Expenses and Invoicing Per Case for Investigators

Most investigators do not lose money on their hourly rate. They lose it on the costs that never reach the invoice: a database search run at 11pm, parking during a surveillance shift, a courier, a records fee paid on a personal card. The fix is simple and unglamorous: log every expense on the case at the moment it happens, and build the invoice from that log.

Why expenses belong on the case, not in a separate tool

An expense spreadsheet for the whole business answers "what did we spend this month". It does not answer "what did this client's matter cost us", which is the question that matters when you invoice, when a client queries a line, and when you decide whether a type of work is worth taking. If each cost is a row on the case, the case total is always current and every line is next to the work it paid for.

What to capture for each expense

• Date the cost was incurred, not the date you typed it.
• Category: mileage, travel, database or records fee, subcontractor, equipment, other. A fixed list, so totals mean something.
• Amount and currency, and whether tax applies.
• Billable or not. Some costs are overheads; decide per line.
• Receipt: a photo taken on the spot, attached to the row.
• Link to the activity: which surveillance log, interview or search it relates to.

Mileage deserves its own columns: start and end point, distance and rate, with the amount calculated rather than typed. Clients question mileage more than anything else, and a calculated figure with a route is hard to argue with.

Agree the rules before the work starts

Put your expense terms in the engagement: which costs are billable, at what markup if any, which need prior approval above a threshold, and how mileage is charged. Most invoice disputes come from a cost the client did not expect, not from a cost that was wrong.

From log to invoice

If time and expenses are both rows on the case, an invoice is a view of those rows for a period: billable lines, subtotals by category, receipts available on request. Record the invoice number and date against each line you billed, so nothing is charged twice and nothing is missed on the next invoice. We cover the time side in how to track time per matter.

In Herarx this is a table on the investigation template: one row per expense, typed columns, a total, a receipt file on each row. A document design turns the billable rows into a PDF invoice from the case page, a sequence can give it the next invoice number, and on plans that include accounting integrations a mapped row can be posted to QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite rather than retyped.

Review before you send

1. Filter the case's expense rows to unbilled and billable.
2. Check every line has a receipt or a reason it does not.
3. Check anything above the approval threshold was approved, and where that approval is recorded.
4. Generate the invoice, file it on the case, and mark the lines as billed.

Look back once a quarter

Because every cost sits on a case, you can compare what each type of matter actually costs to run against what you charge. That is often where pricing decisions come from. It is also one of the questions worth asking of any system you evaluate; see what to look for in investigator case management software.