/legal Beta
When internal recovery has run its course, a case goes legal. The legal register is the record
of every such matter: what was filed, where, by whom, what happens next, and what it is costing.
The legal register is display-only for money. Claim values and costs are recorded for tracking
and reporting; the register does not post to the accounting ledger. Costs you actually pay are
booked as expenses in the normal way.
The register
The register grid lists matters with:Matter types
Matters cover the range of recovery proceedings: court case, eviction, execution, demand follow-up, agency referral, and other.Matter statuses
The matter workspace
Opening a matter gives you the working record:Parties and contacts
Everyone involved, each with a role: advocate, law firm, court official, auctioneer, opposing party, or other, with their contact details. This is the list you need at 9am on a hearing day.Hearings
Scheduled and past events with type (hearing, mention, ruling), date, outcome and next date. Recording the outcome and the next date is what keeps the register’s Next Hearing column trustworthy — and that column is what the collections overview reads.Costs
Costs incurred, itemised by type:
Each cost carries a date, an amount and a description. The total flows to the register’s Costs
column and to the legal panel on the collections overview.
Next steps and description
Free-text working notes: what the matter is about, and what has to happen next. Written for the colleague who covers for you.Opening a matter from a case
From a collection case, the Open legal matter action creates a matter pre-filled from the case — unit, lease, tenant, balance — and flips the case’s treatment state to legal flagged. The case stays open and linked, so the debt continues to be tracked in one place. The related handover action (a ladder step) generates the handover pack — statement, communications log, interaction log and promise history — which is what an external advocate or agency will ask for first.Closing a matter
Close matter records the outcome and stops it appearing in active views. Closure does not delete anything: hearings, parties and costs remain for reporting and for the next matter against the same tenant.Using the register well
1
Open the matter when instructions go out, not when the case is filed
The gap between instructing an advocate and filing is where matters get lost.
2
Record the next hearing date every time an outcome is entered
An empty next-date is indistinguishable from a matter nobody is watching.
3
Log costs as they are incurred
Recovery decisions depend on cost-to-date versus claim value. A cost logged three months late
is a decision made on bad numbers.
4
Reconcile costs to expenses monthly
The register tracks; the expense module pays. They should agree.