In Clio Accounting, you can view all of your vendor bills, expenses, and hard costs from the Funds out tab. This articles covers what you need to know about vendors and vendor bills. For information about hard costs, refer to Clio Accounting: Funds out—Hard Costs and for information about expenses, refer to Clio Accounting: Funds Out—Expenses.
- Vendors are people or businesses that supply products or services to your law firm, such as banks, catering companies, office supply depots, airlines, transportation services, software services, and more.
- You can create vendor bills in Clio Accounting to keep track of the bills you receive from your vendors.
This feature is just one component of Clio Accounting. Learn more about the other features by reading the articles listed below. We recommend starting with "Clio Accounting: Basics and Guidelines to Get Started" and routinely reviewing the recommended guidelines list to stay on top of your accounting and bookkeeping.
Add vendors
Your firm may pay for vendor services such as IT services, purchases, transportation costs, rent, office supplies, etc. You can add a vendor separately from operating expenses by following the steps below, or you can add a vendor while adding an operating expense.
Note: Vendors cannot be deleted from Clio Accounting in order to avoid potential discrepancies that may be introduced when a vendor associated with an operating expense is deleted. Only create vendors that you know will have operating expenses attached to them.
- Go to the main Funds out tab, then click the Vendors subtab.
- Click New vendor.
- Enter the vendor’s name in Company name and complete any other fields relevant to the vendor.
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The EIN (Employer Identification Number) and 1099 vendor fields are for taxation purposes. 1099 vendors are trade and non-trade individuals or companies that provide goods, services, or contract work for your firm, and where your firm does not deduct taxes from amounts paid to these vendors. If your vendor is a 1099 vendor, you will need to report the amount paid to this vendor to the IRS and issue a 1099-NEC Form to the vendor.
Tip: The vendor expense report can be used to quickly find the amounts paid to vendors for a specified time period.
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- Click Save vendor to save the vendor and close the new vendor modal, or click Save vendor and add new expense to save the vendor and create a new expense under that vendor.
Search and view vendors
When viewing a specific vendor, you can view all transactions or expenses associated with the vendor. From that page view, you can also view, edit, or delete expense transactions.
- Go to the Funds out tab, click the Vendors subtab, then click New vendor.
- In the Search for vendor field, enter a keyword to quickly find a vendor.
- Click the vendor's name.
Edit vendors
- Go to Funds out tab, click the Vendors subtab, then click New vendor.
- Optional: In the Search for vendor field, enter a keyword to quickly find a vendor.
- Click Edit next to a vendor's email.
- Make any changes and then click Save vendor.
Generate vendor expense report
The vendor expenses report provides information about all payments made to firm’s external vendors that are not related to a client or a matter. The list provides individual payments for the specified time period and includes the name of the vendor, the transaction date, the category of the payment, the description, whether the vendor is a 1099 vendor (as specified when you added the vendor), and the transaction amount.
Tip: If your firm needs to issue and file 1099-NEC Forms, you can use this report to quickly find information about all amounts paid to vendors for the specified time period.
- Go to Funds out tab, then select the Expenses subtab, and click Export to CSV.
- Select a reporting period or set a custom period using Start date and End date.
- Click Generate.
Your CSV file will be downloaded to your computer.
Manage vendor bills
- Click the global Add transaction menu.
- Select Add vendor bill.
- Enter the necessary information in the modal.
- Click Save.
Vendor bills that were not paid yet can be edited.
- Go to the Funds out tab, and click the Vendor bills subtab.
- For the relevant transaction, click the more icon (horizontal ellipses).
- Select Edit.
- Make the necessary updates.
- Click Save.
Vendor bills that were not paid yet can be deleted.
- Go to the Funds out tab, and click the Vendor bills subtab.
- For the relevant transaction, click the more icon (horizontal ellipses).
- Select Delete.
- Click Delete again to confirm the action.
Pay vendor bill
- Go to the Funds out tab, and click the Vendor bills subtab.
- For the relevant vendor bills, click Mark as paid.
- Enter the necessary information in the modal.
- Optional: If you want to make a single lump sum payment to cover more than one bill from the vendor, start typing the bill number in the Select bill(s) field to add the bill.
- Click Post payment.