Configure General Bill Settings

General bill settings control how your firm's bills look, calculate, notify your team, and lock down before you generate them. You set the PDF page size, bill details, currencies, LEDES billing, time rounding, non-billable time, bill states, bill notifications, and default delivery options. Configuring these once means every bill applies your firm's preferences without adjusting each bill.

Set bill PDF page size

This setting sets the page size for bills you download from Clio Manage: letter, A4, or legal.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > General.
2. Under PDF Page Size, select the page size.
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Save changes.

Select default billing template

You can set the default billing templates in Clio Manage to apply to new bills and trust requests and select whether to include a cover page before the invoice. The defaults you select apply to every new bill or trust request unless you select a different one when generating a bill or trust request.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > General.
2. Optional: Under Default billing templates, click View to review the current firm default billing template.
3. Select your default templates.
   • For Invoice template, click the dropdown and choose the template you want as your default.
   • For Trust request template, click the dropdown and choose the template you want as your default. 
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save changes.

Enable a bill cover page

A cover page precedes the invoice with the bill number and total amount due. The cover page is not customizable.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > General.
2. Under Default billing templates, check or uncheck Apply cover page to bills.
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Save changes.

Manage currencies

In Clio Manage, the Currencies section of general bill settings supports multiple currencies for activities, billing, reporting, and bank transactions. See Manage Currencies to add, edit, or remove a currency and to set how time and expense entries convert between a matter's currency and your firm's default.

Set tax defaults

The Taxes section of general bill settings sets your firm's primary and secondary tax rates and whether they apply to bills by default. See Configure Tax Settings for the full setup, including compound tax logic and applying or removing tax on an individual bill.

Enable LEDES billing and set up UTBMS codes

LEDES billing generates bills in the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) format that corporate clients and third-party clearinghouses such as insurers often require. Enabling it LEDES billing and selecting UTBMS codes sets at the firm levels allows firm users to use it for individual clients and their matters. Refer to UTBMS Codes to learn more.

Set time and decimal rounding

Clio Manage offers two rounding options for time entries and bills:

Decimal rounding:

Rounds time entries up and to two decimal places. A 0.248-hour entry appears as 0.25 hours.

Time rounding:

Rounds time entries up to the nearest minute increment you choose. With a 5-minute increment, a 22-minute entry rounds to 25 minutes.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > General.
2. Scroll to Time rounding.
3. Check or uncheck Enable decimal rounding and Enable time rounding.
4. Click Save changes.

Set non-billable time defaults

This setting controls how Clio Manage treats hourly time entries on flat rate and contingency matters, where firms track time for reference rather than bill it at an hourly rate.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > General, and scroll to Non-billable time.
2. Check Set hourly time entries on flat rate and contingency matters to non-billable by default to record hourly entries at your normal billing rate and mark them non-billable automatically.
3. Uncheck this setting to leave the non-billable checkbox unchecked by default and bill hourly entries on these matters at a rate of $0.00 instead.
4. Click Save changes.

Enable editing of approved bills

This setting controls whether your firm can edit a bill once it has moved to the Approved state.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > General, and scroll to Bill states.
2. Check or uncheck Allow editing of approved bills and trust requests.
3. Click Save changes.

Enable bill generation notifications

This setting allows you to choose which members of your firm to notify when you generate bills.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > General, and scroll to Bill notifications.
2. Check Display notification section during bill generation.
3. Click Save changes.

Set default bill sending options

Set how bills attach and whether text delivery is on by default. You can still change these options for an individual bill when you send it.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > General.
2. Set your options.
   • Default bill attachment options: Choose between sending bills as a secure PDF link or as an attached PDF
   • Default send by text message options: Text delivery is on by default. Turn it off if you do not typically want to send bills by text. You can still choose to send a bill by text at the time you send a bill.
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Save changes.

Up next

Configure Tax Settings: Create tax rates and set invoice tax defaults.