Disbursements

The Disbursement screen is where all costs paid out by the firm on behalf of the client will be tracked in order to ensure reimbursement at the conclusion of the case. Please note that this screen may be called something else, such as Case Costs or Expenses as configured by your administrator.

The top half of the screen will keep a running total of all of the costs added to the case under various categories, such as recoverable or waived, grouped by each individual plaintiff. The bottom half of this screen contains all entries for costs made on the case.

The Structure of This Page

Disbursement Limit Section: Lists the expense budget for the case and allows editing.
Financing: Indicates whether the disbursement have been financed by your firm and, if so, the date from which they were financed. If the case disbursements are marked as financed, the interest will be calculated automatically on the negotiation/settlement screen.
Summary table: Displays expenses totals (total, recoverable, non-recoverable, and waived) spent on behalf of each plaintiff.
Add disbursement button: Used to add a new disbursement to the case file.
Disbursement table: Contains the disbursement details and allows various actions to be performed on them.

Disbursement Limit:

The disbursement limit is intended to provide a guide as to the budget for expenses on the case. The limit is not a hard cap; a case can continue to accumulate disbursements even after passing the limit, but cases with a total disbursement amount greater than the current limit appear in the Cases With Disbursement Exceeding Limit Report to aid in identifying and tracking them. The Disbursement Limit section contains four elements: the limit amount, any comment on the limit amount, Edit hypertext for editing the limit, and Show History hypertext for viewing past changes to the limit. If the disbursement limit on a case has not been manually set, it is automatically set by the SmartAdvocate system. If the case has an estimated case value range assigned to it via the Edit Case button on the Case Summary page, the disbursement limit will automatically be set to the limit associated with that case value range in the Case Values picklist. If an estimated case value has not been set, the disbursement limit will automatically be set to the value in the Disbursement parameter in the System Parameters administrative page. To manually set the disbursement limit, click the Edit hypertext. This will open a panel with two Text input fields: one for the Disbursement Amount Limit, and one for the Comment. Both must be non-blank. When you have made your desired edits, click Save to save the changes, or Cancel to discard the changes and close the panel. To return to having the disbursement limit set automatically instead of manually, click the Edit hypertext, then fill in 0 as the disbursement amount limit and save the changes. (The comment must still not be blank, though it will also be automatically reset on saving.) To view changes in the disbursement limit over the history of the case, click the Show History hypertext. This will bring up a panel listing the limit amount, the date it was set, the date it was replaced, the associated comment, and the staff member who set it.

Summary Table:

The Summary table totals the disbursement amounts in the Disbursement table. It is updated automatically when changes are made to the Disbursement table; no changes may be made to the Summary table directly. Each row of the table represents an individual plaintiff. See Tables for general information about table structure and usage, including all buttons and other tools in this table that are not mentioned below.

Columns in the Table

The Summary Table Contains the following columns:

1.) Plaintiffs: The plaintiff whose disbursement totals are listed. Each plaintiff in the case is automatically listed in one row, with the primary plaintiff listed in bold.

2.) Total: The total amount of all disbursements made on the plaintiff's behalf.

3.) Recoverable: The total value of all recoverable disbursements made on the plaintiff's behalf. The sum of this column across all rows in the table appears below the last row of the column.

4.) Non-Recoverable: The total value of all nonrecoverable disbursements spent on the plaintiff's behalf. The sum of this column across all rows in the table appears below the last row of the column.

5.) Waived: The total value of all waived disbursements made on the plaintiff's behalf. The sum of this column across all rows in the table appears below the last row of the column.

Disbursement Table

The Disbursement table is where the details of disbursements are stored. Each row of the table represents an individual disbursement. See Tables for general information about table structure and usage, including all buttons and other tools in this table that are not mentioned below.

Columns in the Table

The disbursement table contains the following available columns:

Status: The status of the check or other payment
Invoice: The date and number of the invoice associated with the disbursement.
Check: The date and number of the check used to pay the disbursement.
Amount: The amount of the disbursement. The sum of this column across all rows in the table appears below the last row of the column.
Payee: The contact to be paid.
Type: The type of expense
Plaintiffs: The plaintiffs on whose behalf the disbursement was made. If none of the plaintiffs in the Plaintiffs field are selected, and the Share Expenses Across Plaintiffs field is selected, this column will contain the names of all plaintiffs in the case.
Recoverable: Whether the disbursement can be recovered from the case proceeds.
Waived: Whether the recovery of the disbursement was waived.
Comments: The description of the expense and any comments about the disbursement
Documents: Any documents related to the disbursement.
Action: An Edit icon and a Delete icon.
Description: The description of the expense.
Invoice Date: The date of the invoice associated with the disbursement
Invoice #: The number of the invoice associated with the disbursement.
Due Date: The date on which payment of the invoice is due.
Check #: The number of the check used to pay the disbursement.
General Ledger #: The identification number of the disbursement in the general ledger.
Payee [From QuickBooks]: Used by the QuickBooks integration; has no purpose otherwise
Status Date: The last date on which the status of the disbursement was changed
Share Expenses Across Plaintiffs: Whether the disbursement should be split equally among the plaintiffs.
Is Payee a Lienor?: Whether the payee of the disbursement also holds a lien on the case
Check Mailed Date: The date on which the check used to pay the disbursement was mailed
Check Date: The date of the check used to pay the disbursement.

