Generate Bills

In Clio Manage, there are two methods for creating bills—quick bill and bulk billing. With Clio’s quick bill feature, you can generate a single bill for a specific matter directly from the matter. With the bulk billing feature, you can generate multiple bills for different matters, proceed through a more detailed bill generation process for individual bills, and change bill themes.

Quick bill

You can generate a quick bill for any matter that has unbilled time or expense activities, including closed matters. Once the time and/or expense entries are generated on a bill, they cannot be changed. If you need to make modifications after generating a bill, you will need to delete or void the bill. Follow the steps below to generate a quick bill.

1. Go to a matter and click Quick bill under the Financial section. You can also go to the contact and click Quick bill in the upper right corner.
2. Select the due date, bill detail level, whether you want to apply tax, and apply any discounts. Learn more about bill options here.
3. Optional: Click Remove to remove any activities from this bill.
   
   Note: Removing activities only removes them from the bill being generated. The activities will not be deleted from Clio and can still be generated on a new bill.
4. Optional: Click Add time or Add expense to add any new activities to this bill.
5. Optional: Check the box for Skip the bill approval process if you want to send the bill to your client without any other user approving it. Learn more about approval and bill states.
6. Click Generate.

Bulk billing

With Clio’s bulk billing feature, you can generate multiple bills for the same client, generate multiple bills for multiple different clients and matters, or generate just a single bill. You can also apply different bill themes to the bills you generate.

You can generate a bill for any matter that has unbilled time or expense activities. Once the time and/or expense entries are generated on a bill, they cannot be changed. If you need to make modifications after generating a bill, you will need to delete or void the bill. Follow the steps below to generate bills in bulk.

1. Go to Billing and select New bills.
2. Select all the bills you want to generate.
3. Optional: Click Filter to narrow your results.
4. Click Generate.
5. Select the due date, bill theme, and bill options. Learn more about bills options below.
6. Click Generate bills.

Bill generation options

When generating new bills, you have a few options on the bill generation modal. Below is a summary of each field:

• Issue date: This is the date that the bill is issued. You can select any date.
• Due date: This is the date that the bill is due. You can manually select a date or check the box for Use contact’s grace period to calculate the due date. With this selection, the due date is contingent on the grace period specified in the contact’s payment profile.
• Change bill theme: This affects the format that the bill invoice appears in. Learn more about bill themes here.
• Detail level: This refers to how activities appear on the bill:
  • All details: Each activity is listed as its own line item for full transparency.
  • Activity summary: Activities are sorted by activity category, which means that activities in the same activity category are combined on the same line.
  • Aggregate: Activities are sorted by time and expenses, which means that activities of the same type are combined on the same line.
    • All items aggregated: The bill will show only one combined total for all activities.
    • Aggregated by type: The bill will show two combined total, one for time and one for expenses.
    • Only services aggregated: The bill will show one combined total for time entries. Expenses will be listed on their own line items.
    • Only expenses aggregated: The bill will show one combined total for expenses. Time entries will be listed on their own line items.
• Activities: You can select if you want the bill to show all activities, only time entries, or only expenses.
• Other options:
  • Combine multiple matters for one client into a single bill: If a client has multiple matters with billable activities, all of those matters and their activities will appear on a single bill.
  • Include unbilled matters with a zero balance: If the client has a matter with activities set to $0, the bill will show this matter as well.
    
    Tip: $0 activities are used for recording flat fee and contingency fee matters. Learn more here.
  • Apply tax: The bill will apply the primary tax you specified in your settings.
  • Apply secondary tax: The bill will apply the secondary tax you specified in your settings.
  • Skip bill approval process: The bill will move directly to the unpaid state. You can accept payment on the bill without requiring approval from another user. Learn more about bill states and approval.
• Notify members of your firm: This allows you to select firm members who will receive a notification when the bill is generated. By default, this option is hidden but can be turned on in settings. See the section below on Firm notifications to learn more.

Firm notifications

In your user settings, you can enable a setting that sends notifications to firm members of your choice when a bill is generated. You are not required to use this feature regardless of whether it is turned on. To turn on firm notifications:

1. Go to Settings > Billing > Bill Settings.
2. Scroll down to Bill Notifications.
3. Check the box next to Display notification section during bill generation.
4. Click Save Bill Settings.

Bill states

Bill states are the categories on the Billing page that bills move through from bill generation to payment. See below for a description of each bill state:

Draft:

When a bill is generated, and you do not select the box for Skip the bill approval process, the bill will appear under this section as a draft bill. A draft bill requires approval from another firm member before it can be sent to the client. It can also be fully edited or deleted.

Pending approval:

When a draft bill is sent to another firm user for approval, it can be found below this section as a bill pending approval. Bills pending approval can be fully edited or deleted. Learn more about how to send a draft bill for approval in the section below on Approve bills.

Unpaid:

When a draft bill is submitted for approval and the bill is approved, it will move into this state. You can also bypass the draft and pending approval states when generating a bill by clicking Skip the bill approval process. The bill will automatically move into an unpaid state and can be sent to the client for approval. Unpaid bills have very limited edit functionality and can only be voided, not deleted.

Paid:

A paid bill has been sent to the client and payment has been recorded on the bill. You cannot edit this bill, and you can only void the bill if you delete any payments.

All:

This subtab shows all your generated bills regardless of bill status.

Archive:

This subtab shows all deleted and voided bills.

Approve bills

When you generate a bill and you choose not to skip the bill approval process, you will need to submit the bill for approval. Once submitted, the bill will move to a pending approval state. Then, the firm user to whom you submitted the bill for approval can approve the bill and send it to the client.