Tips to Elevate Your Billing in Clio

My accounts receivable is the bottom it has ever been in my 27 years of follow, and I haven’t needed to institute collections actions towards any shoppers this 12 months. – Jodi Donato, Donato Legislation

Within the fast-paced setting of regulation, staying on high of billing greatest practices isn’t simply helpful; it’s important for constructing belief along with your shoppers, bettering your realization fee and money circulation, and rising your follow. We perceive how vital the billing stage is for regulation corporations and have invested in growing intuitive options that assist regulation corporations like yours simplify and higher handle your billing course of. By adopting these practices in Clio, you’ll be able to guarantee your billing is just not solely environment friendly but in addition correct, clear, and client-friendly. Right here’s learn how to take advantage of out of Clio’s billing options, setting your follow up for fulfillment.

Invoice Extra Effectively

Earlier than Clio, it took 3 hours a month to do our billing—and it was tedious and legal professionals hated it. Now, with Clio, it’s simple, it’s environment friendly, it takes 45 minutes, and folks get it achieved on time.” – Angela Lennon, Koenig | Dunne

Inefficient billing workflows generally is a burden on busy regulation corporations, consuming up hours each month that could possibly be spent serving or buying extra shoppers. These options are tailor-made to enhance the effectivity of your billing course of from begin to end:

Leverage Bill Message Templates: Create custom-made messaging for invoice sharing, unpaid invoice reminders, belief requests, and excellent balances (by default), plus set as much as 20 extra templates for different distinctive conditions as wanted. Through the use of invoice message templates, you’ll be able to simply customise your billing messages and topic traces with fields such because the shopper title, matter title, and excellent quantities, making certain shoppers obtain invoices they received’t ignore. You’ll be able to view and edit your invoice messaging templates here.

Automate reminders and collections: After your payments have been generated and shared with shoppers, following up with shoppers for cost generally is a laborious and time-consuming activity for regulation agency employees. By enabling automated reminders for unpaid payments, you’ll be able to guarantee shoppers are receiving follow-up for his or her excellent balances that go unpaid. Specify the schedule for follow-up—the timeframe during which a reminder ought to be generated if a invoice stays unpaid. You may also specify if only one reminder ought to be despatched, or if reminders ought to be regularly despatched (i.e., each 15 days) till a invoice is paid. When you have Clio Funds enabled, you can too arrange payment plans to assist clients pay down excellent balances progressively on a schedule that works for each you and your shopper.

Generate bills in bulk: For corporations that deal with a number of instances concurrently, Clio’s bulk billing function is a game-changer. Generate a number of payments in a fraction of the time it will take to create them individually, considerably rushing up your billing course of. Contemplating nearly one in three authorized professionals agree that their agency takes too lengthy to get payments out to shoppers, and fewer than half would say they invoice in a well timed style, it’s helpful for regulation corporations to make use of the majority billing function to shortly and simply generate shopper payments. In line with the 2023 Legal Trends Report, regulation corporations utilizing bulk billing have realization charges which might be 21% increased than corporations not utilizing the function (94% in comparison with 78%).

Simplify Your Time and Expense Monitoring

Billing practices begin with the way you observe time and bills. Holding correct and descriptive exercise entries may help your shoppers higher perceive what they’re being billed for, making them extra more likely to pay and fewer more likely to dispute or query any fees. Clio’s time monitoring functionalities are designed to seize each billable minute or expense with precision and ease. To kickstart your path to optimum time and expense monitoring, strive these practices:

Use the Time Keeper button: Clio’s timer perform makes it simple to trace time whilst you work on totally different duties and issues. With one click on from any web page, you can begin and cease the timer to log time, making certain your work is accounted for. Pushing aside this activity solely invitations elevated threat of inaccurate data, much less specificity, and finally ends up costing you extra time to enter.

Create time entries from duties or calendar occasions: One other option to observe time is by creating time entries immediately from duties in your activity listing or calendar occasions on the calendar view.

To generate time entries from duties

1. Navigate to the Duties tab
2. Click on the dropdown arrow subsequent to the duty you need to add time for and click on ‘Add Time’
3. Enter the period and exercise class for the duty. The matter, description, and date ought to be auto-populated from the small print added when the duty was created

To generate time entries from calendar occasions

1. Navigate to the Calendar tab
2. Click on the calendar occasion and choose ‘Add time’
3. Enter the exercise class for the duty. The period, matter, description, and date ought to be auto-populated from the small print added when creating the occasion

Use mobile entries: Leverage Clio’s cell app to report time entries from anyplace. Whether or not you’re in courtroom, at a shopper assembly, or working remotely, the power to trace time or enter bills from anyplace ensures no billable exercise slips by means of the cracks.

