When you are viewing a matter finance summary screen and the matter is set to a foreign currency you'll see two columns. The one on the left will indicate your 'base' currency; that is the currency your application is set to display and use in reports.


The second column will display the total amounts in the matter currency. So if you are working with an application based in the United States you'll see US Dollars on the left and (for example) Canadian Dollars on the right if the matter is based in Canada.


At the bottom of the display you'll see what the exchange rate was that was used in the calculation:


To make sure that the exchange rates are kept up to date for all the open matters and those closed within the billing window a nightly task can be run to keep them in sync: After the task runs the date will be updated along with the exchange rate indicator. The default date is the date the matter was opened or you edited it by hand.


Anytime the task runs it will make a record of the event in your transaction log. Contact your company LAWTRAC administrator or LTO Support to set-up the nightly task.

In a user's My LAWTRAC screen they can set their 'native' currency. For this example I've set my currency to reflect China.


When I go to an outside counsel invoice listing and click the 'International' view the screen will refresh to show in invoice amounts converted into [A] my currency, the outside counsel's currency, [B] the matter currency [C] and finally the currency the application [D] is set to.


The purpose of this screen is to provide better communication between your legal staff either internally or with the outside counsel.

When working with the Control Amount feature in conjunction with foreign currency invoices the control feature is a tool to assist the person keying in the information.


Imagine if you would you receive an invoice from a firm in Japan. The invoice is for 750,000 yen [A]. You enter the 750,000 as the control amount and begin keying in the line items [B].


After keying in all the line items the invoice total in US Dollars is 8,290.04 [C].


The control amount looks at the amounts keyed in, not at the converted amounts. The idea is the person keying in won't know what the final amount will be once the currency conversion is done for every line item.