and click PDF. The reprinted bill will be an exact copy of the original bill.

If you choose All Matters or Matter Range, Reprint Bills uses the cutoff date for fees and expenses to choose which bills to print. Even if you printed month-end bills over several days, you can reprint them all at once if you specify the last day of the month as the cutoff date.

For example, suppose you printed 20 bills with the cutoff date of March 31 using Bills for Matters. Let's say you plan to mail those paper bills to the clients. Now you want to print a second copy of those bills for your files. Choose Reprint Bills, then All Matters, and set the cutoff date to March 31. Reprint Bills will create a single PDF file containing the same 20 bills, so you can print them again. Or, if you prefer, you can save the PDF file on your local disk and save that instead of creating paper bills.

On the Reprint Bills page, if you check the box, Only reprint non-email bills, only bills that are not to be sent by email will be reprinted. Here's how it works. There is a checkbox on the Email tab when you edit a matter called Reprint bills for email. If you check that box, it means that you want to create a separate PDF file for the matter's bills so you can send them by email (or have RTG Bills Online send them for you). The menu choice, Reprint Bills for Email, actually creates those PDF files.

Matters that don't have that box checked are skipped by Reprint Bills for Email. Presumably, you want to print bills for these non-email matters on paper. The checkbox, Only reprint non-email bills, allows you to reprint just those non-email bills as a single PDF file, so you can print them all at once. It avoids printing a paper copy of bills that will be sent by email.

The Reprint Bills page only prints the most recent bill for any matter. It cannot print bills prior to the most recent one. That requires Historical Bills. Click Done to return to the menu.

Historical Bills

You can print prior bills if you choose Historical Bills from the Reprint section of the RTG Bills Menu. Here you can print any bill, not just the most recent one. You must specify the Bill Date, which is either the date the bill was originally printed, or the fee/expense cutoff date for the bill. (This choice is made by the Supervisor on the Edit Options page.) To find the Bill Date, look at the Matter Ledger report.

Let's try that. On the RTG Bills Menu, click the Reports button. Make sure that Standard reports is selected at the top of the Select a Report page. Click Matter Ledger in the list of reports and then click View.

At the Select a Matter Range page, choose All Matters and click Next. At the Select a Date Range page, choose All Dates and click Next.

The report contains one matter, 1-1, for which we have printed three bills. The first bill showed the conversion balance, the second bill was canceled, and the third bill showed a fee, an expense, and a payment.

Look at the date shown for the two bills that were not canceled. Depending upon how quickly you have been going through this tutorial, both bills might have the same date. In any case, the date we want is the date of the last bill, which shows fees of $187.50 and expenses of $25.00. The date is in the first column of the report.

Click Done to leave the RTG Viewer and click Done again to leave the Select a Report page. Choose Historical Bills from the Reprint section of the menu.

You will see the Historical Bills page. Choose All Matters. Enter the bill date of the last bill that was created for matter 1-1, which you just found on the Matter Ledger report. Click PDF.

A new browser window opens to display the PDF document, which contains all bills printed on the specified date. If it had the same date, the conversion bill will appear first. Scroll down until you see the bill we are interested in. The bill you see on the screen should be the same as the bill you printed. It shows a fee transaction, an expense transaction, and a payment. The payment has paid off the previous balance, so the total now due is the sum of the fee and expense transactions on this bill.

Usually you will not have two bills for the same matter printed on the same date. It can happen, however, if you print two bills for the same matter, on the same day, with different cutoff dates. If that does happen, the two bills will be viewed or printed together.

Most of the time, the matter number and the bill date will uniquely identify a bill. You can get the bill date from the Matter Ledger, then use Historical Bills to view or print the bill. This feature is useful if a client asks for a copy of a bill sent prior to the most recent bill for the matter.

Close the window displaying the PDF document. At the Historical Bills page, click Done to return to the menu.

When you wish to reprint a single bill, you can do it directly from the Matter Ledger report. As before, click the Reports button. Make sure that Standard reports is selected at the top of the Select a Report page. Click Matter Ledger in the list of reports and then click View. At the Select a Matter Range page, choose All Matters and click Next. At the Select a Date Range page, choose All Dates and click Next.

