Set Up Evergreen Trust (Retainers)

In Clio Manage, evergreen trust helps your firm track the balance of client trust funds on a matter. After your client pays the initial trust deposit, set the minimum balance in the matter's billing preference section. As you draw against the funds, the matter's dashboard shows the matter's trust balance. You can enable evergreen trust so that when you pay a bill from the trust, it calculates the amount and generates a trust request. You can also choose to notify firm users with a low balance notification if the matter trust funds drop below the minimum balance. 

Understand evergreen management in Clio Manage

An evergreen retainer follows the same cycle each billing period and enables your firm to automate the trust generation. 

1. Collect the initial retainer. Create a trust request, send it to your client, and record the payment. 
   • See Create Trust Requests and Approve and Send Trust Requests.
2. Set the minimum trust balance for the matter and turn on evergreen trust.
3. Record time and expense entries, then generate a bill.
4. Apply the retained trust funds to the bill.
5. Review the automatic replenishment trust request, and send it to your client.

Set the minimum required amount and turn on evergreen trust

The Minimum required amount is the trust balance you want to keep available on the matter. Replenishment requests top the balance back up to this amount. Set the minimum first, then turn on the settings you want. You can turn on evergreen trust and low balance notifications separately.

1. Go to the matter you want to update, or create a new matter.
2. Click Edit matter.
3. Scroll to the Billing preference section, then find Trust balance.
4. Under Minimum required, enter the trust balance to maintain for this matter.
5. Turn on Enable evergreen trust.

6. Optional: Turn on Low balance notification, then under Notify these users, select the firm users to notify.

   Note: Low balance notifications are available to firms with Essentials, Advanced, and Expand subscriptions. If you need to upgrade your firm's plan, ask a firm administrator.

7. Click Save matter.

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 the replenishment request

When applying trust funds to bills, the Evergreen trust section appears for evergreen matters. You can update or review the issue date, due date, skip the approval process, and remove any duplicate trust requests. 

1. Generate a bill. See Generate Bills in Bulk, or Generate Quick Bills for a single bill.
2. Apply trust funds to the bill. See Apply Trust Funds to Bills. You can apply trust to several bills at once from the bills table.
3. Under Evergreen trust, review the number of requests to create for evergreen matters, then set the Issue date and Due date.
4. Optional: Click Add note to add a note to the request.
5. Optional: Select Skip the trust request approval process to send the request without approval from another firm member.

6. 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.
7. Review the request and send it to your client to collect the funds. See Approve and Send Trust Requests.

Understand the replenishment amount

Clio subtracts the current matter trust balance from the Minimum required amount:

Minimum required − current trust balance = trust request amount

For a matter with a $2,750.00 minimum, applying trust that brings the balance to $0.00 generates a request for $2,750.00. For 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 you clear old trust requests, the new request is for whichever is higher: the amount needed to reach the minimum, or the amount still owed on the cleared 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. 

1. In Clio Manage, go to the matter Dashboard.
2. In the Financial section, under Matter trust funds, click New request.
3. Confirm the Issue date, Due date, Client, and Matter, and set Balance type to Matter.

4. 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: Bring the matter trust balance back up to the minimum required.
   • Replenish + outstanding balance: The replenishment amount plus any outstanding balance on the client's bills.
   • 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.
5. Optional: Edit the Amount field to override the calculated amount.
6. 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.