When designing bill formats, use styles for consistent formatting, place matter-specific fields in the appropriate sections, use alignment and sizing tools, review layout properties, avoid overlapping rows, and use the Field Explorer to add data fields.
Use these techniques when creating or modifying bill formats in Bill Designer. These guidelines can help make bill formats easier to maintain and reduce layout issues when the same format is used for single-matter and consolidated bills.
Use styles
Apply styles to objects in the bill design whenever possible.
After styles are applied, font settings throughout the design can be changed by modifying the style. Avoid changing font settings directly on individual fields. Direct font changes are treated as manual overrides, which can prevent future style changes from cascading to those fields.
Use sections appropriately
The Bill Header and Bill Footer sections are designed for consolidated bills, where the totals for the entire bill are the sum of the totals for the individual matters in the consolidation.
The Page Header and Page Footer sections are used for page numbering and for information that applies to the bill. Matter information is available in these sections for formats intended for single-matter bills.
If matter information is placed in the Page Header, Page Footer, Bill Header, or Bill Footer, and the bill format is used for consolidated bills, the results may be unsuitable. Matter fields show information for the first matter in the consolidation only and do not change for each individual matter on the bill.
To design a format that can be used for both single-matter bills and consolidated bills, place matter-specific fields in the Matter Header and Matter Footer sections.
Use alignment and size buttons
Use Field Alignment, Layout Alignment, and Field Size options to align or size a group of fields with one click.
Review properties
Each item in the design has its own properties. These properties control behavior such as whether a field prints on the Prebill, Final Bill, or Both.
Other properties, such as Can Grow and Can Shrink, can further customize how an object behaves. Similar properties are available for each bill layout section and for the layout as a whole.
Review these properties when creating each layout design.
Avoid overlapping rows
Rows in the bill design are determined by the size of each field. This allows flexible row control, but it can also cause rows to overlap. Overlapping rows may cause fields to print on top of one another, especially when field suppression is used.
For more information, see Suppress Line If Zero Property.
Use the Field Explorer
The Field Explorer is the quickest way to add data fields to a bill format.
The Field Explorer lists the available data fields for the current section. The list can be grouped by field type or classification to make fields easier to find.