Generate Bills for Billing in Clio

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In Clio Manage, there are two methods for creating bills—quick bill and bulk billing. With Clio’s quick bill feature, you can generate a single bill for a specific matter directly from the matter. With the bulk billing feature, you can generate multiple bills for different matters, proceed through a more detailed bill generation process for individual bills, and change bill themes.

Note: You cannot generate a bill for a non-billable matter. 

Generate quick bills

You can generate a quick bill for any matter that has unbilled time or expense activities, including closed matters. Once the time and/or expense entries are generated on a bill, they cannot be changed. If you need to make modifications after generating a bill, you will need to delete or void the bill. Follow the steps below to generate a quick bill.

  1. Go to a matter and click Quick bill under the Financial section. You can also go to the contact and click Quick bill in the upper right corner.
  2. Select the due date, bill detail level, whether you want to apply tax, and apply any discounts. Learn more about bill options here.
  3. Optional: Click Remove to remove any activities from this bill.
    Note: Removing activities only removes them from the bill being generated. The activities will not be deleted from Clio and can still be generated on a new bill.
  4. Optional: Click Add time or Add expense to add any new activities to this bill.
  5. Optional: Check the box for Skip the bill approval process if you want to send the bill to your client without any other user approving it. Learn more about bill states and approving bills here.
  6. Click Generate.

 

Generate bills in bulk and multi-matter bills

With Clio’s bulk billing feature, you can generate multiple bills for the same client across multiple matters (multi-matter billing), generate multiple bills for multiple different clients and matters, generate just a single bill. You can generate a bill for any matter that has unbilled time and/or expense activities and apply different bill themes. 

Note: Once time and/or expense entries are generated on a bill, they can only be edited if the bill is in draft or pending approval. If you need to edit activities on an approved bill, you will need to delete or void the bill or turn on the option to edit approved bills in your settings. Learn more about deleting and voiding bills here and editing approved bills here.

Tip: Clio offers a split billing feature where you can split a bill for a matter amongst multiple payers, allowing multiple individuals to pay portions of one bill. Learn more here.

  1. Go to Billing and select New bills.
  2. Select all the bills you want to generate.
  3. Optional: Click Filter to narrow your results.
  4. Click Generate.
  5. Select the due date, bill theme, and bill options. Learn more about bills options below.
    • This modal is where you can generate a multi-matter bill if a single client has multiple matters with unbilled time and/or expense entries. Under Other options, check the box for Combine multiple matters for one client into a single bill.
  6. Click Generate bills.

 

Bill generation options

When generating new bills, you have a few options on the bill generation modal. Below is a summary of each field:

  • Issue date: This is the date that the bill is issued. You can select any date.
  • Due date: This is the date that the bill is due. You can manually select a date or check the box for Use contact’s grace period to calculate the due date. With this selection, the due date is contingent on the grace period specified in the contact’s payment profile.
  • Change bill theme: This affects the format that the bill invoice appears in. Learn more about bill themes here.
  • Detail level: This refers to how activities appear on the bill:
    • All details: Each activity is listed as its own line item for full transparency.
    • Activity summary: Activities are sorted by activity category, which means that activities in the same activity category are combined on the same line.
    • Aggregate: Activities are sorted by time and expenses, which means that activities of the same type are combined on the same line.
      • All items aggregated: The bill will show only one combined total for all activities.
      • Aggregated by type: The bill will show two combined total, one for time and one for expenses.
      • Only services aggregated: The bill will show one combined total for time entries. Expenses will be listed on their own line items.
      • Only expenses aggregated: The bill will show one combined total for expenses. Time entries will be listed on their own line items.
  • Activities: You can select if you want the bill to show all activities, only time entries, or only expenses.
  • Other options:
    • Combine multiple matters for one client into a single bill: If a client has multiple matters with billable activities, all of those matters and their activities will appear on a single bill.
    • Include unbilled matters with a zero balance: If the client has a matter with activities set to $0, the bill will show this matter as well.
      Tip: $0 activities are used for recording fixed rate and contingency fee matters. Learn more here.
    • Apply tax: The bill will apply the primary tax you specified in your settings.
    • Apply secondary tax: The bill will apply the secondary tax you specified in your settings.
    • Skip the bill approval process: The bill will move directly to the unpaid state. You can accept payment on the bill without requiring approval from another user. Learn more about bill states and approving bills here.
  • Notify members of your firm: This allows you to select firm members who will receive a notification when the bill is generated. By default, this option is hidden but can be turned on in settings. See the section below on Firm notifications to learn how to enable this section. Once enabled, you can choose to notify each firm member by email and/or an internal message.