Editing a Disbursement

To edit a disbursement:

Right-click anywhere in the row representing the disbursement you wish to edit. This will bring up a menu of options. Alternatively, you can click the Edit icon in the Action column of the row representing the disbursement you wish to edit. This will bring up an Add/Edit panel for disbursements, with the existing information filled in. Skip to step 3.
Click the Edit option in the menu. This will bring up an Add/Edit panel for disbursements, with the existing information filled in.
Fill the fields in with your desired information.
Click Save to save the changes and close the panel.
If you decide you do not wish to save the changes, click Cancel instead of clicking Save to undo the changes and close the panel. You can also click the white X at the upper right of the panel to do the same thing.

Deleting a Disbursement

To delete a disbursement:

Right-click anywhere in the row representing the disbursement you wish to delete. This will bring up a menu of options. Alternatively, you can click the Delete icon in the Action column of the row representing the disbursement you wish to delete. This will not bring up a confirmation message; it will simply delete the disbursement.
Click the Delete option in the menu. This will bring up a confirmation message (to avoid accidental deletions).
Click the OK button in the message to confirm the deletion. If you decide you do not wish to delete the disbursement, click Cancel instead of clicking OK to cancel the deletion. You can also click the black X at the upper right of the message to do the same thing. Until you either confirm or cancel the deletion, you may not be able to visit any other tab in your browser

Adding a Disbursement

To add a new disbursement:

Click the Add Disbursement button. This will bring up an Add/Edit panel for disbursements, blank except for defaults.
Fill the fields in with your desired information.
Click Save to save the disbursement and close the panel.

If you decide you do not wish to save the disbursement, click Cancel instead of clicking Save to undo the changes and close the panel. You can also click the white X at the upper right of the panel to do the same thing

The Add/Edit Disbursement Panel

The Add/Edit Disbursement Panel allows you to fill in the details of a disbursement. See Add/Edit Panels for general information about panel structure and usage. This panel contains the following fields:

Invoice Date: The date of the invoice associated with the disbursement.
Invoice #: The number of the invoice associated with the disbursement.
Amount: The amount of the disbursement.
Due Date: The date on which payment of the invoice is due.
Status: The status of the check or other payment.
Status Date: The date on which the most recent check status was entered.
Check Date: The date of the check used to pay the disbursement.
Check #: The number of the check used to pay the disbursement.
Check Mailed Date: The number of the check used to pay the disbursement.
General Ledger #: The identification number of the disbursement in the general ledger.
Payee: The contact to be paid.
Is Payee a Lienor?: Whether the payee of the disbursement holds a lien on the case.
Payee [From QuickBooks]: Used automatically by the QuickBooks integration; has no purpose otherwise.
Disbursement Type: The type of the expense.
Description: The description of the expense.
Expense Account:
Bank Account:
Clients: The clients on whose behalf the disbursement was made. If neither Share Expenses Across Plaintiffs nor any of the checkboxes in this field is selected, the record will not save.
Share Expenses Across Plaintiffs: Whether the disbursement should be split equally among the plaintiffs
Recoverable: if neither this field nor any of the checkboxes in the Plaintiffs field is selected, the record will not save
Custom Field:
Comments: Any comments about the disbursements
Related Documents: Tool for adding and tracking documents. Click the Select button to add a document to this disbursement.

The Related Documents Field and Documents Panel

The Related Documents field and Documents panel allow you to select documents that have already been added in the case and specifically relate them to a particular record on this page. This can help you quickly identify and access the most relevant document when you or another staff member visits this page at a later time. When you click Select Documents from the right-click menu, or click the Select button in the Related Documents field, a table of the documents in the case will appear. Find the document or documents you wish to associate with the particular record and select the checkbox for each document. Click Select or Update to confirm the selection. The descriptions of each selected document will appear in the Documents column in the table. Clicking the Open icon to the far left of the row will open that document.