Frequently Asked Questions

February 8th, 2010, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:  Fiscal Year-To-Date.

Do you report on other than a calendar year?

Yes, you can choose any fiscal year you want and it does not have to be the end of a month. We report all hours, fees, costs and payments by your chosen fiscal year.

January 28th, 2010, San Francisco, California:  Timekeeper Contribution Reporting.

Does Interbill track timekeeper time and fees to payments?

Yes we offer a timekeeper productivity report which tracks payment back to the contributing timekeeper.

January 12th, 2010, Berlin, New Jersey:  Statement formats.

Does Interbill offer more than one statement format?

Yes we offer almost any arrangement of billing data you can think of.

December 21st, 2009, Franklin, New York: Collections.

Does Interbill have a collections department?

We work with the national collection agency Optio Solutions.  They send out a series of collection letters and Interbill sends out the payment plan bills when a payment agreement has been reached.

December 10th, 2009, Bridgeport, Connecticut:  Application of trust funds.

What happens when charges exceed the client’s trust account?

The Prebill shows a credit balance.  We are working on an alarm notification that does not slow down the program.

November 26th, 2009 - Lowell, Massachusetts: What if Interbill goes out of business?

What happens to my data if you go out of business?

Interbill has been in business and continuously operationally profitable since 1978.  But, just in case your data is always on your computer in a common data format that can be exported into any billing program.

November 4th, 2009, Houston, Texas:  LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange) billing format.

Does Interbill prepares bills in LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange) format and post those on the client’s website.

Yes, we prepare bills in any LEDES format and we post to the client’s website or transmit any way your client specifies.

October 20th, 2009, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania: Contingency billing – billing for costs but not fees.

Our office does a lot of work on a contingency basis.  On contingency files we do not bill our time but we keep track of it so that we can see if we came out ok on each case.  We do bill costs though and we bill those monthly.  Is there a way with your service we can keep track of time but not bill time and keep track of costs but not bill costs?

Yes for contingency cases there are several different ways you can bill.  Keeping track of time as a business and management practice only, but billing costs is one of our contingency billing alternatives.

October 14th, 2009, Boston Massachusetts: Alternative billing Format – summarizing fees.

Although we keep track of our services by the individual service, we like to combine all of the services from one timekeeper and day together into one paragraph with a total of hours and amount. Can you do this?

Yes this is one of our alternative statement presentations.

October 6th, 2009, Chicago Illinois:  Billing for 287 timekeepers and licensing system.

We are a 209 attorney law firm with 78 paraprofessionals who bill time and costs. Are you capable of handling this size firm with your Online system and it is possible to operate your service from our servers.

Yes you can license our online software to operate it on your servers providing a closed intranet or open internet service to your staff. There is no upward limit to the number of attorneys or offices. We can sign a turn key operating contract with your firm to operate your system for you or you can operate it yourself. Our customer service staff can support your staff or you can use your billing staff for support and our staff will be your backup.

September 16th, 2009, Fort Lauderdale, Florida:  Emailing Statements.

Can we review our statements and email them from the Interbill website?

Yes, you can. You put email addresses in once and then all you have to do is click “send”.

September 3rd, 2009 Huntington Beach, California: Using the Interbill Web Timesheets for remote timekeepers.

Our main office is in Southern California.  We have an attorney and a paralegal in an office in Northern California, we bill out of our Southern California office.  Can the Northern California attorney and paralegal keep their time and costs on web timesheets? And, can we synchronize that data with our billing data in the Southern California office?

Yes, but the attorney and paralegal in Northern California will not be able to open files until we release Web Timesheets 2 in November 2009.

August 16th, 2009, Los Angeles, California: Multiple Offices with Multiple return Addresses.

We have offices in Northern and Southern California. We send out bills from both offices and ask that payment be sent to the office from which the bill has been sent.  However, we consolidate our financials and sometimes attorneys and paralegals in one office work on cases which are primarily the responsibility of the other office. Can we continue that practice on Interbill?

