Paul W. Carlson, CPA:
Hi, this is Paul Carlson, CPA, with Law Firm Velocity. This video we're going to walk through creating a consultation invoice and associated payment within Clio.
(00:11):
Some firms want to create a matter and an invoice for each consultation completed so, to do that, we go into create a new matter. We're going to add the client name, so if you need to create a client, go ahead and do that. We're just going to use client A here. Matter description, just needs to be a brief consult or a description for you. And then, we need to go down to billing preferences and note that this is a flat fee and put the flat fee amount in. From here, we can save the matter. Here we are back at the matter dashboard. We have a matter for client A, the description of consult. Down here we show that it's a billable flat rate for $350 and Paul Carlson is going to get the credit for the flat fee.
(01:02):
Next step is to create a quick bill. This is the quickest way to add or create the invoice for the matter. The trick with this process is watching the dates, that the time entry date, the invoice date, and the payment date all have to match the date the credit card was swiped for the consult. In this example, the client came in on June 3rd for the consult and the credit card deposit was deposited to the checking account on June 5th, so we're going to use June 3rd for all dates. We change that to June 3rd, which is a credit card transaction date. We're going to generate the bill and while we're here we can go view bill, see how it created the invoice as of June 25th, we need to change that so we're going to go edit. We want the issue date to be June 3rd. Save the invoice, and this is what we're looking for. Looking for a flat rate bill for $350. With that, we will approve the bill, and once the bill is approved we can record the payment, so record payment.
(02:25):
Again, the client came and talked to us on June 3rd, going to be direct payment. If your Clio is integrated with LawPay, if you click credit card it's going to start the whole process to go back and charge the client. Since they've already paid, you want to do direct payment and, in the description, type in that it came from LawPay. If you want extra credit, you can add the last four digits of the LawPay authorization code there, and we record the payment. Let's go back and look at our invoice, that we have a $350 invoice. We have a payment for June 3rd, and it shows that the balance due is zero. If you want to print this to give to the client or for your own records, you can click download PDF here and you can save the invoice. That's how to create a quick invoice for a consultation. Thanks.
.jpg)
