At Billables AI, we support firm-specific billing guidelines and offer flexible options to enable and customize block billing. Below are our recommended best practices if you plan to use block billing in your workflow.
How to Activate Block Billing
By default, Billables AI will not automatically merge your time entries and instead focus on making granular entries for each activity that you work on. To activate block billing, head to the settings page and locate the "auto-merge entries" setting.
We provide users with 3 options when it comes to deciding how they would like their entries automatically merged:
No grouping - Billables will not automatically merge any entries, regardless of similarity or billing code
Medium grouping - Similarly related entries (working on the same task, topic, workstream, etc) will be merged (e.g, editing a document and researching on a browser about the same topic)
Broad grouping - Merge entries under the same a single client or matter whenever possible (e.g every entry relating to ABC company's XYZ matter will be a single entry). This is the setting most closely related to block billing.
Once saved, Billables will automatically begin merging entries according to your chosen grouping level. Billables will only merge entries when it has a high degree of confidence for the client matter matching.
Here are some tips and tricks to tailor your entries further while using the auto-merge setting.
Customizing Merged Narratives Descriptions
Within the settings page, you can customize how merged entry descriptions are presented by locating the narrative descriptions setting. You can choose to separate the narratives by either a period or a semi-colon, and you can also choose to include the duration for each activity within the description as well.
Example of merged entry, separated by a semi-colon, and durations included with the narrative description
Favouriting your clients and matters
To improve client-matter matching when
auto-merging your entries, we suggest favouriting your most commonly used clients and matters (billing codes). This will help train the system to more accurately assign entries over time when you start approving.
To do this, visit the billing codes page and select the star symbol next to any client or matter you wish to favourite. Favorited billing codes are marked with a blue star.
Client-Matter View
Billables AI offers many different ways to view your dashboard. Many block billers utilize the client-matter view to see their entries grouped by clients and matters.
To see entries grouped by client and matter, visit your main dashboard and select the suitcase icon at the top right of the page.
Manual Merging
If you wish to merge multiple entries, you have the ability to manually merge them. By manually merging your entries, you can improve Billables AI's ability to group entries in the future.
To manually merge entries, select the checkmark boxes next to the entries you wish to merge and press the merge button at the top right of the page.
You can make any changes to the entries before you merge them (Billables AI automatically sums the total duration of all entries).
Additionally, we allow users to generate a new narrative that encompasses all activities being merged through the use of our AI. 
Remember to Review and Approve Your Entries Daily
Approving your entries is the most important step in ensuring Billables AI accurately tracks your time. We recommend taking a few minutes every day to review your entries and approve ones that portray the activity correctly. This will improve Billables AI's ability to tailor your entries as well as improve client-matter matching in the future.
To approve an entry, visit your main dashboard and select the checkmark icon next to the entry you wish to approve. Approved entries are marked by blue icons.