The RTG Viewer is now displaying the Matter Ledger. Find any bill that has not been canceled and click on it. You will see the View a Bill Item page, which displays information about that bill. Click the PDF button to create a PDF copy of the original bill.

Close the window displaying the PDF document. Click Done at the View a Bill Item page. Click Done again at the RTG Viewer page. Click Done once more at the Select a Report page.

Create a Retainer Account

When we speak of retainers, we are referring to payments received from a client in advance of being billed for fees or expenses. Trust accounts are bank accounts you control that hold client funds that your firm disperses.

In RTG Bills, retainer accounts and trust accounts are treated the same way. We always refer to retainer accounts, but you can set up each account to behave in the way that you want. You can use a retainer account to keep track of money that you are holding on behalf of the client, or you can use it to keep track of money that the client has paid in advance, to be applied to future fees or expenses.

If your firm does not use retainers or trust accounts, you can skip this section.

For this tutorial, we will consider the simplest situation, in which you receive a payment from the client to be used, as needed, to pay the bills for a matter. First, we will create a retainer account for matter 1-1.

From the RTG Bills Menu, in the Tables section, choose Edit Retainer Accounts. You will see the Select a Retainer Account page. Enter matter number 1-1, if it is not already there, then click New.

You will see the Add a New Retainer Account page. At the top, you see the matter number, the client name, and the matter name.

In the Account Type section, choose Matter-level account. Unless a client specifically requests that a retainer be used for multiple matters, you should create a matter-level account.

In the Description section, enter a description to identify the account on the bills.

In the Group section, leave the value as 0.

The Retainer Requests section lets you specify that the retainer should be replenished when it falls below a certain level. Select Replenishing retainer. Often this is called an evergreen retainer. Enter 1000 in box (A) and 5000 in box (B). If the balance in the retainer account falls below $1,000.00, the bill will request a replenishment to get it back to $5,000.00.

In the Standard Account section, check the box to make this account the standard retainer account. This will avoid having to choose an account when you enter a retainer transaction.

In the Automatic Payments section, check all four boxes. We are assuming that the retainer can be used to pay any charges for this matter. Just note that, if you needed to, you could have one account to pay fees and another one to pay expenses, for example.

Review your entries and click Save to create the retainer account. A message says the account has been created. Click OK.

Back at the Select a Retainer Account page, you can see the new account in the list. It has a Level of Matter, the Number is 1, and the Description is whatever you entered earlier, or Matter-level retainer if you did not change the default description. Click Done.

Next, we will look at a bill. Click the Bills button. On the Bills for Matters page, choose One Matter and enter 1-1 if it is not already there. Enter 5/31/16 for both cutoff dates. Click View.

The bill shows the previous balance of $212.50 and there are no new fee or expense items. But notice that there is now an Additional retainer due of $5,000 because the retainer account is empty and we set it to request a replenishment when the retainer balance is below $1,000. Click Done and then Done again to leave the RTG Viewer and the Bills for Matters page.

Let's suppose the client has sent a check for $5,000 to be put in the retainer account. Click the Payments button. On the Select a Payment or Adjustment page, the matter number should show 1-1. Click New.

On the Enter a New Payment Item page, enter the date 5/7/16. Leave the matter as 1-1. In the Description box, type Thank you for the retainer. Change the Type to Retainer Received. Below the Amount heading, enter 5000 in the Retainer box. Notice that the Retainer Account section near the bottom of the page already shows the retainer account we created earlier, Matter-1, because we set it as the standard retainer account. Click Save & Done.

At the Select a Payment or Adjustment Item page, we can see the retainer transaction in the list. Click Done.

Now click Bills. The settings should be unchanged: One Matter, 1-1, 05/31/2016 for both dates. Click View.

The bill now has a Retainer section and it contains the $5,000 retainer that was entered. The Billing Summary shows a Retainer applied line, with a credit equal to the previous balance. In other words, $212.50 has been taken out of the retainer account and used to reduce the matter balance to zero. The Total now due is zero, and the Retainer balance shows the remaining balance in the retainer account.

What is not obvious from this bill is that RTG Bills determined the separate fee and expense balances and used the retainer to zero each one separately. We can see that on a prebill. Click Done to exit the RTG Viewer and Done again to exit the Bills for Matters page.

