Best Practices for Effective Billing Guidelines

Last updated: October 1, 2026

Billing guidelines are one of the best ways to get Billables AI drafting entries the way you like them, right from your first week. This guide covers what guidelines are, what to set up first, and how to write guidelines that work, with samples you can copy.

What billing guidelines are

Billing guidelines are instructions, written in plain language, that tell Billables AI how to draft your time entries. You add them in Settings, and Billables AI follows them each time it drafts an entry for you.

Your firm's admin may have already set firm-wide guidelines. Anything you add in My Preferences applies just to you.

What they can do

Guidelines can shape four things:

  • Narratives: how your entry descriptions are worded and formatted

  • Hidden vs. shown entries: which activity appears on your dashboard

  • Client-matter matching: which client and matter an entry is assigned to

  • Merging: how related activity is combined into one entry

A few things are set elsewhere, like rounding, billable status, and task codes. Guidelines also work one entry at a time, so they can't enforce invoice-wide rules like monthly hour caps.

For the full picture, see the "What billing guidelines can't do" section of 📄 Intro to Billing Guidelines.

Your first week: what to do

  1. Open your guidelines. Go to Settings, open the My Preferences tab, and find the billing guidelines box.

  2. Start with how you want entries to read. Add a handful of narrative guidelines for your biggest preferences, like tense, how to refer to people, or words you always use. The samples below are a good place to start, and you can keep adding more as you go.

  3. Hide the noise. If certain activity never belongs on a bill, like newsletters or automated notifications, add a guideline to hide it.

  4. Help with matching. If certain people or reference codes always belong to one client or matter, add a matching guideline.

  5. Review your entries daily. Edit narratives the way you'd want them, and hide what doesn't belong. Billables AI learns from your edits, approvals, and hidden entries.

  6. Check in after a week. Look for anything you're still fixing by hand, and turn it into a guideline.

Admins: if you're setting up guidelines for your whole firm, see 📄 Onboarding: Use Billables Intelligence to write your org-level Billing Guidelines. It walks you through drafting a firm-wide set from your best existing time entries.

How to write guidelines that work

Tell Billables AI what to do

Guidelines work best when they tell Billables AI what action to take, rather than only what to avoid. Use verbs like remove, replace, generalize, condense, and redact.

Less effective:

"Do not include internal firm discussions."

More effective:

"Remove and exclude references to internal firm discussions, staffing decisions, internal tools, platforms, or workflow issues. If the activity description includes internal coordination or operational detail, actively redact that information and generalize the narrative to the legal work performed (for example, coordination, review, or preparation)."

This works because it tells Billables AI exactly how to handle internal content if it appears, rather than assuming it will be left out.

Less effective:

"Avoid unnecessary detail."

More effective:

"Remove excessive factual or contextual detail from narratives. If the activity includes background facts, names, dates, or granular descriptions that are not required for billing, actively condense and generalize the narrative to the core legal task performed."

This keeps the focus on the legal work rather than exhaustive detail.

Keep them clear and consistent

  • One rule per line. If a line joins two instructions, split it into two.

  • Put your most important rules first.

  • Avoid rules that conflict, like "Always start with a verb" and "Always start with Re:".

  • Use exact names. Write client and matter names exactly as they appear on your Billing Codes page.

  • Tidy up now and then. As clients, matters, and people change, remove rules that no longer apply.

Sample guidelines

These are meant to spark ideas. Copy any that fit, and swap the bracketed text for your own details.

Narratives

  • Replace the word "research" with "review and analyze."

  • End every narrative with a period.

  • Remove case names and case numbers from narratives.

  • For email entries, remove anyone in the CC field from the participant list.

  • Replace the full names of [Firm Name] employees with their initials (e.g. "MO" instead of "Mary Orville").

  • Write the names of people outside the firm as first initial and last name (e.g. "B. Jones" instead of "Bonnie Jones").

  • For call entries, remove "Guest User" when an attendee is unknown.

Hidden vs. shown entries

  • Hide email entries where every recipient uses the @[yourfirm].com domain.

  • Hide emails from automation@[vendor].com.

  • Hide calendar entries labeled "Internal."

  • Always show calls with "Client Call" in the title.

Client-matter matching

Based on people:

  • Assign all emails from name@domain.com to Client X, Matter Y.

  • Assign any message sent to name@xyz.co to Client Z.

  • Assign all meetings that include x@company.com to Client C.

Based on content:

  • Assign any message that mentions [Project Name] to Client B, Matter B.

  • Assign any event that mentions code xyz12345 to Client D, Matter E.

Merging

  • Merge all email activity into one time entry per client per day.

Merging guidelines work alongside your grouping setting.

For more, see 📄 Best Practices for Block Billers.

Reviewing your entries

Approved entries influence future drafts. To reinforce your guidelines:

  • Edit narratives to reflect your preferred level of detail

  • Avoid approving entries that include internal operational detail or unnecessary specificity

  • Focus approvals on narratives that clearly describe the legal task, in neutral, generalized language

Consistent review and approval will keep improving your results over time.

Learn more