From Document Index to court bundle
How the index and the bundle share one source of truth.
The Document Index and the court bundle look like two separate deliverables, but they are two views of the same underlying configuration. Seeing that relationship explains why getting the index right is the whole job: the court bundle is generated from that same configuration. A bundle you have already generated is a fixed output: it does not update when the index changes, so after you change the index you regenerate it (Create Bundle). Regenerating replaces the previous bundle rather than adding to it — the old volumes are cleared before the new ones are built, so download anything you still need first.
What the Document Index is
The Document Index is the ordered, structured spine of a collection: headings and documents arranged in the sequence you want them to appear. BriefTech saves one index configuration per collection, so a matter divided into several collections has a separate index — and a separate bundle — for each. (If you have not scoped to a collection, you are working across the whole matter.) It is what you build in the Index stage, and on its own it produces an index document — a table of your documents that can be exported as Word or Excel.
Everything downstream flows from this arrangement, so the Document Index is less a report you generate at the end than the structure you shape throughout.
How document order produces serial numbers
The order in which you arrange documents is the source of their serial numbers. BriefTech numbers documents by walking the list from top to bottom, so moving a document changes its number. Numbering options — such as where the count starts and an optional text prefix — build on top of that order rather than replacing it.
This is why arranging the list is the meaningful act: the numbers are a consequence of the sequence, not something you set document by document.
One configuration, two outputs
A single saved configuration drives both outputs. The same ordered structure that produces the index document also produces the paginated court bundle: your documents appear in the bundle in the order the index puts them. There is no separate "bundle order" to keep in sync — the preview you see and the file you export come from the same place.
The bundle is more than your index, though. Depending on your bundle settings it also renders pages the index has no row for — a cover page, a table of contents in each volume, a tab page before each document, and an intro document at the front of volume 1. The bundle is built from the live documents in the collection you are bundling — those you have not moved to the Bin. If no collection is selected, that is the whole matter; binned documents are excluded either way. And it need not cover every volume: Volumes to assemble on the Create Bundle panel builds just the volumes you name. See Generate a paginated court bundle.
The preview calculates pagination at a lighter setting for speed — it assumes a one-page table of contents per volume, while the export generates and measures the real one — so its page counts and volume breaks are an estimate; the exported bundle finalises them and can shift by roughly the length of each volume's table of contents (a 15-page index can shift a volume by around 14 pages). (One numbering nuance: the bundle's table of contents keeps your Document Index serial numbers, but its tab and bookmark numbering always starts at 1.)
That parity is deliberate: it removes a whole class of mistakes where an index and its bundle quietly drift apart.
How volumes and pagination are derived
The bundle's finishing touches build on the same configuration. The table of contents follows from your Document Index, and a large collection is split into volumes according to the volume settings — a page-count limit with a split strategy. Senior Volumes, if you turn it on, adds to that rather than replacing it: each top-level heading starts a new volume, and the page-count limit still splits within it, so a heading holding more pages than the limit still runs to several volumes. By default each volume's page numbers restart at 1. Adjust the index and these follow automatically when you regenerate the bundle.
The choice of preset follows from the kind of filing. For Malaysian matters, a Common Bundle (Part A), a Plaintiff's Bundle or a Defendant's Bundle under Order 34 is prepared with the Bundle of Documents preset, while a Record of Appeal to the Court of Appeal or Federal Court uses Records of Appeal (MY) — its lower page-per-volume limit reflects the Malaysian appellate courts' volume-size conventions. See Document Index presets for each preset's settings.
For the exact options behind each output, see Document Index presets and Court bundle settings.
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