Billing software for law firms: fees, disbursements and what is owed

The money a firm lends its clients

A law practice spends other people's money long before it collects its own. Search fees at the registry, lodgement and filing fees, a commissioner for oaths, courier, transport to court — each one small, each one paid out of the office float, usually in cash, usually by whoever was going that way.

None of it is the firm's cost. It is a loan to the client, recoverable on the next bill. But UGX 45,000 handed over on a Tuesday and never written down is not recoverable at all. It comes off the fee, quietly, and after two years the partner concludes conveyancing is less profitable than it used to be.

PesaScope records each of those payments as an expense against the client and the job, so when the final bill goes out the advances are line items on it rather than something a clerk has to remember.

From instruction to final bill

1. Record the deposit on instructionWhat was agreed and what the client actually paid. The remainder sits against their name from the first day rather than the last.
2. Log every payment made for the clientSearch fees, filing fees, courier, transport. Photograph the receipt and attach it while the paper is still in your hand.
3. Bill in stages, not once at the endInvoice the milestone reached — Pro can bill a percentage of an agreed quote — with the advances shown as their own lines.
4. Track what comes backRecord part payments as they arrive. The balance ages by itself and unpaid bills are flagged overdue without anyone checking a diary.

What a firm bills for

Pick "Law firm" at sign-up and this list is already there, and after that a bill is assembled from saved lines instead of drafted from nothing.

Keeping disbursements as their own line is the difference between a bill that looks expensive and a bill that shows the client which shillings were your fee and which were the registry's.

One land transfer, start to finish

The UGX 630,000 was the firm's own cash, out for four months. Recharged, it is neutral. Forgotten — which is what happens to payments made in cash and logged nowhere — it is eighteen percent of the fee. Three matters a month like this is roughly UGX 22,000,000 a year of the firm financing its clients.

What PesaScope is not, and this part matters

PesaScope does not manage matters. There is no case file, no document store, no conflict check, no limitation-date diary and no court calendar. It handles the money side of a job and nothing beyond it.

More importantly, it has no client account ledger. Money held on a client's behalf is not the firm's income and has to be held and reconciled the way your regulator requires. PesaScope has no client-account ledger, no three-way reconciliation and no compliance reporting, and running it will not satisfy those obligations. Keep client funds where they belong.

There are also no timesheets. You cannot bill from recorded time or measure a fee earner's utilisation. Bills here are agreed amounts plus recovered disbursements — if hourly billing off a running timer is how your firm works, this is not the tool.

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