Payments and Bank Accounts

Accounts in Clio Manage are designed to mirror your real-life bank accounts at your financial institution for collecting payment on bills and retaining trust funds. You can create two types of accounts in Clio—operating and trust accounts. Trust accounts retain funds in trust for clients. Operating accounts are for daily transactions.

Create new accounts

When creating a new bank account in Clio, you can select whether the account is an operating or trust account. All non-trust accounts are operating accounts. Once transactions have been applied to an account, account types should not be changed since this can cause account balancing inaccuracies.

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Select New account.
3. Name your account and select the account type.
4. Optional: Check the box for Connect this bank account to online payments and add financial details to connect the account to Clio Payments to accept payments directly from clients. Learn more below.
5. Click Create bank account.

Connect or disconnect from online payments

When creating or editing a bank account in Clio, you will need to connect the account to Clio Payments. If you are setting up Clio Payments for the first time, you are required to connect at least one Clio Manage operating account to online payments once your application is approved. This allows you to collect payment for bills and sync transaction records with your accounting platform. You can also disconnect any bank accounts that you do not want connected to online payments.

Connect bank accounts to payments:

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Click Connect to payments. You can also click the down arrow next to Edit and select Connect to online payments.
3. Select the account that you connected when signing up for Clio Payments. Click Add payout account to connect to a different payout account.
   • If you do not have the option to choose a payout account, this means that your payout account is still pending verification. Once it is verified, you can connect it.
4. Click Connect.

Disconnect bank accounts from payments:

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Click the down arrow next to Edit and select Disconnect from online payments.
3. When the warning prompt appears, select Disconnect.

Edit accounts

You can edit basic details of a bank account at any time. Once transactions have been recorded in an account, the account type should not be changed since this can cause account balancing inaccuracies.

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Click Edit
3. Make your changes.
4. Click Update Bank Account.

Delete accounts

1. Go to Accounts.
2. Click the down arrow next to Edit and select Delete.
3. When the warning prompt appears, check the confirmation box and select Delete.

Record vendor transactions

You can manually record funds out of your operating accounts to track payments to non-clients, such as payments to vendors related to your clients' cases. Once recorded, your operating account balance will show the deducted amount.

1. Go to Accounts and select an operating account. You can also go to the Transactions subtab in a contact or matter.
2. Click New transaction.
3. Complete the required fields.
   • Under Amount, enter the amount that will be paid to the vendor as a negative number (e.g. -200).
   • Under Date, select the transaction date.
   • Under Account, check that the appropriate operating account is selected. The funds will be deducted from this account.
4. Complete the remaining fields as necessary.
   • You are not required to select a client or matter, but completing these fields will allow you to track which client and matter the vendor payment is connected to.
   • Under Source/Recipient, enter the vendor's name to help you distinguish which vendor received the payment on the Transactions table and in relevant reports. 
5. Click Record transaction.

Export transactions

Once you have recorded transactions on your bank accounts, you can export transactions from a single bank account. You can also export transactions specific to a single matter or contact from the matter or contact’s Transactions subtab.

Transfer funds between accounts

Each contact and matter in Clio have a Transactions subtab where you can record transactions and transfer funds between a contact and any of the contact’s matters or from one bank account to another.