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Create and Manage Expenses Entries

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Expense entries in Clio Manage help you track costs related to matters, such as barrister fees, court filing fees, and expert witness costs. By default, all expenses are recorded as standard expenses without categorisation. If your firm needs to differentiate between expenses paid to third parties (disbursements and anticipated disbursements) and internal costs billed to clients (expense recoveries), you can enable these options in Settings.

Enable expense tracking for hard costs (disbursements) and soft costs (expense recoveries)

By default, Clio Manage tracks all expenses as standard expenses. You can enable tracking expenses as disbursements vs expense recoveries to categorise reimbursable expenses, anticipated disbursements before they are paid, or expense recoveries. If your firm needs to track vendor payments against recorded expenses, you can link bank transactions to standard expenses. This ensures that payments made from your operating account to third-party vendors are correctly recorded and appear in financial reports.

Enable recording expenses as disbursements

Note: Previously recorded expenses will not be affected when this feature is enabled.
Important: Disabling this feature will revert disbursements to standard expenses. Re-enabling it will restore their categorisation as disbursements.
  1. Go to Settings > Billing > Expenses subtab.
  2. Toggle on Record expenses as disbursements.

 

Enable linking disbursements to bank transactions

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 subtab.

  2. Toggle on Link disbursements to bank transactions.

    Note: To toggle Link disbursements to bank transactions, you will first need to toggle Record expenses as disbursements to on.

 

Enable recording anticipated disbursements

Once disbursements and expense recoveries are enabled, you can use this feature to record, manage, and report on vendor expense estimates before receiving payments. If you disable this feature, previous entries recorded as anticipated disbursements will revert to standard disbursements.

Important: Anticipated disbursements must be linked to a bank transaction after recording.
  1. Go to Settings > Billing > Expenses subtab.

  2. Toggle Record anticipated disbursements.

    Note: To toggle Record anticipated disbursements, you will first need to toggle Record expenses as disbursements and Link disbursements to bank transactions to on.

 

Enable recording taxes on disbursements

When your firm pays a vendor for a disbursement, the tax paid on the vendor bill (input tax) may differ from the tax charged to the client (output tax). In Clio, you can enable the option to track the tax paid on vendor bills separately from the tax applied on client invoices, supporting accurate reporting and compliance. For example, fees like non-vattable land registry search fees or certain court fees in the UK are subject to a 20% tax payable by the client but the firm is not subject to paying taxes to the vendor. Separating out both taxes means that the disbursement can sync as net+0% to an accounting integration like Xero, while the client bill shows net +20%.

To enable this setting:

  1. Go to Settings > Billing > General.
  2. Toggle on Enable recording of input and output taxes on disbursements.

 

Add new expense entries

Expenses track costs related to a matter in Clio Manage. Record these costs and attach receipts to facilitate firm reimbursement and provide clients with clear bill transparency. You can create expense entries from several areas in Clio Manage, including the main Activities page, a matter’s Activities subtab, or the global Create new button.

Note: When recording expense recoveries, you can enter up to four decimal places. Other areas in Clio may round values to two decimal places, but the actual rate remains unchanged. Quick bills support two decimal places.
  1. In Activities, click New expense.
    • Alternatively, from the global Create new button, select Expense entry.
  2. If you previously enabled tracking expenses as disbursements vs expense recoveries, select the expense type and complete the required fields.
  3. Optional: Under Receipt, select Attach receipt to select a file already in Clio or click Upload receipt to upload new files from your computer (up to a maximum file size of 15 MB). Once you have selected all relevant files, click Attach.
    • To include attached receipts on client bills, check the box for Send receipt with bill. Receipts attached to non-billable expenses will not be sent with the bill.

  4. Optional: Under Expense category, select a pre-created category to auto-populate certain fields. If the matter has LEDES billing enabled, select the relevant code under UTBMS Expense code. For the Tax field, choose one of your pre-created tax rates.

    Note: The rate(s) added here are used as the default tax rates, but you can still edit them at the time you generate a bill.
  5. If your firm uses multiple currencies and the expense currency is different from the matter’s currency, you may have to select the conversion rate to use (if you chose Billing Settings where the rate is set at the time you record the expense).
  6. Complete the remaining fields.
    • When entering the date, you can select a past, current, or future date.

    • You can mark an expense as non-billable by checking the Non-billable box. If you still want the non-billable expense to appear on bills, check the Show this entry on the bill box.

      Note: Tracking non-billable expenses helps the firm track non-billable activities and report on non-billable time using the Matter Productivity by User report. Showing these entries on bills demonstrates the extra value invested in a client's matter.
      Important: Non-billable expenses marked as Show on bill will only appear on bills generated using bulk billing (Billing > New bills). They will not appear on invoices generated using Quick bill.

    • Optional: Select a tax rate or rates to apply to the expense. You have to create the tax rate first in order to select it from the dropdown when you create an expense entry.

      • When selecting multiple rates you can apply subsequent taxes to the pre- or post-tax amount.
      • To track an input tax that is different from what you bill your client, check the box for A different input tax rate applied to the vendor bill, then select the relevant rate from the dropdown.
      Note: The input tax rate appears only on the disbursement listing report. Clients will be charged tax on their bill using the rate in the original Tax field specified in the expense, or the tax specified at the time the bill was generated.
  7. Save the entry.
    • Click Save entry to save and exit the modal.
    • Click Save and create another to save the entry and clear the fields in the modal to create another entry.
    • Click Save and duplicate to save the entry and keep the fields filled to create additional similar entries.

 

Track vendor bill status

If your firm uses the Xero integration with the Sync to Xero as bills to pay setting enabled, you can monitor the real-time sync status of your Disbursements and Anticipated disbursements.

Tip: Tracking the Vendor bill status ensures all firm-paid expenses are accounted for before you finalise a client bill. This helps protect firm cash flow by ensuring you don't overlook unpaid liabilities.

  1. Go to the main Activities tab or the Activities subtab within a specific matter.
  2. Locate the Disbursement or Anticipated disbursement entry.
  3. View the Vendor bill status field:
    • Unpaid: The expense has synced to Xero as a bill to pay but has not been settled.
    • Paid: The expense is settled in Xero or linked to a bank transaction in Clio.

Note: Xero does not allow edits to paid bills. Once an expense is marked as Paid, the entry in Clio Manage becomes read-only and cannot be edited or changed back to Unpaid.

 

Duplicate and edit expenses

You can edit and duplicate an expense activity from the main Activities page in Clio Manage or from the Activities subtab within a matter. 

Duplicate expenses Edit expenses
  1. Go to Activities and find the expense you want to duplicate.
  2. In the Actions column, click Duplicate, or select Duplicate from the dropdown.
  3. Make any necessary changes.
  4. Click Save entry.

 

Delete and recover expenses

You can delete an unbilled expense from the main Activities page in Clio Manage or from the Activities subtab within a matter and recover expenses from the Recovery Bin. You can also track deleted expenses in the Recovery Bin, a matter timeline, and from the Firm Feed in your dashboard.

Important: Deleted expenses remain in the Recovery Bin for six months and can usually be restored, but Clio does not guarantee data recovery. Users can delete individual expenses and  administrators can delete multiple expenses at the same time.
Delete a single expense Delete multiple expenses Recover expenses
  1. Go to Activities.
  2. In the Actions column, click Delete or select Delete from the dropdown. You can also check the box next to the expense you want to delete, then click Delete above the table header.
  3. When the warning prompt appears, select Delete entry.

 

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