Yes, we will set you up as one office, and we can assign different billing and payment addresses to different files or cases.  Interbill does this all the time for its customers.

August 5, 2009, Alton, Illinois: Timekeeper hourly rates.

I like to display the amount we pay each timekeeper rather than the fee hourly rate we charge clients for that timekeeper. Can you accommodate how I do this?

Right now you can display the fee amount or nothing. Our update this fall will accommodate your request. You can choose to display the timekeeper pay amount or the client fee amount.

August 3rd, 2009, Bethesda, Maryland: Timekeeper access.

We use outside contractor attorneys and paralegals. We cannot have them use our software system because of access problems to other client names they are not working on and confidential firm financial information. Right now we have to have these attorneys and paralegals submit data manually, how does Interbill handle this situation.

As far as firm level information, you can restrict timekeeper access. Most of our customers have contract attorneys and paralegals use our online system and synchronize data periodically. The update we are releasing this fall, has permissions for timekeepers which can restrict them to loading certain client names. Right now the online version does not have any firm or client financial information.

July 22nd, 2009, Hagerstown, Maryland: Prebills.

I like to edit prebills on each file before billing them. How is that done with Interbill?

Prebills are integrated into the timekeeping process. You can quickly look at a prebill after each entry to see the current status of the statement. We have created what we believe is the easiest to edit prebill system available. The same easy to use prebill is available online also.

July 8th, 2009, Salisbury, Maryland: Charging different hourly rates and flat rates.

I charge a variety of hourly and flat rates based upon the type of case and the activity. How would Interbill handle this?

With Interbill you can establish an override hourly rate for your office, another override for the client and establish override hourly rates and flat rates for different types of activity. We think we have this requirement well handled.

June 17th, 2009, Mountain View, California: Manual Timekeeping.

I travel a lot and like recording my time and costs on paper, can you accommodate me?

Yes, we can. You can record everything on what we call a Log and fax it to us. We will input the data for you. The cost is $60 a month more.

June 4th, 2009, Mamaroneck, New York: Getting Started.

I have thought of upgrading my billing system to Interbill any number of times, but I just cannot get started. Do you have a road map for me to follow that might make this a less daunting task. I have about 75 active clients and about 300 other clients I want to bring on just to keep them for promotion purposes.

The one thing that is great about Interbill is that we have people. People to walk you through the process on the phone, but most importantly people who will key your data into the Interbill Software and/or online system you will be using. This is usually done by asking you to fax your last statement to the client to Interbill with a notation regarding payments and then start using Interbill to record all your entries. For any unbilled time or costs, you can fax those exactly in the manner you have kept them. We might have to talk to you a few times to understand your prior process, but we can assure you you will be using Interbill the very first month.

May 27th, 2009, Clinton, New York: Special Agreement Hours.

I often am asked to do work for a fixed fee. Almost always I have earned much less than my hourly rate. Do you have a solution to this problem other than not to agree to a fixed rate?

Yes we do and it works very well. We call it Special Agreement Hours. You limit your agreement with your client to a certain number of hours that is included in the flat fee. Once the hours exceed your standard hourly rate for that client will go into effect automatically. This is easy to implement. In our program you select Special Agreement Hours, select the file, enter the fixed fee amount and then the hours to be included.

May 3rd, 2009, Glendale, California: Productivity and Other Reports.

Can you create bar graphs for productivity reports and other reports?

Yes we can. We are also developing this so that our customers can do it for themselves when they want.

April 24th, 2009, San Francisco, California: Fee entry Description Limits.

Is there a limit on the length of activity descriptions on statements?

No, none. You can use as many lines of description as you need.

April 17th, 2009, Maryland: Billing Pre-Paid Legal Plans.

I work with a lot of legal prepaid plans. Do you have experience with the various billing arrangements and formats they require.

Yes, I believe we have worked with all the prepaid legal billing plans, and so far we have not run into any requirements we haven't been able to automate.