 

Track progress of bulk billing actions 

In Clio, the Job Status subtab allows you to monitor the progress of bulk billing actions. These actions include generating bills for multiple clients, approving and applying client funds and deleting draft bills. You can monitor the status of a bulk billing action and troubleshoot any errors using the steps and error descriptions below.

  1. Go to Billing and select the Job Status subtab.
  2. Scroll to view the date, action type and current status of past bulk billing actions. 
    • Click on the hyperlink to view detailed results for each action.
  3. Optional: Click the Today dropdown to filter job statuses by Today, Last 2 Days, or Last 7 Days.
  4. Optional: To clear a specific job status log, click the three dots next to the action. To clear all logs, click Clear All.
Note: Bulk billing actions will continue to make progress even if you are not monitoring the Job Status subtab. You can check back later to confirm all actions have been completed.
Bulk billing action errors

The following are common errors that may occur during bulk billing actions, along with the cause and resolution.

Error: unexpected_error

Action: Any

Description: A generic error for unknown issues.

Error: negative_matter_amount

Action: Generate bills

Description: A bill cannot be generated when the matter has a negative amount due, often caused by overpayment on previous invoices.

Current messaging: “You have matters with a negative amount due; they cannot be combined into a single bill.”

Error: no_charge_aggregate

Action: Generate bills

Description: Occurs when trying to generate an aggregate bill that contains only non-billable activities.

Error: no_time_entries

Action: Generate bills

Description: Triggered when bill generation is requested but there are no time entries to include on the bill.

Error: no_expense_entries

Action: Generate bills

Description: Triggered when bill generation is requested but there are no expense entries to include on the bill.

Error: nothing_to_generate

Action: Generate bills

Description: Triggered when bill generation is requested, but there are no billable activities to include.

Error: split_bill_not_on_client_bill

Action: Generate bills

Description: Occurs when split bills are selected in a bulk billing job that also includes the option to "Combine multiple matters for the same client in one bill."

Error: split_bill_not_aggregated

Action: Generate bills

Description: Occurs when split bills are selected in a bulk billing job where the "aggregate records" option is selected.

Error: no_client

Action: Generate bills

Description: Triggered when attempting to generate a bill for a deleted client.

Error: no_matter

Action: Generate bills

Description: Triggered when attempting to generate a bill for a deleted matter.

Error: paid_bill_transaction_error

Action: Apply trust

Description: Occurs when applying trust to a group of bills and at least one bill is not in "awaiting payment" status.

Error: bill_deleted

Action: Submit for approval

Description: Occurs if the bill has been deleted in a different session or by another user.

Error: bill_voided

Action: Submit for approval

Description: Occurs if the bill has been voided in a different session or by another user.

Error: bill_paid

Action: Submit for approval

Description: Occurs if the bill was paid while another user was viewing an outdated version of the bills table.

Error: bill_awaiting_payment

Action: Submit for approval

Description: Occurs if the bill was moved to "awaiting payment" in a different session or by another user.

Error: no_contact_for_grace_period

Action: Approval

Description: Triggered when attempting to approve a bill and set the issue date based on the grace period, but the client has been deleted.

Error: job_level_failure

Action: Any job

Description: Occurs when the job was interrupted before completion.

Error: matter_has_zero_balance

Action: Bill generation

Description: Occurs when attempting to generate a bill, but the matter has a zero balance.

 

Enable firm notifications on bills

In your user settings, you can enable a setting that sends notifications to firm members of your choice when a bill is generated. You are not required to use this feature regardless of whether it is turned on. To turn on firm notifications:

  1. Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Settings.
  2. Scroll down to Bill Notifications.
  3. Check the box next to Display notification section during bill generation.
  4. Click Save Bill Settings.

 

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