Is this right approach to get model data formmated html?

I would like to know, if I am following the best practices of development in CakePHP framework.

If you have for a example an Invoices Table, and you want to display the status of the Invoice, let’s say you want a green label for the status of the invoice like this:

<span class="green">Paid</span>

What i do is the following. I create a virtualfield on my model named statuslabel, in that virtualfield i call a Helper that displays an element.

so it would be Model->Helper->Element

That way anywhere in my application i can call statuslabel like it was a field from that model and i would get the statuslabel.

My big question is if this is the right way to do it or i am doing it all wrong?