April 17th, 2009, from Denver, Colorado: Data Connectivity.

Is Interbill ODBC compliant?  We are converting all of our documents to NetDocuments. We want a billing system that is ODBC-compliant for exporting client and matter information to NetDocuments.

The short answer is “yes”. Electronic Timesheets and Web Timesheets are both built upon ODBC compliant databases. For those who are reading this and have no idea what it is about, let me explain the importance of this question. ODBC stands for Open Data Base Connectivity. It is a popular standard for database access. The goal of ODBC is to make it possible to access data from a database, regardless of which application created the data. A database that understands ODBC commands is referred to as ODBC-Compliant. Common databases like Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access are ODBC compliant.

So why does this matter?

Because we utilize ODBC compliant databases in our system, the data is capable of being accessible outside of our software. Services like NetDocuments are able to write custom software and scripts to access the data that is stored within any ODBC-compliant database for the purpose of importing or exporting data, such as client and matter information. The opposite would be true if we utilized a proprietary database format; the data in our database would be inaccessible to any software but our own.

April 5th, 2009, from Encinitas, California: Displaying Discounted Rates on Statements.

It appears that Interbill would mathematically discount the EAP hourly entries as entered, rather than treat the timekeepers as having two different rates and apply one set to the EAP referred clients and the other set to the other clients. Am I correct?

You can do it either way, as noted above, we can discount a rate and show that discount or you can use a different rate for the client.

April 5th, 2009, from Encinitas, California: Pricing & Interbill® Contract Information.

How long will your current pricing remain in effect?

Three years. We have not raised prices on the system where you key the data since we introduced it in 1992 as a DOS based system.  Since that time, we have not only updated the system about 20 times, but we have added web statements, free backup and storage of all data and Web Timesheets within this pricing structure. We are aware that the long range projection for the dollar is to inflate dramatically starting in about 2012, so we are a little nervous about guaranteeing prices, but retaining our customers is key to us and the ratio of price to value is key.  We have no plans to raise prices with inflation at what it is. We have constantly perfected our systems so they run more inexpensively and of course, growth amortizes more customers over our fixed costs. Very few of our costs are variable.

What is the duration of your service contract?

Month to month.  We contract prices longer but we do not require you to obligate for more.

Is there reduced pricing for longer contract periods?

No, we do not want to hold a customer to a contract who does not want to use us. This is a community of interest and the minute it does not work for you, we do not want you to have to work with us or pay us.

March 24th, 2009, from San Francisco, California: Billing multiple times a month.

Can you bill half of my clients at one time and the other half at another time, during the same month?

Sure, we can do that.  Our Customer Service will help you set that up.

March 21st, 2009, from Indianapolis, Indiana: Interbill Credibility and Longevity.

How long has Interbill been in business?

We have been in business since 1972. 
We are a California Corporation in good standing. Interbill has billed for attorneys longer than any software company, online service, or any other kind of billing service.

Using an billing service like yours, unlike using software, means we must rely on the fact that Interbill will stay in business at least as long as we do. How can we be sure Interbill will be around in the future?

Rest assured, Interbill is here and healthy and ready for the future. Interbill intends to be a major player in the professional online billing market. We have made the large, necessary investments to ensure our success as we expand throughout the nation. Interbill is now in its second generation of mangement and we have already begun training the third generation. All these young men and women will be taking Interbill into the future. If you're looking into the future you will see Interbill - and we will be there for you!

March 19th, 2009, from Chicago, Illinois: Reminder billing/Overdue payments.

I read your FAQ on collections. I am interested in a way to notify clients the minute their payment is overdue.  Can you help me?

Yes, we do have reminder billing. Although, it does not send out the reminder bill on the payment due date. We are changing it so that it does work that way. By September of this year, you will be able to set how many days you want to wait, after your payment due date, before you send out a reminder bill. You are decide what is printed on the reminder bill and your phrases can be conditional, based upon whether a partial payment was received, how long ago etc. You can also use all or part of our standard reminder billing phrases.

