Expenses

Expenses are one of two types of billable or non-billable activities that form a bill. Time entries are the other type of activity. Expenses can be further broken down into disbursements, anticipated disbursements, and expense recoveries.

Disbursements are the hard-cost expenses like court or mediation fees incurred on behalf of a client that require direct payment to a vendor as disbursements. Clients can reimburse these expenses throughout a matter or when billed at the end. 

Expense Recoveries allow you to record indirect soft costs related to a matter, like photocopy charges or phone bills. These expenses are charged to the client as well, but a direct payment is not made to a separate vendor or service provider.

Enable disbursements and expense recoveries

If your firm differentiates between disbursements and expense recoveries, you can enable this feature for activities in Clio Manage. Examples of disbursements can include court filing fees, lab fees, and witness fees. Examples of expense recoveries include photocopies, postage costs, and data storage, to name a few.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > Expenses.
2. Toggle on Record expenses as disbursements.

Add new expenses

You can create a new expense entry in the main Activities page in Clio Manage, the Activities page within a matter, and from the global Create new button on the top right of your Clio Manage screen.

1. In Activities, click New expense. From the global Create new, click Expense entry.
2. If you previously enabled Disbursements and Expense recoveries, select the expense type and complete the required fields:
   • • If you select disbursement, you can record a prepaid amount. In the Prepayment field, enter any value up to the total value of the disbursement.
3. Under Expense category, select a category that you previously created. This will auto-populate some fields. Learn more about expense categories here.
4. Optional: If you enabled UTBMS codes, you can select the relevant code under UTBMS expense code. UTBMS codes stands for a uniform task-based management system, which essentially means they’re used to standardize categories across a firm to make for more efficient analysis and billing.
5. Under Tax rate, choose how you want tax to be applied to this expense. 
   
   • You can choose to not apply any tax or apply your primary tax, your secondary tax, or both your primary and secondary tax rates. Learn more about setting up tax rates here.
   • If you select Use tax applied to invoice or if you do not select any option, the expense will inherit the tax setting chosen when generating a bill. 
6. Complete the remaining fields.
   • When entering the date, you can select a past, current, or future date.
7. Click Save entry. Save and create another will save this expense entry and populate another expense entry modal. Save and duplicate will save this expense entry and populate another expense entry modal with the same information.

Create non-billable expenses

By default, expenses marked as non-billable will not appear on a generated bill because they are set to $0. If you need to show a non-billable expense on a bill, you can do so easily when creating the expense entry. By showing non-billable expenses on a bill, you can bill more accurately for non-billable activities, report on non-billable time using the "matter productivity by user" report, and show your clients extra value invested in their case. 

1. Create a new expense entry or edit an existing expense entry.
2. Check the box for Non-billable to not charge for the expense. 
3. Check the box for Show this entry on the bill to show the expense entry on the bill at a $0 rate.
4. Complete the remaining details and then click Save entry.

Duplicate expenses

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

1. Go to Activities and find the expense you want to duplicate.
2. Click the down arrow next to Edit and select Duplicate.
3. Make any necessary changes and then select Save entry.

Edit expenses

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

1. Go to Activities.
2. Find the activity you want to edit and click Edit.
3. Make any necessary changes and then select Save entry.

Delete expenses

You can delete an unbilled expense from the main Activities page in Clio Manage or from the Activities subtab within a matter. All users can delete expenses one at a time, but administrators can delete expenses in bulk.

You can track deleted expenses in the Recovery bin, from a matter's timeline, and from the Firm Feed. Deleted items will remain in the Recovery Bin for six months. It is possible to recover deleted items, but Clio does not guarantee that the lost data can be recovered. The best practice is to ensure the item is not needed before deleting it, with the recovery bin available as a failsafe.