CasEngine by CodEngines
Expense management

Expense management software for law firms.

Record disbursements against the matter with the receipt, the VAT and who paid — then track who the firm still owes, and recover the cost on the client's invoice.

The problem

A paralegal pays a court fee out of their own pocket on Tuesday, because the filing could not wait.

Three weeks later two questions have no clear answer: has the firm paid them back, and has the client been charged for it? The receipt is in a coat pocket, the amount is in somebody's memory, and by the time the invoice goes out one of those two things will have been missed. Usually the same one.

How it works

From the receipt to the invoice.

  1. 01

    Log it against the work it belongs to

    The disbursement records against the matter, and the case or project within it — with the receipt attached, the amount, the VAT, the date, who paid it and who it was paid to. Court fees are recorded as what they are rather than as a general cost.

  2. 02

    Say whether somebody is owed money

    Mark the expense as needing a claim when a person has fronted it. The firm can then list, at any moment, every expense somebody has paid for and not yet been repaid — a question most practices answer by asking around.

  3. 03

    It waits for approval

    An expense sits pending until it is approved or rejected. Nothing unauthorised reaches a client, and a rejection is recorded rather than being a conversation nobody wrote down.

  4. 04

    Recover it on the client's invoice

    Approved disbursements are billed alongside professional fees and itemised separately, so the client can see what was work and what was cost incurred on their behalf.

  5. 05

    Settle the reimbursement

    Mark the claim settled when the person is paid back, and it drops off the unsettled list. The firm's obligation to its own staff is tracked as deliberately as its clients' obligations to the firm.

Outcomes

What changes for the firm.

In detail

Everything included, in one place.

Reimbursement tracking

Every expense can be flagged as needing a claim and later as settled, so the firm can separate what it owes its own people from what it has already repaid — and neither depends on anyone remembering.

Recorded against the matter it belongs to

Disbursements attach to the matter and to the case or project within it, so a cost belongs to the file it arose from rather than to a general ledger line nobody can trace back.

Receipts and VAT

The receipt attaches to the expense record and VAT is captured with the amount at the point of spend, which is what makes the tax position reconstructable a year later.

Approval before billing

Expenses are pending until approved or rejected, so nothing unauthorised reaches a client invoice and a refusal leaves a record.

Who paid, and who was paid

Both sides are recorded — the person or account the money came from, and the court, agent or supplier it went to — along with the transaction reference.

Filterable for audit

Expenses filter by matter, client, type, date range, who was paid and reimbursement status, so producing the evidence behind a charge is a query rather than an afternoon.

FAQ

Common questions about this feature.

Yes. An expense someone has paid personally is flagged as needing a claim, and stays on the unsettled list until it is marked settled. That turns "has anyone paid Ahmed back for the court fee?" from a question you ask around the office into a filter.

Related

Works with the rest of the platform.

See it on your own matters

A short walkthrough with our team, using the kind of work your team handles day to day.