March 13, 2009, from Glendale California: Security and confidentiality.

What about confidentiality and security with your services both online, software, and handling data.

Interbill® is responsible for keeping your data secure and confidential. This should be your number one concern.  Unlike your own staff, we can be sued for a breach of confidentiality and security, and most likely we would lose our business and perhaps more.  Interbill® provides a level of security and confidentiality that you cannot provide in your own office.

One of the biggest problems with using digital data is that it can be copied, moved, changed or distorted in a number of ways that leave no trace. It doesn't matter where the data is located. Digital data requires multiple levels of security to protect it.

We use 128-bit encryption to protect your data while it is in your database, as it is transmitted over the internet and accessed via your computer. This means your data cannot be intercepted or deciphered by anyone. To ensure that your data is safe when you view it online, our website is VeriSign™ secured. VeriSign™ is the leading secure sockets layer (SSL) Certificate Authority enabling secure e-commerce and communications for web sites, intranets, and extranets.

We have been in business since 1972 and have never had even an allegation of a break in security or confidentiality.

We can afford to provide you with state of the art security because we amortize those costs over thousands of customers. Regardless of the size of your office, you cannot afford this level of security in your offices.

Here is a link to a recent very thoughtful article from a member of the Oregon Bar about data security and confidentiality for attorneys.  Basically he says it is very difficult for small law offices to provide that security and confidentiality on there own. http://www.osbar.org/publications/bulletin/09febmar/legalonline.html

March 12th, 2009, from Chicago, Illinois: Reminder billing.

I read your FAQ on collections.  What I am interested in is a way to notify clients the minute their payment is overdue.  Can you help me?

Yes, we have reminder billing and although it does not send out the reminder bill on the payment due date, we are changing it so it does work that way. 

By September of this year, you can set how many days you want to wait after your payment due date before you send out a reminder bill.  You are in total control of what is printed on the reminder bill and your phrases can be conditional, based upon whether a partial payment was received how long ago, etc. 

You can also use all or part of our standard reminder billing phrases. .

February 24th, 2009, from Boston, Massachusetts: Manual-handwritten system details.

I am interested in your manual billing service.  I like to record my time, costs and payments by hand.  I do not like to carry around a laptop computer. Can you tell me a bit more about how the manual system works?

Our manual system is very easy to use. You will just have to have some sort of reference sheet for your clients' file numbers which people using our Electronic Timesheets and Online Web Timesheets have instant access to. The rest is about the same. You can record, time, costs, payments, trusts all on one log form. The log form can be photocopied and/or downloaded from our website. You then fax all your timesheets to Interbill when you are ready to bill. 

We do prefer having your timesheets faxed all at one time. If that is not convenient, you can fax them whenever you can during the month. Our fax number is toll free. The cost to key your data is 35 cents per line. Our customers pay about $70 in keying charges each month.

How do I get my billing statements and financial reports?

You may choose to have Interbill print and mail them, or you can email them or print and mail them. You can also choose to have us mail some while you mail/email others. It's up to you.

February 20th, 2009, Providence, Rhode Island: Can I put Messages on My Interbill Statements?

Can I put messages on my Interbill® Statements, and if so, how do I remove the message when I no longer want it?

Yes, you can put a short message on your bills for all your clients at one time, and/or on individual bills. Also, certain features like Installment Billing, Special Agreement Hours, Repetitive Charges and Repetitive Credits have their own message lines if you want to use them.  Unfortunately, remembering to take off the message is up to you. But, we are working on a feature that will allow you to indicate how many times you want the message to appear.

Tuesday February 17th, 2009, Berkeley, California: Emailing client statements directly from interbill.com.

I would like to email my statements from your web site, how is that done?

You can automate the emailing of current statements from our VeriSign® secured website. You only have to put the email address in once and it is retained on the statement website if you want. You can click one button to send all your statements at one time, or send them individually. We provide you with standard language for the cover email. You can also edit our standard language or create your own.

Can I email some statements and mail the others?

Certainly.  You can choose any combination.

Can I email archived statements from the website?

We retain one year of archived client statements on the website for you. You can email those just like you would send current month statements. If you need to go back further than one year, you can call us or email us and we will put that statement on the website for you. You have to download it and email it using your regular email account.

Thursday, February 12th, 2009, Springfield, Massachusetts: Issuing credits & discounts to clients.

I like to give courtesy discounts to my clients who are either friends, referrals from friends, or professionals I use like my Ophthalmologist.  I like to show the entire charge on the bill then show that I discounted the charge. The problem is that I forget to do it and my software doesn’t remember for me. Can you help me?

Sure, we do remember for you.  You can establish an automatic repetitive credit on each statement. That credit can be a percent of the fees for the current month. You establish it once and that is it. This is a very popular feature with our customers.

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009, Honolulu, Hawaii: Specific costs and/or fee trusts, and non-refundable retainers.

We do a lot of Family Law. Our practice has been to take a non-refundable retainer for costs and put the fees into a trust. This is pretty labor intensive. We have to remember to transfer the money and we often forget.  First, can you open a retainer account and a trust account on each file? And secondly, do you have some way of automating the transfer of retainer money to costs and trust money to fees.

Yes and Yes. You can have a retainer and a trust account on each file. I will not go into detail on the options here, but I will address your specific question. When you receive money to be deposited into the cost retainer, you will enter that money as a cost retainer. When you receive money be deposited into a the fee trust you will enter that deposit as a fee trust.  From then on all fees will be subtracted automatically from the fee trust and all costs will be subtracted automatically from the cost retainer. All transactions will display on the statement for a clear statement picture of the charges and the payments.

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009, Chicago, Illinois: Covering overhead costs.

I do a lot of small business work. I do not like to itemize costs like phone calls and photocopies, but those costs are substantial if I do not charge for them. Do you have any method where I can charge a cost overhead amount that is in proportion to the fees I charge?

Yes, we have a feature that works almost exactly as you describe. You can input one or more cost overhead items, or consolidate them all into one entry and have that calculate as a percent of fees not to exceed a certain amount.  You can do this one time and have it calculate on all your files every month, or do it each time you open a file and have it calculate on individual files differently. The entry per file is easy, you just put the percent of fees you want and the description and the limit. The entry says something like: Overhead cost items like photocopies, postage and telephone costs at 1% of fees, not to exceed $50 per month:  $42.02.

Monday, February 9th, 2009, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Billing clients with multiple matters.

I do mostly transactional work for small businesses. Many of my customers have several matters going on at any one time.  They like to keep the matters separate so they can see what each is costing them, but they like to pay together. My current software can handle this because I set up a client / matter relationship. But sometimes my larger clients decide to shift things around and ask to aggregate the bills by a department or division. That request boggles our software and my staff. How does Interbill handle a situation like this?

We are very familiar with this request as it happens all the time, particularly with our Entertainment Law attorneys who deal with many projects, and the projects move in and out of divisions of the same organization.  We came up with a simple solution. You open a "Summary File" for the larger organization, then you open up the matter like any other file. On the "Summary File", you just link the file number to the Summary. The Summary Statement summarizes all charges.The individual billing statements for those files immediately behind it.

Anytime you want to change which Summary File the file is billed with, you click "unlink" and highlight the file number and remove. Then you use the same procedure linking the file to the new Summary File. It is very easy and there is no accounting involved.

Friday, February 6th, 2009, Cleveland, Ohio: Can Interbill® standardize language terms in certain billing practices?

In our practice we have a number of things that we do which happen in stages. We like to describe those the same when they occur and we use standard language so the bills say the same thing regardless of who does the work. Is there an easy way to do that with your systems?

You can develop description codes to use on the Logs. The description for the codes can be 250 characters in length or about 6 statement lines. If you have the description in a document you can cut and paste into our programs online or on your computer from any text document (e.g. Word or WordPerfect).