On the RTG Bills Menu, Bills section, choose Prebills for Matters. On the Prebills for Matters page, the settings should be unchanged: One Matter, 1-1, 05/31/2016 for both dates. Click View.

The prebill shows a lot of additional information. In the Billing Summary, you can see that the retainer was applied separately to the fees and expenses so that each one has a New balance of zero. RTG Bills does this automatically when the bill is created, because we chose Automatic Payments in creating the retainer account. That setting is actually stored with the matter. Click Done to exit the viewer and Done again to exit the Prebills for Matters page.

Click the Matters button. Click Edit to edit matter 1-1. On the Edit a Matter page, click the Retainer tab. After you create a retainer account, any changes must be made here. For example, if you determine that the retainer account should only be used to pay expenses, you could click the None buttons for Fees, Interest, and Taxes. Click Cancel to exit the Edit a Matter page and Done to exit the Enter a Matter Number page.

Using Automatic Payments for a retainer account is similar to using Automatic Allocation when you enter a payment. In both, you are relying on RTG Bills to determine how much to apply to fees, expenses, interest, and taxes. It does the calculation when the bill is prepared, because at that time it knows exactly how much is due.

Further information about retainer accounts is available in the help system:

Help > Help Home Page > Special Topics for RTG Bills > Retainers and a Trust Account

RTG Timer Transactions

If you or someone else in your firm wants to try RTG Timer, this is a good time to do it. The RTG Timer tutorial, Using RTG Timer Online, assumes you have entered the fake data described in this tutorial.

In the course of the RTG Timer tutorial, several transactions for matter 2-1 are entered and released. If several people try the RTG Timer tutorial, they will each create transactions. All the released RTG Timer Online transactions go into RTG Bills Online.

Here we will assume that someone has used the RTG Timer tutorial and that they have created and released transactions, which are now in RTG Bills Online. If not, skip to the next section.

After someone releases transactions in RTG Timer Online, they can no longer be changed in RTG Timer Online, but they can be changed in RTG Bills Online.

Let's look at the RTG Timer Online transactions. Click the Expenses button. Type the matter number 2-1 and press Tab. Transactions should appear in the list. Click the transaction that says Messenger service to edit it. This expense transaction looks just as it would look if you had entered it into RTG Bills Online directly. In fact, there is nothing that identifies it as having originated from RTG Timer Online. The transactions are ready to be billed, just as if you had entered them into RTG Bills Online.

Click Cancel to leave the Edit an Expense Item page. Click Done to leave the Select an Expense Item page and return to the menu.

Delete The Fake Data

We have now completed our brief tour through RTG Bills Online. You may want to experiment further with the software before you enter actual data. When you are ready to remove the fake data, follow these instructions.

If you received transactions from RTG Timer Online earlier in this tutorial, you should delete them first. We have not billed them, so we can simply delete them.

Click the Reports button. On the Select a Report page, make sure the option for Standard reports is selected. In the list of reports, scroll down to find Unbilled Fees and Expenses by Matter. Double-click the report in the list. Note that a double-click on the report name is the same as a single click to highlight it followed by clicking the View button.

On the Select a Matter Range page, click All Matters, then click Next.

On the Select a Date Range page, click All Dates, then click Next.

The RTG Viewer will display the unbilled fees and expenses. Click any fee item. You will see the Edit a Fee Item page. Click Delete to delete this item, then OK to confirm that choice. You may be asked if you want to update the report now. Click OK. You will see the report again, but the deleted item has been removed.

Repeat this process until all of the unbilled items have been deleted. After you delete the last one, you will see the Results from Report page, which says Nothing to view. Click Continue. At the Select a Report page, click Done.

Now that you have deleted the RTG Timer Online data, we will go on to delete the data entered in this tutorial.

Write Off a Balance Due

A matter cannot be deleted if the fee, expense, interest, tax, or retainer balance is not zero, or if the matter has unbilled transactions: fees, expenses, payments, or adjustments. A good way to check this is to print a prebill.

Choose Prebills for Matters from the Bills section of the menu. You will see the Prebills for Matters page. Under Matters, click All Matters. Under Cutoff Dates, click Today. Under Billing Cycles, click each unchecked item until every item is checked.

Click View. After a pause, the RTG Viewer will display the prebills. Use the Previous and Next buttons to move from page to page. You should see at least one prebill, for matter 1-1.

