Your letterhead on fee notes, payslips and documents

Where a law practice records its logo and details in Achekam so fee notes, payslips and documents for signature carry its letterhead, and what stays blank.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Legal businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

A law practice's letterhead does quiet work. It tells a client that the fee note really came from their attorneys, tells opposing counsel which firm they are dealing with, and tells an employee that the payslip in their inbox is genuine. When documents leave the office with an old logo, a missing registration number or a different address on each one, the practice looks careless, and a forged document becomes easier to pass off.

Achekam puts the practice's branding on what it produces from one set of details recorded in Settings. This article explains where those details go, which documents carry them, and why a field you leave empty stays empty, for law practices in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

The details a practice records once in Settings

The logo, brand colour and company details are recorded under Settings, in Firm Profile and Branding & Themes. Record them once, carefully, and every document that uses them follows.

Gather before you start:

• the practice's registered name, exactly as registered;
• its registration number, if it is a company or other registered entity;
• the VAT registration number, if the practice is registered;
• the physical and postal addresses, telephone number and general e-mail address;
• the logo, as a clear image file at a good size;
• the brand colour your designer uses, if you have one.

Your professional rules may say what a law practice's letterhead must show, such as how the practice is described or whose names appear. Check them before you finalise the details, because Achekam will print what you record, not what your rules require.

Fee notes on the letterhead

An issued fee note can be downloaded as a PDF on the practice's letterhead and e-mailed from the fee note, with or without a pay link, and a failed send is reported as not sent.

The VAT number matters for the heading. A practice enters its VAT registration number in Settings under Firm Profile, and documents made by the server print it and are titled Tax Invoice only when a VAT number is set. There is a current defect to know about: the invoice PDF downloaded or e-mailed from the invoice screen is always headed TAX INVOICE and cites the South African VAT Act, whatever the practice's country or VAT number. A practice that is not VAT-registered, or that practises in Nigeria or Kenya, should check those PDFs before sending them. The whole route from draft to issued is set out in fee notes from draft to issued.

Payslips, tax certificates and EMP201 PDFs

The same branding reaches the practice's payroll documents. The logo, brand colour and company details set under Settings appear on payslips, tax certificates and EMP201 PDFs.

Payslips are PDFs with the practice's logo and details that can be downloaded or e-mailed one per person, and an employer setting sends them automatically when a run is approved, with a delivery log, provided an e-mail service is configured on the server. For employees, a branded payslip from a consistent sender is easier to trust and harder to fake.

What a payslip must say is a separate question from how it looks. In South Africa, the Department of Employment and Labour's Basic Guide to Pay Slips sets out the details an employer must give a worker in writing each payday, such as the pay period, deductions and net pay. Tax certificates and the EMP201 are South African documents; for Nigerian and Kenyan practices, the payslip is where the branding shows.

Documents composed for signature

Mandates, fee agreements and settlement letters are often sent for signature rather than posted. Any document can be sent for electronic signature, including a document composed from text blocks with merge fields, and documents composed for signature carry the practice's logo and details. The signed PDF and a completion certificate are filed back into Documents.

That makes the composed mandate look like the practice's own paper, not a generic form. How a mandate is signed electronically is covered in having the mandate signed electronically.

The branded page clients see when they pay online

When a fee note is sent with a pay link, the client pays on a public page that shows the practice's name and branding. Clients who have learned to recognise your letterhead will recognise the page, which helps them tell your genuine payment request from a fake one.

When the practice's details change

Practices change more often than their letterheads do. A partner retires, the practice converts to an incorporated company, it moves offices or registers for VAT. Each change is made once, in Settings, rather than on individual documents. Keep a copy of important documents exactly as they were sent, such as signed mandates and fee notes, so you can always show what a client received at the time.

Make updating Settings part of the checklist for any such change, alongside the bank, the regulator and the e-mail signature, and decide who in the practice is allowed to do it.

Fields left blank rather than invented

A field the practice has not recorded is left blank on its documents, not invented. If the VAT number is empty, no VAT number appears; if there is no postal address, none is printed.

That is the right behaviour, and it puts the responsibility on the practice. A blank field is easy to miss on a single fee note and obvious to an auditor reviewing a year's worth. Check the result:

Before the next document goes out

Record the details and logo in Settings, then produce one of each document above and read them side by side. Fix anything missing at source, in Settings, rather than editing individual PDFs, so the next hundred documents come out right.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.