Friday, February 6th, 2009, Glendale, California: Charging different rates for different matters.

Although we charge an hourly rate, which can differ by client, we also charge fixed rates for certain kinds of activities. Sometimes we also charge different hourly rates for certain tasks. Can you do this for us? Our current software requires us to do an override and often the attorney or staff forget and we end up looking unprofessional and careless.

Yes, we can do this for you and we can prevent any screwups. First, you can open any file with different hourly rates per timekeeper. You then can create a description code that not only inserts how you want to describe the case on each bill, but you can edit that expanded description, add to it or delete parts of it. When used that code can have its own hourly rate or flat fee for the task. All you need to remember is to use the code. 

All codes expand so you can see them and they are available at a right click in front of you. If you use our manual service, where you write your data on one of two forms and fax it or email it, you can also use those codes. In that case, you will want to print the codes on your sheet for reference.

Monday, January 30th, 2009. Updating hourly rates on unpaid bills.

I understand you store Billed Data as long as we want, selectively, by matter or type of matter, and that you hold Unbilled Data until it is billed.  My question is about Billed Data. When I send the Final bill I often change the hourly rates for me and my associates and want to bill all entries at the new hourly rates. Can I do that with Interbill?

Sure, we can change the Hourly Rates and do a Cumulative Bill for you that includes any rate changes. You can also add, delete and modify any entries, even though the entries have been billed once. It is easy to do. You just call, fax or email the instructions.

Monday, January 26th, 2009. What are Evergreen Retainers?

I see you have a feature called Evergreen Retainers. I think I know what that is, but can you expand on it just a bit more?

Sure. The Evergreen Retainer was the idea of several Family Practitioners and one Business Attorney who used our services in the early 90’s. I can’t remember which one coined the term, but I think it was the well-known Ms. Sandra Musser who did a lot of big name Family Law cases. 

While talking to Sandra one day many years ago, she said she wanted to start working on a retainer only basis, but she did not want to hold a lot of money at one time for a case. She proposed that we develop a way of automatically billing out a specific retainer amount when a retainer balance reached a certain minimum balance. She called it an "Evergreen Retainer" and that name has stuck.

It is easy to set up. When you open a file you check "Evergreen Retainer" and enter the Minimum Retainer balance and how much to automatically bill when that balance is reached. For example, if you want to maintain a minimum $5000 retainer balance and you want to bill $2000 when the retainer balance goes below that amount, those are the numbers you use. 

You can select to have the money held in a "retainer" or a "trust" account.. This method of billing has become popular with attorneys handling various kinds of white collar crimes.

Saturday, January 24th, 2009. Insurance defense billing formats: Carrier formats.

Can you send out Electronic Bills in various Ledes statement formats to my Insurance Company clients?

Yes, we have been preparing and uploading Ledes statement formats since Ledes was developed. We can prepare your statements in any electronic format specified by the carriers. It doesn’t matter how many there are and there is no extra charge for this service. You specify the format when you open the file and the rest is automatic. Normally we know the format for a particular carrier because we prepare bills for America and Canadian insurance companies.

Saturday, January 22nd, 2009. Billing flat fees, hourly rates, and capturing costs.

I offer an Hourly Rate or a Flat Fee to my clients. I bill them the Flat Fee in equal monthly installments, and at the end of the case I show them the itemized bill of services and costs.

If they paid on time each month, I allow them to pay whichever amount is less and refund the difference - if the Flat Fee they paid is more.  It is usually substantially less which makes them feel good about the Fixed Fee. 

Sometimes I include the costs, but normally it is a Flat Fee plus costs, so I bill a monthly installment plus costs. This is getting way too much for me to handle with my software. Is this something you can do for me?

Yes, we can set up all of those arrangements and we can print an itemized bill of fees and costs, or just fees, for your client at the end of the case. 

Usually we apply the Flat Fee to that so you can determine whether to refund the difference or write off the difference. This is all automated for you. You do not have to do anything but open the file and record your normal time and costs.