What eBill 2.0 actually is
eBill 2.0 is the Committee for Public Counsel Services billing portal. Private attorneys who take court appointments enter their time and expenses there, and CPCS pays from what you file. It replaced the older eBill system, which is why everything, including the official manual, calls it "2.0." When someone says they are "doing their eBill," this is what they mean (eBill 2.0 User Manual).
Getting access
You do not just log in. Before CPCS turns on your account you sign a Private Attorney eBill 2.0 Access Agreement, which is required (Assigned Counsel Manual). Once CPCS sets you up, you get a login for the portal and your assigned cases start showing up in it.
Your time bills against a NAC
Every case you are appointed to has a NAC, a Notice of Assignment of Counsel, and that is what your time bills against inside eBill. Court-assigned cases (D-NACs) appear in your NAC list on their own. Bar Advocate Program cases (C-NACs) you add yourself with the Add NAC button, using the number on the paper form (eBill 2.0 User Manual, Section 3). More in the NAC guide.
Every entry gets an activity category
When you enter time against a NAC, you pick the activity category that matches the work. The trial-level form has 13 categories, and the set changes depending on whether the NAC is a trial or an appeal (eBill 2.0 User Manual, Section 3.3). Two kinds of work for the same client on the same day is two entries. See the trial activity codes and the appellate ones.
The rules eBill enforces
A few things trip people up because eBill and CPCS are strict about them.
- Rounding. You bill in tenths of an hour, and you round the day's total for a client to the nearest tenth, not each task up. Round every task up and it gets clawed back on audit. See rounding to the nearest tenth.
- Daily caps. Most days cap at 10 billable hours, 12 on an actual trial day. Over that needs a per-date waiver. See the hour caps guide.
- Travel. Travel time and mileage are separate, and eBill allows at most one hour of travel for every 30 miles, rounded down (eBill 2.0 User Manual, Section 3.4). See travel and mileage.
Deadlines matter
eBill will not save you from a late bill. Miss the filing window and the money is gone. The deadlines guide lays out what has to be filed by when.
Where Plani fits
The catch with eBill 2.0 is that it wants clean, categorized, correctly rounded time, and it wants it before the deadline. Most attorneys keep that on scraps of paper and reconstruct it later. Plani does the reconstruction as you go. You text it what you did, in plain English, whenever, and it keeps the running record with the right client, category, and minutes. When you connect it to eBill, it reads your NAC list, matches your clients to the right cases, and puts your time in for you, following the same rounding and cap rules above. You review and submit. Plani never clicks Submit for you.