Guides
Presenting invoices in court as exhibits
Nobody reads an invoice. They look for a number, check it against another number, and move on. An invoice exhibit should be built for that behavior.
The number in question is usually a total, a line item, or the difference between the two. Around it sit the details that make the total mean something: the invoice number and date, the period covered, the purchase order or contract reference, tax lines, credits, and whatever the payment terms say. Testimony about an invoice almost always involves comparing it with something else — a contract rate, a delivery record, a payment.
The practical difficulties are mundane. Invoice type is small. Thermal and dot-matrix printing scans badly. Billing sets arrive as dozens of near-identical pages that are easy to mix up, and the running total across a set is rarely printed anywhere.
Preparing the file as a PDF
Exhibit Room imports PDFs only. Invoices generated by an accounting system can usually be exported straight to PDF from the system itself, which produces sharp text and is preferable to printing and rescanning a document that started life digital.
Paper invoices need care at the scanner. Use 300 dpi, grayscale rather than black and white for faded thermal paper, and deskew if the scanner offers it — a page scanned at a slight angle is harder to read on a screen than on a desk. Scan the whole page including the footer, because payment terms and the remittance address tend to live down there. If the original is a small receipt, do not enlarge it to a full page in software; scan it at a higher resolution instead.
For a billing set, decide the grouping before you build any files: one exhibit per invoice keeps each one independently offerable, while one exhibit for a month of invoices keeps the set short. Whichever you pick, put the invoices in date order inside the PDF and confirm that no page has been captured twice. Advice on grouping documents into exhibits is in how to organize trial exhibits.
Presenting it in Exhibit Room
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Import and name the exhibit by invoice number and date
Bring the PDF in, then name it something like "Invoice 4471 — 12 Jun". The exhibit name is shown on screen during presentation, which means the room sees the identifier without you having to say it twice.
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Record the figures in the description field
Put the total, and the page and line of anything disputed, in the exhibit description. When counsel asks "what was the labor charge on that one," the answer is in the same panel as the document instead of in a separate spreadsheet.
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Point at the total with an arrow, not a highlight
A total sits in white space at the bottom right of the page, where a highlight is easy to miss. An arrow drawn from the empty margin into the figure reads clearly even on a poor projector. Save the highlight tool for line items inside the table; the PDF annotation page lists the full set of drawing tools.
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Bracket the line item and label it if it needs a name
Use a rectangle around the row in dispute, and add a callout if the row's description is cryptic. A callout reading "charged at the day rate, not hourly" turns an unreadable abbreviation into the point you are making.
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Present, zoom to the figures, and compare across exhibits
Press Present, then + to enlarge until the small type is legible — invoices usually need more zoom than a letter does. Type a page number and press Enter to move within a billing set, and press E to switch to the contract or payment record you are comparing against — presenting contracts in court covers the other half of that comparison.
What to highlight and what to avoid
Highlight the figure the witness will speak, and the one field that identifies the document — the invoice number or the date. If the argument is about a rate, mark the rate column and the quantity, because the multiplication is the testimony. If it is about scope, mark the description text rather than the money.
Avoid marking every row of a table; a bracketed row surrounded by unmarked rows is what makes the bracketed row visible. Avoid showing a subtotal without making clear that it is one, especially where tax, credits or retentions sit between the subtotal and the amount actually claimed. Avoid presenting a long billing set page by page in silence — summarize, then show the two or three pages that carry the dispute. And be careful with bank details and card fragments printed on remittance slips: keep them off the screen where you can, and remember that a drawn box is a presentation aid, not a way to produce a sanitized document.
Frequently asked questions
One exhibit per invoice, or one for the whole set?
One per invoice when individual invoices are contested, which is common in construction and services disputes. One exhibit per month or per project when the set is background to a damages figure and nobody is arguing about individual documents.
Can Exhibit Room total the figures for me?
No. It displays documents and does not calculate anything. Damages arithmetic belongs in a spreadsheet you prepare separately and, if it is going in front of the court, as its own exhibit.
How do I present an invoice next to the payment record?
As two exhibits, switched with the E key during presentation. Presentation mode shows one page at a time, so a genuine side-by-side needs a single prepared page offered as an illustrative exhibit.
The invoice is a faded thermal receipt. What can be done?
Scan it in grayscale at a high resolution and present it enlarged. Exhibit Room does not run OCR or enhance images, so whatever legibility you achieve at the scanner is what the courtroom will see.
Point at the number that matters
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