Bill Themes and Customizations

In Clio Manage, bill themes are custom configurations of how you want your bills to appear. With bill themes, you can customize your bill invoices and choose configurations that work best for your firm and your clients.

Clio offers over 150 bill theme configurations, including popular options like including your firm logo, modifying the footer of a bill, changing the appearance and orientation of firm and matter information, adding a secure payment link, removing the detailed statement of accounts or other sections, and more.

Create new bill themes

You can create an unlimited number of bill themes for your bill invoices. After creating a bill theme, you can generate bills and select which theme the bills should appear as. To create a new bill theme:

1. Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Themes.
2. Click New Theme.
3. Name the theme and select Create New Theme.
4. Click through the options in the navigation menu to customize your bill theme. Learn more about these categories in the section below.
5. Change will be saved automatically. If they are not, click Save.

Set default bill theme

When you set a bill theme as the default theme, all generated bills will appear in that theme unless you select a different theme while creating a bill. If you set a new default bill theme, previously generated bills will not be affected. 

1. Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Themes.
2. Click Set Default on the bill theme that you want to set as the default.

Edit and delete bill themes

Once you have created bill themes, you can modify them or delete the ones you do not need, including Clio's Default formatted bill theme. When editing a bill theme, you can customize font, spacing, tables, and alignment in many of the bill theme categories. Below the bill theme options is a live preview of your bill theme. If you delete a bill theme, any previously generated bills that appear in that theme will change to Clio’s Default theme format.

Bill theme customization categories

Clio offers over 150 bill theme customization configurations. Below is a summary of each bill theme customization category that you see when editing a bill theme:

Page Setup:

In this section, you can change the left, right, top, and bottom margins of the bill invoice page, select the font type, size, and color of the bill theme, and make your bill theme envelope friendly in terms of how content fits within the page margins. You can add more content to your bill theme by decreasing margins and font size.

Localization:

In this section, you can change the name for every heading on your bill theme to terms that are more relevant to your workflow or to your own language. By default, Clio supports Unicode encoded characters for all fields, which means you can enter details in any language.

Watermark:

In this section, you can choose to show or hide watermarks on draft and void bills. If these options are selected, then all bills in draft will show "DRAFT" watermark on each page, and all voided bills will show a "VOID" watermark on each page.

Header:

In this section, you can show or hide the bill matter number, bill number, and the bill's issue date in the bill theme's header. You can also choose to show or hide the header when downloading a bill preview in PDF format. 

Invoice Information:

In this section you can configure how the invoice section appears, including the font name, size, and color, and whether the title is shown or hidden. You can change the invoice title in Localization > Invoice Information > Title. You can also choose to show or hidden what information appears in this section, including bill number, subject, bill issue date, bill due date, and purchase order.

Firm Information:

In this section, you can configure how your firm information appears on the bill theme, including the appearance of the title (your firm's name) and any background around the title, and the spacing between the title and your firm contact information. You can also show or hide your logo and change where and how it appears, show or hide your firm address and contact information, and change how the firm address and contact information appear.

Client Information:

In this section, you can configure how client information appears on the bill theme, including the spacing between the client's information and the first bill invoice line, the font name, size, and color of the client's information, whether the client's address and phone number are hidden or visible, and how the client information is aligned (center, left, or right).

Table Configuration:

In this section, you can configure settings for the tables that show services and expenses, including the font name, size, color, background color, and border of the title (the matter name and number) and table headings. You an also change the color and appearance of the rows containing the bill line items.

Matter:

In this section, you can configure how matter information appears in the line item tables. This includes the appearance and orientation of the title (matter name and number), table headings (column titles), line items (services, products, and trust transactions), the firm user who created the bill, and any payments on the bill.

Interest:

This section will only be visible if you previously created a payment profile. In this section, you can configure the appearance of the interest table, including how line items and columns on the table appear, and whether the interest table should show a interest subtotal below the table. You can change the name of the table title and table headings in Localization > Interest.

Statement of Accounts:

In this section, you can choose to show or hide tables containing the account balance and any outstanding balances. If you show either of these tables (statement of account, detailed statement of account, trust or client account), you can change their font name and color, change the background and border colors, and select the orientation of the table information.

Footer:

In this section, you can choose what information appears in the footer of the bill theme, including page numbers and custom statements for the payable statement, bill memo, and any payment profiles.

Remittance Slip:

In this section, you can add a remittance slip to your bill theme and choose to include information for checks and wire transfers.

Set up common customizations

Below is a list of popular bill theme customizations and where to find them while editing your bill theme.

Show statements of account on bills

The statements of account is a detailed summary of bill invoice amounts, payments, and balances due on a client's account that can be generated as an export. You can also show or hide a smaller or less detailed version of the statements of account on a bill invoice using bill themes. When making this change, you can show or hide and make some custom modifications to the statement of account, which shows the total amount outstanding, and the detailed statement of account, which shows the amount due for the current bill and any payments received.