Create Activity Categories: Exercise classes may help regulation corporations create widespread labels for occasions agency members continuously observe, eliminating the necessity to enter them manually every time. Examples of time entry classes are ‘Name with shopper’, ‘Court docket look’, ‘Doc preparation’, and so on. For an inventory of widespread exercise classes for time and bills entries, see here.

Follow consistency: Make it a behavior to enter your time and bills each day. This routine minimizes the chance of forgetting billable hours and supplies a extra correct overview of your workload and productiveness.

Enhance Communication and Transparency

Clear communication and transparency are the bedrocks of belief in any attorney-client relationship. Detailed payments can begin your shoppers off with a greater understanding of the companies you’re offering to make sure expectations are met or exceeded. Providing a devoted channel so that you can share payments with shoppers supplies them with well timed responses to any questions they may have and may also go a great distance in direction of leaving your shopper with a constructive lasting impression of your agency. Constructive lasting impressions may also improve the chance of referrals or repeat enterprise.

Present detailed payments: Create payments that aren’t solely skilled but in addition complete. Detailed descriptions of companies, alongside itemized bills, assist shoppers perceive precisely what they’re being charged for, decreasing questions and disputes. It’s additionally attainable to designate time entries as ‘non-billable’ in order that shoppers have full visibility into the work being carried out on their matter, and any worth you offered however didn’t cost for.

Leverage Text Snippets: Clio’s Textual content Snippets are useful abbreviations for generally used phrases that you should utilize all through Clio to robotically fill in textual content. Clio has a library of them already or you’ll be able to create your individual. Clio’s Textual content Snippets are abbreviations or shortkeys that may fill a textual content subject in Clio with an in depth message when the shortkey is entered. For instance, making a textual content snippet for ‘cco’ may create an in depth description like ‘Consumer Session – half-hour – in workplace’. Creating these prematurely permits time-strapped legal professionals to supply distinctive element on shopper invoices, whereas saving time and limiting typing errors.

Use Clio for Clients: Clio for Shoppers, our safe portal for sharing payments, messages, and paperwork along with your shoppers, is a useful resource for speaking with shoppers both by way of an internet interface or a cell app. Share a number of payments directly with shoppers by way of Clio for Shoppers from the Billing tab to ship all excellent invoices to shoppers inside seconds.

Simplify Consumer Funds with Clio

At the moment, providing handy and versatile on-line and in-person cost choices is predicted from shoppers. Clio Funds, built-in immediately inside your billing and case administration system, facilitates clean, safe transactions whereas offering a clean shopper expertise. It additionally facilitates immediate funds. In reality, corporations that gather 75% or extra of their funds on-line gather half of their payments inside three days of issuing them—5 occasions sooner than corporations that don’t gather digital funds in any respect.

Present cost hyperlinks: This permits shoppers to pay their payments or belief requests instantly upon clicking the safe cost hyperlink. Having a hyperlink obtainable to your shoppers alongside their invoice can dramatically enhance cost time. Companies utilizing Clio Funds may also generate and download QR codes that may be added to an electronic mail and even uploaded to your regulation agency web site for shoppers to simply scan and pay.

Store payment methods: With Clio Funds, you may have the power to request and retailer most well-liked shopper cost strategies for future payments or belief requests. With a saved cost technique, you’ll have the power to cost a shopper’s most well-liked debit card, bank card, or eCheck, eradicating any delays on cost and making follow-up pointless.

May your agency profit from Clio Funds? Book a free consult with us to learn more.

Implementing New Practices

Adopting new practices requires a considerate strategy. Begin by evaluating your present billing processes to establish areas for enchancment. Implement these adjustments progressively, permitting your crew time and house to regulate to attain billing consistency. Coaching and steady help are important, making certain everyone seems to be leveraging Clio’s options to their full potential.

Steady Enchancment

The authorized business and know-how are ever-evolving, and so ought to your billing practices. Keep knowledgeable about updates and new options from Clio. Commonly reviewing your billing processes and looking for suggestions out of your shoppers and crew can uncover alternatives for additional efficiencies and enhancements.

Ultimate Ideas

Environment friendly, clear, and client-friendly billing isn’t only a aim; it’s inside attain with Clio. By integrating these greatest practices into your each day routines, you’ll be able to enhance your agency’s monetary well being, improve shopper satisfaction, and reclaim beneficial time. Let Clio deal with the complexities of billing, so you’ll be able to deal with what you do greatest—working towards regulation. Embrace the innovation Clio presents, and watch your follow thrive in productiveness and profitability.

We printed this weblog submit in Might 2024. Final up to date: Might 8, 2024.

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