Sharing, Payments, and Credit Notes

Question 1

Sharing Bills

Answer 1

Once a bill has been approved, it must be sent to the client for payment. Clio offers three ways to do this:

1. Download the bill as a PDF that can be printed or sent to the client via email or mail
2. Share the bill with the client via email through Clio
3. Share the bill with the client via Clio Connect

The benefit of sharing the bill either via email or Clio Connect is that some Clio accounts can accept credit card payments online. The recommended feature is to accept online payments is Clio Payments, powered by LawPay

Question 2

Sharing Outstanding Balances

Answer 2

We understand that law firms want an easy and fast way to inform and remind their clients of outstanding amounts that they owe. The Outstanding Balances feature appears as a tab in the Bills page, giving you the ability to see a list of all clients who have an outstanding or overdue balance. From this list, you can send emails to those clients that reminds them of these outstanding amounts, along with links to view the bills. If your firm has Clio Payments activated, your clients will see an option to pay the bill (or all of the bills) using a link within the email

Question 3

The sharing and reminding of these outstanding balances can be done individually or in bulk, streamlining the work of follow up.

Answer 3

Clio will use the primary email address associated with the client for the email notifications when you share in bulk. If you share individually, you’ll have an option to send the email to additional or alternative contacts

Question 4

Outstanding Balances feature

Answer 4

one of the many tools that we offer to help you ease the workflow of getting paid and collecting outstanding balances from your clients. The Outstanding Balances feature is available to all of our customers regardless of your subscription plan in North America

Question 5

Recording Bill Payments

Answer 5

You can record payments from a variety of sources including transferring funds from a trust account and accepting credit card payments directly in Clio Manage.

Question 6

No matter what the source of the payment is, Clio provides options to ease the payment workflow

Answer 6

As you saw, you can easily apply a payment for one bill. You are also able to apply a bulk payment for multiple bills for a single client. For example, a client may provide a single cheque to pay her last tow bills and you can handle that in one transaction.

Using the general “Record payment” button in the Unpaid bills page, you can select a single client and pay all of their bills at once

Once the client is selected, all their bills are listed with the oldest at the top. You can either decide how much to allocate to each bill, or enter a bulk sum and allow Clio to apply it to the oldest bill first, and so on

Question 7

If you aren’t using the auto apply trust feature, you can still transfer funds that are being held in trust on your client’s behalf

Answer 7

Let’s take a look at how that would take place by reviewing the Record payment options after a Trust Account is selected:

• Client: name of the client you are recording payment(s) for
• Date: the date of the payment
• Reference: allows firms to enter check, transfer, or other reference numbers related to the payment
• Source: this is where you will select the name of the trust account in Clio that contains the client’s funds
• Destination: This must be an operating account in Clio. When a firm takes money from a client’s trust account to pay for services, they must place that money into an operating account
• Funds available: a table of available funds for the client (includes trust and operating accounts on client or matter levels) is visible until a Source account is chosen. This makes it clear what funds the client has available to put towards their bills
• Payment amount: A payment amount input in this field will be automatically distributed to pay off the items first. This amount can’t exceed the total funds available in the Trust source
• Payment: can input a payment amount for a specific bill in this field. This can’t exceed the total amount of funds available in the Trust source

Question 8

Editing Payments

Answer 8

Bill payments that are direct payments and payments from trust can be edited to update the payment date and payment amount

*Please note that bill payments created through Clio Payments or through a bulk payment will not have editing options

Question 9

Credit Notes and Write-offs

Answer 9

The terms credit note and write-off are used interchangeably and are considered to be the same in Clio. They can be used for a few purposes, such as:

1. Waiving interest amounts owing
2. Writing off amounts a client owes on a bill
3. Applying a credit that is separate from a discount on a bill

Credit notes can be edited and also reported on, making it both a valuable tool and a measurable data piece. Credit notes do not get counted as being revenue received, so firms can rest assured that their reporting will be accurate

Question 10

There are two ways to add credit notes and write-offs. Please note that credit notes can only be applied to approved bills (in Unpaid status)

Answer 10

1. Use the “write off remaining” checkbox when applying a partial payment to a bill
2. Add a credit note when previewing a bill in the “Credit Notes” section
   * If a credit note needs to be deleted, it can be done from the same Bill Preview screen in the credit note tab