The new electronic bill of costs became mandatory for all work undertaken on Part 7 multi-track claims from 6 April. Unless the court orders otherwise the only exclusions to this rule are cases subject to fixed costs or cases in which the receiving party is a litigant in person.
The electronic bill will have to be used for costs claims for work undertaken from 6 April onwards. It will not be mandatory for any work pre-6 April 2018, but where cases straddle this date it will probably be easiest to incorporate all costs within one bill (being the electronic one).
The court form for the new bill is Precedent S which can be found here and is annexed to Practice Direction 47 of the Civil Procedure Rules.
It is anticipated that Form N260 (the statement of costs used for summary assessment) will also be reviewed and amended in due course to bring it into line with this electronic bill and the costs budget (Precedent H).
We expect to see more changes over the next couple of years as the courts work to modernise their systems and move towards becoming paperless.