You probably have two invoices with offsetting amounts. For example, one invoice has a balance of $100 and another has a balance of -$100. The simplest way to confirm this hypothesis is to take a look at the open item list on the case's account status screen. You should see two invoices that add up to zero. You may even see more than two that sum to zero.

The most likely cause of this condition is that someone attemped to credit the original invoice, but did it incorrectly. Rather than applying a credit adjustment to the original invoice as should have been done, he or she entered and billed a write-down, hereby creating a second invoice and your current headache.

There are a number of ways to correct this condition, but the simplest is to enter two offsetting adjustments, a credit (minus) adjustment to the debit (positive) invoice and a debit (positive) adjustment to the credit (minus) invoice.

• Just go to transactions/adjustments.
• Enter the two adjustments one at a time.
• Display the outstanding invoices so that you can specify the invoice to which you're applying your adjustment.

Other ways to resolve this problem:

1. Delete the second invoice and its write-down and apply a credit adjustment to the original invoice. The problem (some might say advantage) of this approach is it removes any permanent record of the mistake.
2. Instead of entering offsetting adjustments, enter offsetting payments. This allows attorneys who performed services on the first invoice to get receipt credit for their time. If you assigned an attorney to the write-down on the second invoice, he will get negative credit for the payment.

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