Payments and Bank Accounts

Accounts in Clio Manage are designed to mirror your real-life bank accounts at your financial institution for collecting payment on bills and retaining client funds. You can create two types of accounts in Clio—operating and client accounts. Client funds accounts retain funds in trust for clients. Operating accounts are for daily transactions.

Create new accounts

When creating a new bank account in Clio, you can select whether the account is an operating or client funds account. All non-client funds accounts are operating accounts. Once transactions have been applied to an account, account types should not be changed since this can cause account balancing inaccuracies.

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Select New account.
3. Name your account and select the account type.
4. Optional: Check the box for Connect this bank account to online payments and add financial details to connect the account to Clio Payments to accept payments directly from clients. Learn more below.
5. Click Create bank account.

Connect or disconnect bank accounts from online payments

When creating or editing a bank account in Clio, you have the option to connect the account to Clio Payments. If you are setting up Clio Payments for the first time, you are required to connect at least one Clio Manage operating account to online payments once your application is approved. This allows you to collect payment for bills and sync transaction records with your accounting platform. You can also disconnect any bank accounts that you do not want connected to online payments.

Connect bank accounts to payments:

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Click Connect to payments. You can also click the down arrow next to Edit and select Connect to online payments.
3. Select the account that you connected when signing up for Clio Payments. Click Add payout account to connect to a different payout account.
   • If you do not have the option to choose a payout account, this means that your payout account is still pending verification. Once it is verified, you can connect it.
4. Click Connect.

Disconnect bank accounts from payments:

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Click the down arrow next to Edit and select Disconnect from online payments.
3. When the warning prompt appears, select Disconnect.

Edit accounts

You can edit basic details of a bank account at any time. Once transactions have been recorded in an account, the account type should not be changed since this can cause account balancing inaccuracies.

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Click Edit
3. Make your changes.
4. Click Update Bank Account.

Delete accounts

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Click the down arrow next to Edit and select Delete.
3. When the warning prompt appears, check the confirmation box and select Delete.

Record vendor transactions

You can manually record funds out of your operating accounts to track payments to non-clients, such as payments to vendors related to your clients' cases. Once recorded, your operating account balance will show the deducted amount.

1. Go to Accounts and select an operating account. You can also go to the Transactions subtab in a contact or matter.
2. Click New transaction.
3. Complete the required fields.
   • Under Amount, enter the amount that will be paid to the vendor as a negative number (e.g. -200).
   • Under Date, select the transaction date.
   • Under Account, check that the appropriate operating account is selected. The funds will be deducted from this account.
4. Complete the remaining fields as necessary. Adding information to these fields can be useful when viewing transactions and when generating relevant reports.
   • Client and matter fields: You are not required to select a client or matter, but completing these fields will allow you to track which client and matter the vendor payment is connected to.
   • Source/Destination: Enter information about the source or destination of the payment (e.g. information about the vendor's bank account).
   • Payer/Payee: Enter the vendor's name.
5. Click Record transaction.

Link transactions to disbursements

If your firm is required to show disbursements on transactions made from your operating accounts to third-party vendors for compliance purposes, you can link transactions to standard and anticipated disbursements when recording the transactions. After linking a payment to a standard and anticipated disbursement, you can see the transaction showing funds out in the transactions table of your operating account, the bank account activity, client ledger and disbursement payment reports. 

Enable disbursement and transaction linking:

With this feature, you can link standard and anticipated disbursements to bank transactions. If your firm is located in Ireland or the UK, this feature is automatically turned on. Otherwise, if your firm is required to link transactions and disbursements for compliance reasons, you can turn this feature on by following the steps below.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > Expenses
2. Toggle Record expenses as disbursements.
3. Toggle Link disbursements to bank transactions.
4. Optional: Toggle Record anticipated disbursements. Learn more about anticipated disbursements here. 

Link transaction to disbursement:

Before you can link a transaction to a disbursement, you will need to record a standard or anticipated disbursement in a matter. Learn more about adding disbursements here. Once a disbursement has been added to a matter, you can record a transaction to pay funds to a vendor and link the disbursement to that transaction.

1. Go to Accounts and select an operating account. You can also go to the Transactions subtab in a matter.
2. Click New transaction.
3. Select the client and matter. 
4. Under Disbursement, select the disbursement that you want to connect to the transaction.
   • The dropdown will show all disbursements for the matter. Disbursements that have already been linked to transactions will show £0.
   • You are not required to pay the entire amount of the disbursement in one transaction. You can always record multiple transactions for the remainder of the disbursement amount. 
5. Complete the following required fields.
   • Under Amount, enter the amount that will be paid to the vendor as a negative number (e.g. -£200).
   • Under Date, select the transaction date.
   • Under Account, check that the appropriate operating account is selected. The funds will be deducted from this account.
   • Under Invoice reference, enter the reference for the payment. This field will only appear once a matter and disbursement are selected.
6. Complete the remaining fields as necessary.
   • Disbursements: The Source/Recipient field cannot be changed. When you create a disbursement, you are required to select a vendor. This vendor is automatically added to the Source/Recipient field.
   • Anticipated disbursements: The Source/Recipient field will automatically populate with the vendor selected when creating the anticipated disbursement. If it does not automatically populate, you can select a vendor or create a new contact.
7. Click Record transaction.

Export transactions

Once you have recorded transactions on your bank accounts, you can export transactions from a single bank account. You can also export transactions specific to a single matter or contact from the matter or contact’s Transactions subtab.

Transfer funds between accounts

Each contact and matter in Clio have a Transactions subtab where you can record transactions and transfer funds between a contact and any of the contact’s matters or from one bank account to another.