With Clio's AI features, you can automate many of your firm's financial processes, e.g., by generating client bills and capturing expense details. This end-to-end automation transforms routine financial tasks into completed, payment-ready bills, accelerating cash flow and reducing errors.
Access billing automation
You can initiate the AI-driven automation setup or review bills generated by AI from the AI Launchpad or the Clio Manage Billing tab.
- AI Launchpad: Click the diamond icon and select Automate your bills.
- Personal Dashboard: Go to your home page in Clio Manage (Dashboard > Personal Dashboard) to see your top matter priorities which may included suggestions for creating bills or invoices.
- Billing tab: Go to Billing and select the Automated Billing subtab.
- Matter Dashboard: Look for the AI Actions card to see when new bills are ready for review.
Understand the automated billing process
Once parameters are set, Clio's AI takes the following steps to complete your billing cycle:
- Proactive notification: Clio's AI notifies firm users before a bill is created, prompting them to enter any remaining time and expenses.
- Bill generation and refinement: Clio's AI converts recorded entries into invoices and refines descriptions for clarity and polish. Refined entries are highlighted in blue for easy review.
- Route approval: The generated draft bill is automatically routed to the specified approvers for review and final approval.
Manage AI uses activity timestamps to determine which activities to include in an automated billing cycle. Automated billing jobs generate at 2:00 a.m. PT and 5:00 a.m. ET.
- Up to the end of previous week: This setting includes all entries created in Clio before 11:59 p.m. on Sunday. The system excludes any entries created on the current Monday, even if the activity date is backdated to the previous week.
- Up to the date the bill is generated: This setting includes all unbilled entries created in the system before the 2:00 a.m. PT generation time.
Tip: Because automated billing relies on the time the entry was created in Clio, ensure all firm users finalise their time and expense logs before the end of the business day prior to your scheduled generation. This ensures your draft bills reflect all work performed without missing the automated cutoff.
Configure billing automation
A billing manager must define the parameters for automated bill generation. You can now include hourly, flat fee, and contingency matters in your cycles.
- In Clio Manage, click the diamond icon and select Automate your bills, or go to Billing > Automated Billing.
- In the settings modal, set the Bill generation schedule.
- Enter a number or use the arrows to set a cadence and select week(s) or month(s) from the dropdown.
- If you select weeks, select a day of the week for weekly generation.
- If you select months, choose to generate on a specific day of the month (e.g., Day 15) or a set day of the week (e.g., the last Tuesday).
- Review the upcoming generation dates displayed below the schedule to confirm when the next cycle will run.
- Under Billing rules, set a minimum amount.
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Optional: Toggle the option to include flat fee and contingency matters.
Note: This setting only affects new matters. When switching an existing matter to a flat rate structure, you will be prompted to enable automated billing for that matter.
- Under Bill details, configure your invoice dates and theme:
- Issue date: Choose to have the issue date be the Same day as the generation date or a specific number of days after the generation.
- Due date: Select Use contact's grade period or set a specific number of days after the issue date.
- Bill theme: Select your preferred theme from the dropdown menu.
- Select which time and expense entries to include. You can choose to bill activities up to the end of the previous month or week, or up to the bill generation date.
- Optional: Toggle the option to refine entry descriptions with Clio's AI. When enabled, entries refined for clarity and polish will be highlighted in blue during the approval process.
- Optional: Under Bill approvers, specify who needs to approve the bill, including by firm role or specific users.
- Click Save settings.
Disable automated billing
You can stop the automated billing process for your firm at any time to cancel in-progress automations or reset your billing flags.
- Go to Billing > Automated Billing.
- Click Edit settings.
- In the bottom left of the Firm bill generation settings modal, click Disable Automated Billing.
Automate expense entries
With Clio's AI features, you can quickly create expense entries from uploaded receipts, cutting down on the time needed for manual data entry.