If you went through the previous section on retainers, there is an unbilled "retainer received" item dated 5/7/16. Click on that item. On the Edit a 'Retainer Received' Item page, click Delete, then click Yes to confirm. You are back at the prebill in the RTG Viewer.

Now the prebill has no unbilled items, but it does have both a fee balance and an expense balance. We will write off these amounts so we can delete the matter. Click Done to leave the RTG Viewer and return to the Prebills for Matters page. Click Done again to return to the menu.

Click the Payments button. Click New. You will see the Enter a New Payment Item page. Click the calendar button to open the calendar, then click the Today link on the bottom left. The date will show today's date. Type 1-1 for the matter and press Tab. Type Write off balance due for the Description. Change the Type to Adjustment.

Click in the Total box (in the Amount column), type 212.50, and press Tab. Notice that the fee and expense amounts are filled in correctly. We could have unchecked the Automatic Allocation box and entered separate fee and expense amounts, but this was easier. We knew the total was $212.50 because it appears on the prebill we just printed and it also appears as the Total Due in the Balance Due column. Note that we did not put a minus sign in front of the number, because this is a credit. It reduces the amount owed. Click Save & Done, then click Done.

Now we need to create a bill so that the balance due becomes zero, even though we most likely would not send it to the client. Click Bills for Matters. Click One Matter. Verify that the matter number is 1-1. Click Today to fill in today's date for both cutoff dates. Click PDF. Click Yes to confirm that you are about to create one bill.

After a pause, a new browser window will open to display the bill. The bill shows a New balance of $0.00. Now that the balance is zero, we are ready to close this matter. For a real matter, you would want to either print the bill or save it locally as a disk file.

Close the window that shows the bill. On the main browser window, click Done to return to the menu.

If prebills for other matters were created, repeat this procedure to zero the balances of those matters.

Close a Matter and Hide a Client

When you have finished all work on a matter, you can prevent someone from accidentally entering new fees and expenses for the matter by closing the matter.

Click the Matters button. If the Matter is not already 1-1, type it in. Click Edit.

You will see the Edit a Matter page. Click the Billing tab. In the Status section, you will see that the status is now Open. Click the Change button. Click Yes to confirm that you want to close the matter. Notice that the status is now Closed and the Date Closed is today's date. An OK to Delete checkbox is now visible, but it is not checked.

This is how we recommend you leave a matter when no more work will be done on it. Click Save.

Now we will close the other matter for this client. At the Enter a Matter Number page, type the matter number 1-2 and click Edit. At the Edit a Matter page, click the Billing tab, then click the Change button in the Status section. Click Yes to confirm. Click Save. At the Enter a Matter Number page, click Done.

Now that all matters for this client are closed, we will hide the client so it does not appear in the client list when you select a client. Click the Clients button. Click on the row for client 1, ABC Manufacturing. If you do not see client 1, click the Top button to go to the top of the client list, then click on client 1.

You will see the Edit a Client page. Click the Hide Client checkbox, then click Save.

You will see the Select a Client page again. Click Show hidden clients. Client 1 is added to the list again.

Click Show hidden clients again to remove the check. Client 1 should disappear from the list. Click Done to leave this page and return to the menu.

When you hide a client, it doesn't appear in the list of clients, unless you check Show hidden clients. This prevents the list from becoming cluttered with inactive clients. Since choosing a matter requires choosing the client first, the matters for a hidden client are, in effect, hidden as well.

Delete a Matter

Under normal circumstances, we suggest that you keep matters and their transactions even after they are completed. If you keep your matters, they can be included in reports. For example, you can print a report showing fees and expenses from two years ago, just by specifying the dates you want, if you have kept all the matters in the database.

You can, however, delete a matter and all its transactions. We suggest you do this only for matters that were created in error, or for test matters such as we have entered here.

We will delete the matters we created earlier: 1-1, 1-2, and 2-1. If you followed the previous instructions, these matters should have a zero balance. We have already closed matters 1-1 and 1-2.

Now we must mark the matters as OK to Delete. We could have done that earlier, when we closed the matters, but we wanted to emphasize that ordinary matters should be closed but not deleted. These three matters are not ordinary matters, however; they are test matters that contain fake data.

