Features
Built around how a firm
actually works.
A Bill of Costs is the end of a process, not the start of one. Bill Wise covers the whole of it — the matter, the people, the documents, the diary and the disbursements — and then draws the Bill from what is already there.
The costing engine
Two dates decide every figure.
The instrument in force on the date the work was done, and the advocate’s standing at the Bar on that same date. Neither of them is today — which is why a Bill drafted this month for work done in 2016 is costed under S.I. No. 9 of 2001, and an advocate who crossed ten years last week is still costed at the earlier bracket for everything before it.
Bill Wise works this out on the server, from versioned rate tables, every time. There is no amount stored on an item that could quietly disagree with the rules it was calculated from.
Drafting a Bill
From the work done to the Bill filed.
Prescribed rates
Rates and schedules under S.I. No. 6 of 2017, and work done before it costed under S.I. No. 9 of 2001. The instrument follows the date of the item, not the date you are drafting.
Standing at the Bar
Each advocate’s bracket is worked out from their date of call — and from their own date of appointment where they are State Counsel — as at the date of each item.
Totals that follow
Profit costs, fee units, allowances, general charges, disbursements and VAT recalculate whenever an entry changes. Page totals and amounts carried forward come with them.
Error checks
Missing advocates, missing time, absent scale heads and schedules that do not match are flagged before a Bill can be finalized, not after it is filed.
Finalized means final
Finalizing a Bill freezes its figures in a snapshot. Later changes to rates or people cannot alter what was already filed, and reopening it keeps the record of what came before.
Export for filing
Review the taxation summary, then export the completed Bill as a PDF laid out for filing — no table to format by hand.
Running the practice
The rest of the firm’s work.
Everything the Bill is eventually drawn from, kept in one place while the matter is live.
Matters
Court, cause number, parties and status, with the people in your firm who may see it recorded on the matter itself.
Clients
Client records and contacts, and a portal where a client sees their own matters, documents and Bills — and nothing else.
Documents
Filed against the matter and stored outside the web root. Every download goes through an access check; none is served as a plain file.
Court diary
Hearings, filings and deadlines across the firm, with reminders sent ahead of the date to the people concerned.
Expenses
Disbursements recorded as they are incurred, then pulled into the Bill without being retyped.
Reports
Matters, activity and billing, as CSV or PDF — each report scoped to what the person running it is allowed to see.
Your firm
Six roles, and a boundary at every one.
Firm Owner, Firm Admin, Advocate, Staff, Client and the platform administrator. What each can reach is checked on the request, not decided by which buttons are on screen.
Firm isolation
Every record belongs to a firm. A query that does not say which one returns nothing.
Record-level access
A matter is visible to the people who opened it or were assigned to it.
Activity auditing
Who did what, and when, recorded against the firm.
Read-only, not locked
If a subscription lapses your workspace becomes read-only — your firm can always reach its own files.
See it on your own figures.
The demo needs no account and no payment details.