Disbursements & Statements

Disbursements are costs that a law firm advances on behalf of a client during the course of a matter — sheriff fees, court fees, advocate fees, expert witness costs, and similar third-party expenses. In South African legal practice, these must be tracked separately from professional fees and reconciled before a matter can be closed.

HeyKazi provides a dedicated disbursement register per matter with a full approval workflow, VAT handling aligned to SARS requirements, and the ability to generate statements of account that summarise fees, disbursements, and trust balances for a client.

Disbursements and Statements of Account require the disbursements module to be enabled for your organisation. Contact your administrator to activate it.

Key Concepts

Disbursement Categories

Each disbursement is classified into a category that determines default VAT treatment and reporting.

Category	Description	Default VAT
Sheriff Fees	Service of court documents, attachment of property	Zero-rated
Court Fees	Filing fees, issue fees, set-down fees	Zero-rated
Deeds Office Fees	Property registration and search fees	Zero-rated
Counsel Fees	Fees paid to external counsel for opinions or appearances	Standard (15%)
Advocate Fees	Brief fees and appearance fees for advocates	Standard (15%)
Search Fees	Company searches, credit checks, tracing	Standard (15%)
Expert Witness	Reports and testimony from expert witnesses	Standard (15%)
Travel	Travel costs incurred on the client’s behalf	Standard (15%)
Other	Any disbursement that does not fit the above categories	Standard (15%)

The VAT treatment auto-selects based on category but can always be overridden. Statutory fees (sheriff, court, deeds office) default to zero-rated pass-through since no VAT is charged by the issuing authority.

Approval Status

Disbursements move through an approval workflow before they can be billed to the client.

Status	Badge	Description
Draft	Grey	Newly recorded. Can be edited freely.
Pending Approval	Amber	Submitted for review by a senior practitioner.
Approved	Green	Reviewed and approved. Ready to be included on an invoice.
Rejected	Red	Returned to the submitter with a reason. Must be corrected and resubmitted.

Billing Status

Tracks whether a disbursement has been recovered from the client.

Status	Badge	Description
Unbilled	Grey	Not yet included on any invoice.
Billed	Green	Included as a line item on an invoice.
Written Off	Grey	Written off with a recorded reason. Will not be billed.

Payment Source

Each disbursement records where the funds were drawn from.

Source	Description
Office Account	Paid from the firm’s own operating account.
Trust Account	Paid from the client’s trust funds held by the firm. Requires linking a trust transaction.

When paying from the trust account, you must link the disbursement to a specific trust transaction. The amount field locks to the linked transaction amount to prevent mismatches. The trust account option only appears when the trust_accounting module is enabled.

Recording a Disbursement

Step 1 — Open the Disbursements tab

Navigate to a matter and select the Disbursements tab. If no disbursements have been recorded yet, the tab will show an empty state.

Step 2 — Click New Disbursement

Click the New Disbursement button to open the creation dialog.

Step 3 — Fill in the details

Complete the form:

Matter — pre-selected if you opened the dialog from a matter’s Disbursements tab
Client — the client associated with this matter
Category — select the type of disbursement (VAT treatment auto-fills based on your selection)
Description — what was paid for, e.g. “Sheriff service fee — summons on defendant”
Amount (ZAR, excl VAT) — the net amount before VAT
VAT Treatment — auto-seeded from the category; override if needed
Payment Source — Office Account or Trust Account
Incurred Date — the date the cost was incurred
Supplier — the party who provided the service, e.g. “Sheriff Sandton”
Supplier Reference — optional invoice or reference number from the supplier
Receipt — optionally upload a PDF or image of the receipt

Step 4 — Create the disbursement

Click Create Disbursement. The new record appears in the disbursement list in Draft status, ready to be reviewed and submitted for approval.

Approving Disbursements

When a disbursement is submitted for approval (moved from Draft to Pending Approval), a senior practitioner with the appropriate capability sees an Approval Required panel on the disbursement detail page.

Step 1 — Review the disbursement

Check the amount, supplier, category, and any attached receipt to confirm the cost is legitimate and correctly categorised.

Step 2 — Approve or reject

Click Approve to mark the disbursement as approved. You can optionally add approval notes.
Click Reject to return it to the submitter. A reason is required so the submitter knows what to correct.

Only disbursements in Draft or Pending Approval status can be edited. Once a disbursement is approved, it is locked to preserve the audit trail.

Statements of Account

A statement of account is a formal document that summarises all financial activity on a matter for a given period — professional fees, disbursements incurred, payments received, and trust balances held. In South African legal practice, this is commonly required under Section 86 of the Attorneys Act for trust account reconciliation.

Generating a Statement

Step 1 — Open the Statements tab

Navigate to a matter and select the Statements tab. Previously generated statements are listed with their date, closing balance owing, and trust balance held.

Step 2 — Click Generate Statement of Account

Click the Generate Statement of Account button to open the generation dialog.

Step 3 — Set the period

Choose a Period start and Period end date. If prior statements exist, the start date defaults to the day after the most recent statement was generated, avoiding overlap.

Step 4 — Preview and save

Click Preview & Save. The system generates the statement, displays an HTML preview, and saves it as a PDF to the matter’s documents. You can download the PDF immediately.

The statement summary includes:

Total fees — professional fees charged in the period
Total disbursements — third-party costs incurred in the period
Previous balance owing — carried forward from prior periods
Payments received — client payments during the period
Closing balance owing — net amount the client owes
Trust balance held — funds held in trust on the client’s behalf

The Disbursement List

The disbursement list provides a sortable view of all disbursements for a matter or across the organisation. Columns include date, matter, category, description, supplier, amount (inclusive of VAT), approval status, and billing status.

You can sort by date, supplier name, amount, or approval status by clicking the column headers. The list supports filtering by approval status, billing status, and category on the full disbursements page.

Tips and Best Practices

Record disbursements promptly — enter costs on the day they are incurred to keep the matter ledger accurate and avoid end-of-month scrambles.
Attach receipts — uploading supplier invoices or receipts provides an audit trail and makes approval faster.
Check VAT treatment — statutory fees (sheriff, court, deeds office) are zero-rated; commercial services carry standard VAT. Getting this wrong affects your VAT return.
Generate statements regularly — monthly or quarterly statements keep clients informed and reduce disputes at billing time.
Review unbilled disbursements before invoicing — the billing run wizard pulls in approved unbilled disbursements as invoice line items. Make sure all pending disbursements are approved before running a billing cycle.

Invoicing — approved disbursements flow into invoices as line items
Projects — disbursements are tracked within matters (projects)
Time Tracking — professional fees complement disbursement tracking on statements of account