When a partial payment is applied to an invoice, CARET Legal automatically allocates that payment to the line items in the following order:
1) Hard Costs
2) Soft Costs
3) Fees in date order by oldest first
By doing this the firm's short term revenue (taxable income) would be lower than if the payment was applied towards a service, time, or soft cost line item which would create revenue.
If you wish to choose the order or which line items get allocations applied to here is some more information: