In Clio Manage, evergreen trust is a workflow that automatically replenishes a matter's trust funds. When you enable evergreen trust for a matter, applying trust funds to an invoice automatically generates a new trust request whenever the balance drops below the minimum you set. You can also send the matter's invoices with the trust request, so your client pays both through one payment link. You can turn on Low balance notification separately to notify firm users, either instead of or alongside the automatic request. This keeps a client's retainer topped up without you having to track the balance or create replenishment requests by hand.
Tip: Learn more about the benefits of evergreen retainers.
Understand evergreen management in Clio Manage
An evergreen retainer follows the same cycle each billing period and enables your firm to automate trust request generation.
Note: If your firm uses Clio Payments, your client can pay a trust request from the request email by card, eCheck, or Pay Later. Otherwise, record the payment yourself after your client pays.
- Collect the initial retainer. Create a trust request, send it to your client, and record the payment.
- Set the minimum trust balance for the matter and turn on evergreen trust.
- Record time and expense entries, then generate an invoice.
- Apply the retained trust funds to the invoice.
- Review the automatically generated trust request in drafts, approve it, and send it to your client with any invoices the matter attaches.
Set the minimum required amount and enable evergreen trust
The Minimum required amount is the trust balance you want to keep available on the matter. Turning on Enable evergreen trust generates a new trust request automatically whenever you apply trust funds to an invoice and the balance drops below this amount. Set the minimum first, then turn on the settings you want. You can turn on evergreen trust and low balance notifications separately.
Note: Evergreen trust applies to trust funds held at the matter level, and cannot generate trust requests for funds held at the client level.
Tip: Each request is created as a draft for your review, and stays in Draft status until a firm member approves and sends it, unless the request is set to skip approval.
- Go to the matter you want to update, or create a new matter.
- Click Edit matter.
- Scroll to the Invoicing preference section, then find Trust balance.
- Under Minimum required, enter the trust balance to maintain for this matter.
- Turn on Enable evergreen trust.
- Optional: Turn on Low balance notification, then under Notify these users, select the firm users to notify.
- Click Save.
- Go to Matters.
- Select the checkboxes for the matters you want to update.
- Click Edit, then select Update invoicing preference.
- Under Trust balance, enter the Minimum required amount to apply to all selected matters, or leave it blank to keep each matter's current amount.
- Under Evergreen trust, select Enabled.
- Click Update invoicing preference.
Note: Bulk edit applies the same minimum amount to all selected matters. To set a different minimum for an individual matter, edit that matter directly.
Send invoices with trust requests
With evergreen trust on, you can choose which invoices go out with the trust request. Your client receives the trust request and the attached invoices in one email, with one PDF and one payment link. New matters attach unpaid invoices and invoices paid from trust by default. Existing matters keep Send on its own until you change the setting.
Note: The single payment link requires Clio Payments. Without Clio Payments, attached invoices still send with the trust request in one email and PDF, and you record each payment yourself. The setting applies to every trust request on the matter, including trust requests you create yourself. A trust request shared through Clio for Clients or Clio for Co-Counsel sends without attached invoices.
- Go to the matter and click Edit matter.
- Scroll to Invoicing preference, then find Trust balance.
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With Enable evergreen trust turned on, select an option from Attach to the trust request.
- Send on its own: The trust request sends without invoices.
- Unpaid invoices and invoices paid from trust: The trust request sends with the matter's unpaid invoices and the invoice paid from trust. Your client pays invoices and replenishes the trust via a single payment link.
- Invoices paid from trust: The trust request sends with the invoice paid from trust, for your client's reference. Your client pays only the trust request.
- Unpaid invoices: The trust request sends with the matter's unpaid invoices. Your client pays the invoices and the trust request through one payment link.
Important: When the option includes unpaid invoices, every Unpaid invoice on the matter attaches to the trust request. This includes invoices you have not sent to your client yet. Invoices in Draft or Pending approval remain separate. To exclude an invoice, keep it in Draft until you are ready to send it.
- Click Save.
Monitor trust balances
You can track trust balances on a single matter or across the firm.
On a matter, the Financial section of the matter Dashboard shows the current trust balance, the minimum required amount, and a low-balance indicator once the balance falls below the minimum.
Across the firm, the trust management report shows unbilled activities, trust account balances, and minimum required amounts, so you can compare your billable work against the funds you hold. See Clio Manage Reports, Presets, and History to generate a report, and Clio Manage Client Reports for what the trust management report contains.
Apply trust and generate a trust request
Once a minimum required balance is set on an evergreen matter, when you apply trust funds to an invoice and the trust balance drops below the required minimum, a trust request automatically generates. When it does, the Evergreen trust section lets you review or update the issue date and due date, add a note, choose whether to skip the approval process, and choose whether to clear the matter's existing trust request.
Important: A generated trust request is a request for funds, not a record of funds received. The matter trust balance does not change until your client pays and you record the payment. See Protect Client Trust Funds.
Understand replenishment calculation
The generated trust request amount is the Minimum required amount minus the matter's current trust balance:
Minimum required − current trust balance = trust request amount
- A matter with a $2,750.00 minimum, applying trust that brings the balance to $0.00, generates a request for $2,750.00.
- A matter with a $5,000.00 minimum, applying trust that leaves a $1,000.00 balance, generates a request for $4,000.00.
When Clear old trust requests to prevent duplicates is selected as the default, the new request amount is whichever is higher: the amount needed to reach the minimum, or the amount still owed on the cleared request.
Note: You cannot change the amount of a generated request while applying trust. To choose a different amount, create the trust request yourself and use Autofill.
- Generate an invoice. See Generate Bills in Bulk, or Generate Bills in Clio Manage for a single invoice.
- Apply trust funds to the invoice. See Apply Trust Funds to Bills. You can apply trust to several invoices at once from the Invoices page.
- Under Evergreen trust, confirm the number of trust requests to be created, then set the Issue date and Due date.
- Optional: Click Add note to add a note to the request.
- Optional: Select Skip the trust request approval process to send the request without approval from another firm member.
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Review Clear old trust requests to prevent duplicates, then confirm to apply the trust funds.
Important: Clear old trust requests to prevent duplicates is selected by default. Clearing deletes draft requests, voids unpaid requests, and writes off the remaining balance on partially paid requests. Clear the checkbox to keep existing requests. When a partial payment is still pending, write off the remaining amount yourself after the payment completes.
- Review the request and send it to your client to collect the funds. See Approve and Send Trust Requests.
Replenish manually with Autofill
If you have enabled evergreen trust on a matter and need to manually top up the matter, you can create a trust request and use Autofill to calculate the replenishment amount.
- In Clio Manage, go to the matter Dashboard.
- In the Financial section, under Matter trust funds, click New request.
- Confirm the Issue date, Due date, Client, and Matter, and set Balance type to Matter.
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Open the Autofill menu beside the Amount label and choose an option. Each option shows its calculated amount, so you can compare them before you choose.
Note: The four options show the same amount when a matter has no outstanding balance and no unbilled work in progress. Replenish uses the same target as evergreen trust: the matter's Minimum required trust balance.
- Replenish: Brings the matter trust balance back up to the minimum required.
- Replenish + outstanding balance: The replenishment amount plus any outstanding balance on the client's invoices.
- Replenish + WIP: The replenishment amount plus unbilled work in progress.
- Replenish + outstanding balance + WIP: The replenishment amount plus outstanding balances and unbilled work in progress.
- Optional: Edit the Amount field to override the calculated amount.
- Click Save trust request.
Up next
- Create Trust Requests: Create a trust request and use Autofill to calculate the amount.
- Approve and Send Trust Requests: Approve a generated request and send it to your client.
- Record Payments on Trust Requests: Record your client's trust deposit against the request.