Split Billing

With split billing in Clio Manage, you can split a bill for a matter between multiple payers, so each party pays only their share, in the proportions your practice area requires. You can add every payer to a matter, generate a bill against time and expense activities as usual, and Clio Manage sends each payer their own bill showing their amount owing. The result is one accurate, divided bill instead of a manual workaround for shared responsibility.

Enable and arrange split billing bill theme columns

Before generating split bills, we recommend enabling and arranging the split bill columns on at least one bill theme. Once enabled, applying that theme to a split bill shows each payer the total amount of each activity line item and the portion they owe. Without these columns, a client and additional payers do not see the portion they owe on a split bill.

1. Go to Settings > Billing > Bill themes.
2. Select the bill theme to edit, or click New Theme to create one. See Create and Manage bill Themes.
3. Click Matter, then select Services/Combined Orderings.
4. Click and drag Split Portion and Activity Total from Hidden Columns to Showing Columns, and rearrange the order of the active columns as appropriate.

Set up and generate split bills

Setting up and generating split bills is a simple process. You can start by adding multiple payers to a matter with the percentage portion of a bill that each would pay. Once this is done, add your time and expense entries to the matter as usual, generate the bill, and send it to each payer to pay their portion. Split bills will show a Split invoice pill in the bills table to differentiate them from regular bills.

Step 1: Add multiple payers to a matter:

1. Go to a matter and select Edit matter to view the matter form, or create a new hourly or flat rate matter. Learn more about creating matters here.
2. Scroll down to Billing preference.
3. Under Split invoice, check the box for Split the invoices for this matter.
4. Click Add payer to add an additional payer, and then enter the amount the payer will be responsible for paying under the invoice portion.
   • The matter's client will be added as a payer by default.
   • The total for all payers must add up to 100%.
   • If you want the payer's bill to be sent to all bill recipients, check the box for Send invoice copy to all bill recipients. By default, a payer will only receive their own bill, but if you check this box, all other bill recipients will receive a copy of this payer's bill.
5. Repeat step 4 to add additional payers. You can add up to 10 additional payers, not including the client, for a total of 11.
6. Click Save matter to finish.

Step 2: Add activities and generate a bill

1. Record time and expense activities on the matter as you complete the work.
2. Go to Billing and select New bills to generate the bill.
3. Select the bill and click Generate. A split bill shows a Split invoice pill to help you find it.
4. Complete the generation details:
   • Under Change bill theme, select the bill theme where you enabled the split bill columns. If you did not previously enable the columns, see the steps under Enable and arrange split billing bill theme columns. Without these columns, your client and additional payers will not see the portion that they owe.
   • Under Detail level, select All details. You cannot select any other detail level.
   • Complete the remaining details. Learn more about the bill generation options here.
5. Click Generate bills to finish. Once generated, you can do the following:
   • Edit the split bill line items. Learn more here.
   • View the bill invoice that your client and payers will see. Learn more here.
   • Send copies of the bill to each payer. Learn more here.
   • Accept credit card, debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or eCheck (US only) payment directly from payers via Clio Payments or manually record cash, check, or card payments. Learn more about accepting payments via Clio Payments here or more about manually recording payments here.

Edit split bills

Edit a split bill's line items, tax, or discounts after generation as needed.

1. Go to the main Billing tab or the Bills subtab in a contact or matter.
2. Select the Draft, Pending approval, or Unpaid quick filter, depending on whether you skipped the bill approval process when generating the split bills.
3. Find the split bill. Under the Actions column, click Edit. Each split bill will show a Split invoice marker to differentiate it from regular bills and trust requests.

4. Make any necessary changes.

   Note: You cannot edit numeric fields (quantity and rate) or the type field, as these would affect other activities on other bills.
   • You can edit text fields (date and description) and the discount and tax fields.
   • The Activity category, Description, and Date fields are linked to the other split bills, so changes to these fields will also be applied to the linked split bills.
   • The tax and discount fields are independent, so a change applies only to the bill you are editing. Edit each split bill separately to apply the same change to all of them.
   • The Update records checkbox will be checked by default and cannot be unchecked.
5. Click Save invoice to finish.

View split bills

Open a split bill invoice to view what a client or each payer sees. When the split bill columns are enabled in the applied bill theme, each payer also sees:

• Activity Total: the total of each activity line item across all the split bills.
• Your Portion: the percentage of the line item that the specific payer or client owes.

1. Go to the main Billing tab or the Bills subtab in a contact or matter.
2. Find the split bill, marked with a Split bill marker.
3. Click the bill ID number under the Id column, or click the down arrow under Actions and select View bill.

Up next

Send Bills to Clients: Send bill copies to each payer by email, text, or the client portal.