Bill themes control how your firm's bills appear to clients. You can create, duplicate, set a default, edit, and delete themes, with each theme carrying your firm's branding and layout preferences to every bill that uses it. Managing themes here ensures the correct layout is applied to every bill you generate.
Note: Billing templates provide a newer visual, drag-and-drop editor for bill design. For most new designs, see Design Bills With Billing Templates. Only users with administrator or billing permissions can create or edit bill themes; all firm users can apply an existing theme.
Choose bill themes or billing templates
Both tools produce the same result—a formatted bill—but build it differently.
- Bill themes: Configure the bill's appearance through a series of settings menus for header, footer, logo, and tables. Faster to set up for a standard bill layout.
- Billing templates: Build the bill layout directly on a drag-and-drop canvas, with full control over structure and placement. Use templates when your firm's branding requirements exceed what a theme's settings menus can offer. Copy an existing theme into the template editor to continue the design instead of starting from a blank canvas.
Copy a theme into the template editor
- Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Themes.
- Below the theme thumbnail, click Copy to billing templates.
- See Design Bills With Billing Templates to continue building the design in the new editor.
Create a bill theme
You can create an unlimited number of bill themes. Clio offers over 150 configurations, including your firm logo, footer, section layout, and a secure payment link.
Note: See Customize Bill Themes for the full list of categories a theme offers.
- Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Themes.
- Click New Theme.
- Name the theme and click Create New Theme.
- Click through the navigation menu to customise the theme. Most changes save automatically; page setup, localisation, and invoice information changes require you to click Save.
Duplicate a bill theme
- Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Themes.
- Locate the theme and click Copy above its thumbnail. The copy will have the original name followed by "(copy)".
Set the default bill theme
The default theme applies automatically to all new bills. Changing the default does not update bills that have already been generated. Clio provides a built-in Default theme that is used if you have not created any themes, and its name cannot be changed.
Tip: You can change the theme on a bill in Draft or Approved/Unpaid status. To change the theme on a paid bill, delete the payment, switch the theme, then re-record the payment.
- Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Themes.
- Click Set Default above the theme thumbnail.
Edit or delete a bill theme
Once you have created bill themes, you can modify them or delete those you no longer need, including Clio's Default formatted bill theme. When editing a bill theme, you can customise font, spacing, tables, and alignment in many of the bill theme categories. Below the bill theme options is a live preview of your bill theme. If you delete a bill theme, any previously generated bills that used that theme will revert to Clio’s Default theme format.
Note: If you edit a bill theme's settings in Settings > Billing > Bill Themes, changes apply to all bills that use that theme, including paid bills.
- Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Themes.
- Click the image of the bill theme you want to customise.
- Click through the options in the navigation menu to customise your bill theme.
- Changes will be saved automatically. Some changes (e.g., Page Setup, Localisation, and Invoice Information updates) will require you to click Save.
- Optional: Select Preview as PDF to view how your bill theme will look.
- Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Themes.
- Click Delete.
- Select Ok.
Up next
Customise Bill Themes: Configure the categories a theme offers, set up common branding changes, show or hide statement of account tables on a bill.