Click the Matters button. Here is a tip for typing matter numbers: you can type either a minus sign (which is the same as a hyphen or dash) or a period between the client and case numbers. Type 1.1 and press Enter. On the Edit a Matter page, click the Billing tab, then click the OK to Delete checkbox so that it is checked. Click Save.

At the Enter a Matter Number page, type 1.2 and press Enter. Again click the Billing tab, click OK to Delete, and click Save.

At the Enter a Matter Number page, type 2.1 and press Enter. Click the Billing tab. Click Change in the Status section and click Yes to confirm. Click OK to Delete and Save. At the Enter a Matter Number page, click Done.

All three matters are now marked for deletion. Click the Reports button. Double-click Closed Matters in the list of reports. Click All Matters and click Next. Click All Dates and click Next.

After a pause, the RTG Viewer will display the report. Note that the Y in the last column means the OK to Delete box is checked, so the matter can be deleted. Press Done to leave the RTG Viewer and Done again to leave the Select a Report page.

Only a Supervisor can delete matters. If you are not a Supervisor, skip the rest of this section.

If you are a Supervisor, click the Supervisor Menu link. On the Supervisor Menu, click Delete a Closed Matter in the Actions section. You will see the Delete a Closed Matter page.

As you can see, you must delete one matter at a time. Enter 1-1 and click Delete. Click Yes to confirm. After a pause, a message appears to say that the matter was deleted.

Enter 1-2 and click Delete and Yes. Finally, enter 2-1 and click Delete and Yes. Click Cancel to leave this page.

When you delete a matter, the matter and all its transactions are written to an archive file. If necessary, you can restore a matter and its transactions with the Restore a Deleted Matter link on the Supervisor Menu.

Click the link to the RTG Bills Menu.

Final Cleanup

Once a Supervisor has deleted the matters, we can delete the clients. Click the Clients button. Click client 2 to edit it. You will see the Edit a Client page. Click Delete. Click Yes to confirm.

You will see the Select a Client page. Click Show hidden clients. Client 1 will appear in the list. Click on client 1 to edit it. At the Edit a Client page, click Delete. Click Yes. Click Done to leave the Select a Client page.

Since matter 1-1 has been deleted, we should remove it as the standard matter. From the RTG Bills Menu, in the Personal Settings section, choose Set the Standard Matter. On the Set the Standard Matter page, click the None button, then click Save.

You can now delete the timekeepers. From the RTG Bills Menu, click Edit Timekeepers in the Tables section. On the Select a Timekeeper page, click timekeeper 1 to edit it and click the Delete button. Click Yes to confirm. Now click timekeeper 2 to edit it and click Delete and Yes to delete it. Click Done to return to the menu.

We set the standard activity code table to 1 so we could use activity codes. If you don't want to use activity codes and you are a Supervisor, click Supervisor Menu and click Edit Options in the Settings section of the Supervisor Menu. On the Edit Options page, next to Standard activity table, click the None button. This simply changes the table number to 0, which means the Activity box will not appear when you enter fees and expenses. Click Save. Click the RTG Bills Menu link to leave the Supervisor Menu.

If you do want to use activity codes, you may want to add more codes. At the very least, you will want to change the two codes already in the table, COPY and FAX, to supply the actual per-page amounts you use. Click Edit Codes in the Tables section. Click on code table 1, Activity codes. Click the code you want to change.

You will see the Edit An Activity Code page. Change the Amount and click Save. Repeat this procedure for the other code, if necessary, and add more codes as needed. When you are done, click Done to leave the Select a Code page and click Done again to leave the Select a Code Table page.

Click Sign Out when you are done using RTG Bills Online.

What To Do Next

Now it is up to you to enter real data.

If you are currently using RTG Bills on a Windows PC, your data can be migrated to RTG Bills Online. Contact RTG for assistance.

If you were not using RTG Bills, you must now enter timekeepers, billing rates, and so on, just as we did with the fake data. The shorthand codes are still there. Change them as you see fit. Edit bill format 1 so the bills look the way you want them to look. Create additional bill formats if some clients should get bills that look different from other clients. Create additional rate tables if some matters are billed at different rates than other matters.

Remember to use the help system when you have a question. If you can't find the answer there, contact RTG.

RTG Bills, RTG Timer, and Billing Made Easy are trademarks of RTG Data Systems.