The hours log is not an invoice

The hours log records who has spent time, on which task, and for how long. Those lines support an account of the work. They are not themselves an invoice. An invoice is a document that arises outside this log, if there is a ground to charge something. The log is not wages either. Hours of a staff member are not calculated here into a salary and are not kept as a payslip. In the log write the task in ordinary words: going through bank statements, updating a draft letter, requesting a valuation. Do not write an amount with it. A money amount in the hours log makes time look like a price. That price does not belong here. The time does, with the date and the name of the staff member.

Whether a fee is due, the will or the agreement says. Not the log, and not a percentage you invent yourself. Do not fill in a percentage. Do not take one over from another file either. If the will says that an executor receives a fee, you note that the deed says that and you leave the amount empty until the basis is fixed. If it says nothing, the field stays empty. An agreement with the heirs about a fee belongs in the file as a document, not as a rounding-off of the hours. For as long as that document is not there, the log is only a report of time. It creates no claim on the estate inventory.

Do not share the hours log through the portal as if it were a bill. Heirs see letters only if that layer is on, and a list of hours is not a letter that establishes a debt. If the office later wants to make a statement, that is a document of its own, with a task of its own for who sends it. The hours can support that statement because the tasks and the dates are there. They do not replace the statement. Internal doubt about whether an hour is chargeable remains an internal note. Do not put that doubt in a layer heirs see. Staff see the log in the workspace. That is where it belongs, beside the task, not beside a promised share.

Ervazo stores the hours as a log with the staff member and the task. Ervazo records and calculates as a worksheet. It adds up the recorded time as time, not as an invoice and not as wages. That is not advice. It files nothing and it pays nothing. The program does not put a percentage on the hours and it does not prepare a bill because there are hours. Whether a fee is due remains the text of the will or of the agreement. The worksheet does not supplement that text. An empty amount with the fee stays empty. The software pays nothing out and does not send the hours list out of the door as an assessment.