Record and Manage Bill Payments

After generating bills and trust funds requests for your clients, you can manually record bill and trust funds request payments from your clients.

Understand payment sources when recording bill payments

When recording a bill payment, you can select the source of payment as a direct payment. See below for more information about the common payment types.

Direct payment

A direct payment is a payment made directly to the firm without using any Clio-integrated payments platform. When you record a transaction as a direct payment, the transaction automatically moves to a paid state.

Trust funds account

You can apply any previously received trust funds for the bill payment.

Record single bill or multi-matter bill payments

You can record payment for a single bill and a multi-matter bill in the same way. A multi-matter bill is single bill that includes activities for multiple matters belonging to one client. You can combine multiple matters for one client onto one bill when generating a new bill using the bulk billing feature (New bills button in the Billing tab).

1. Go to the main Billing tab or the Bills subtab in a matter or contact.
2. Click the down arrow next to Send and select Record payment.
3. Select the payment source, deposit account, the payer, and the amount being paid. You can also add a description about the purpose of the transaction or note. If the client has available trust funds, you will see the option to select funds from the trust funds account.
4. Click Record payment.

Record payment for a single client's multiple bills and matters

If one of your client's has multiple generated bills, or if one matter has multiple generated bills, you can record payment on all of the unpaid bills by following the steps below.

1. Go to Billing.
2. Click Record payment.
3. Search for the client. All unpaid bills for that client will appear.
4. Select the payment source, deposit account, the payer, and the amount being paid for each bill. You can also add a description about the purpose of the transaction or note. If the client has available trust funds, you will see the option to select funds from the trust funds account.
5. Click Record payment.

Record bill payments from trust funds

If your client has trust funds on the client or matter-level, you can record payment for a bill from the trust funds. You can record payment and apply trust funds at the same time as the bill approval process or after a bill has already been approved.

When paying bills with client-level trust funds, Clio Manage generates three distinct transactions to accurately represent the movement of funds. These transactions record: a transfer to the matter balance (the system prevents edits to this transaction), a transfer from the client-level trust funds, and a transfer to your operating account to pay the invoice.

Apply trust to individual bills

Apply trust to multiple bills

You can also perform bulk actions to approve bills or to apply trust to approved bills.

1. Go to Billing or the Bills subtab in a matter or contact.
2. Select the Unpaid subtab.
3. Select your relevant bills.
   1. Use the checkboxes to select relevant bills. Make sure not to select any trust requests, or an error will occur.
   2. Click the down arrow next to Send at the top of the table and select Apply trust.
   Tip: You can also select all bills across all pages. Click the down arrow next to New bills in the top right corner, then click Bulk Apply trust. Any trust requests will be automatically be excluded.
4. In the modal, select the trust account from which the bills are to be paid for the Source account, the operating account into which the funds will be paid for the Destination account, and the Payment type.
5. Optional: Check the box for Only include invoices that have been shared more than 7 days ago to apply your action to older outstanding bill amounts.
6. Click Apply trust.
   Note: Any bills that you selected with no trust funds available in the Source account you selected will remain unpaid. Furthermore, any bill amounts greater than the trust funds available will be paid partially with the remaining balance remaining unpaid.

You can find details about previous bulk apply trust actions by viewing transactions in your trust accounts. A bulk transaction will show the total amount paid across invoices. Click View for the transaction to view details of individual invoices paid. You can also download a PDF file of this information.

Edit recorded bill payments

You can edit a recorded bill payment from within either a contact or matter's Bills subtab or the Transactions subtab. When editing a recorded payment, you can edit all fields other than the write-off or credit note section. If you need to apply a credit note or write-off a bill payment, you will need to delete the payment first. Learn more about credit notes here.

Delete recorded bill payments

You can only delete a recorded payment if it is a direct payment.

1. Go to Billing or click the Bills subtab in a contact or matter.
2. Optional: Click the Paid quick filter subtab.
3. Click the bill ID to open the bill. You can also click the down arrow next to Send and select View bill.
4. Under the Payments subtab, click the down arrow next to Edit and select Delete.
5. When the warning prompt appears, select Delete.

View bill payment history

Once a payment is recorded, you can view which firm user recorded the payment in the bill Timeline, from your Firm Feed, and in the matter's Timeline.