v1.87.0 Update: Billable Item Categories & Cost Type Classification

We're rolling out a major upgrade to how billing items are organized in EasyEviction. You can now assign each flat fee and expense to a named category — like County Fee, Attorney Fee, or a custom category you create — and every category is automatically classified as a hard cost or soft cost. This means cleaner invoices, more consistent reporting, and the ability to break down your billing by cost type without any manual work. If you're happy with your current workflow, nothing changes — Legacy mode keeps everything exactly as it is today, and you can adopt categories at your own pace.

What's New

Billable Item Categories

Every billable item (flat fees and expenses) can now be assigned to a category. The system comes with seven built-in categories:

• County Fee
• Attorney Fee
• Client Charge
• Writ Filing Fee
• Sheriff Fee
• Hearing Fee
• Legacy (flat fees only — more on this below)

You can also create your own custom categories in Admin > Billable Item Categories to match your organization's billing structure.

For built-in calculated categories (County Fee, Writ Filing Fee, Sheriff Fee, Hearing Fee, Attorney Fee), the amount and description auto-populate from your fee settings — the same auto-calculation you're used to, now available on expenses too.

Hard Cost / Soft Cost Classification

Each category carries a cost type — either Hard or Soft:

• Hard costs are out-of-pocket disbursements paid to third parties on behalf of the client (County Fee, Writ Filing Fee, Sheriff Fee, Hearing Fee)
• Soft costs are internal service charges (Attorney Fee, Client Charge, and any custom categories you create — which default to Soft)

When you create custom categories, you choose whether they're Hard or Soft. Built-in categories have fixed cost types that reflect standard legal billing conventions.

This classification flows into your reports:

• The Billable Items Report now includes a "Cost Type" column showing Hard or Soft for each line item
• The Invoice Report now includes "Total Hard Cost" and "Total Soft Cost" columns per invoice, so you can see how billed amounts break down at a glance

Cost Type Override (Optional)

By default, each billable item inherits its cost type from its category. If your organization needs the flexibility to override the cost type on individual items, an administrator can enable "Allow Category Cost Type Override" in the Billable Item Categories settings. When enabled, a Hard/Soft toggle appears on the billable item form.

Category Labels on Invoices

New invoice display settings let you control how categories appear on invoices sent to clients:

• Show Category Labels on Invoice — when enabled, the category name (e.g., "County Fee") appears as the primary label on each invoice line item, giving clients a clear, consistent identifier for each charge
• Include Detailed Descriptions — when enabled alongside category labels, the free-text description appears after the category name (e.g., "County Fee - Filing for Case #1234"). When disabled, only the category name shows

These settings are found in Admin > Invoice Settings. Existing organizations start with category labels off, so your invoices look exactly the same until you choose to enable them.

When a non-Legacy category is selected, the description field becomes optional — the category name serves as the primary identifier.

QuickBooks Integration

For organizations using QuickBooks sync, invoice line items now use the category name as the QuickBooks Item/Service name. This means charges are matched by category rather than by free-text description, which is more consistent and reduces duplicate items in QuickBooks.

Legacy Mode — Nothing Changes Unless You Want It To

This is the most important part for existing users: all your current billable items and workflows continue to work exactly as they do today.

When you create a new flat fee, the Category dropdown defaults to Legacy. In Legacy mode:

• The existing fee type dropdown (County Fee, Attorney Fee, Custom, etc.) appears and works exactly as before
• All auto-calculation, description auto-fill, and amount behavior is unchanged
• Your existing billable items that were created before this update are automatically treated as Legacy — no data migration needed on your end

Legacy is essentially a bridge: it preserves the original system while giving you the option to move to categories at your own pace. You can mix and match — some flat fees in Legacy mode, others using the new categories — on the same case or invoice.

Expenses don't have a Legacy option (they never used the fee type system), so the category dropdown simply appears as a new optional field.

Why Move from Descriptions to Categories?

The old system relied on free-text descriptions and a fixed fee type enum to identify charges. This worked, but had limitations:

• No cost classification — There was no way to distinguish hard costs from soft costs in reports, making it difficult to break down billing for accounting or client reporting
• Inconsistent naming — The same type of charge might be described differently across cases ("County filing fee" vs "Filing fee - county" vs "Court fee"), making reporting and filtering unreliable
• No custom organization — You were limited to the seven built-in fee types with no way to add your own
• Description-dependent invoices — Invoice line items relied entirely on free-text, which could vary and made QuickBooks matching fragile

With categories:

• Every charge gets a consistent, named label that carries across cases, invoices, and reports
• Hard/soft cost classification happens automatically based on the category
• You can create custom categories that fit your practice
• Invoice presentation is cleaner and more professional
• QuickBooks sync is more reliable

Where Categories Appear