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 trust funds. You can create two types of accounts in Clio—operating and trust funds accounts. Trust 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 trust funds account. All non-trust 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. Click Create bank account.

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.
   • 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.
   • Under Source/Recipient, enter the vendor's name to help you distinguish which vendor received the payment on the Transactions table and in relevant reports. 
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 view transactions 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 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. Toggle Record anticipated disbursements.

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.