Paul W. Carlson, CPA (00:00):
Hi, this is Paul Carlson CPA with Law Firm Velocity. This video we're going to show you how to manage client trust balances within Clio. Just go ahead and jump into the example report and then we'll discuss the process. Makes more sense when you're in here. So we go reports, we're going to run the matter balance summary report. We have to get the levers just right. So we want everyone, we want to display trust balances, descriptions, and we want to view it on the web. If you export this report to Excel, you get different results and it's missing the detail that we need. So we're going to click on the web and here comes the report. The goal here is to make sure that the firm has enough client trust money on hand to cover work that is currently being performed. That we don't want to get to the end of the month and find that a client has a thousand dollars in trust and we have provided $10,000 worth of work because in that situation, the client owes us $9,000 unsecured.
(01:14):
So let's look through a couple examples. This is an example Clio file I use for testing things. So the results are... Some of the examples are a little weird. We have client A, and of this client, they have $3,600 in accounts receivable. We have 7,280 in work in progress. So Clio calls work in progress its un-billed fees or un-billed services. We have expenses in progress at 390, which means the client owes us $11,300 because the client really owes us outstanding invoice amounts, plus un-billed services, plus un-billed expenses. So they currently owe us $11,000. We have $10,000 in trust, which means the client currently owes us $1,300. So in this situation, you'd want to get on the phone and talk with the client and request more advanced money. Within ethics requirements if the client is behind, that you can start to slow down work until additional funds are provided.
(02:31):
Look at another example. One doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Here we go. So we have Mr. Company with multiple matters. In this case, they have a thousand dollars in accounts receivable, no additional work, but they have $5,700 in client trust account. So we are ahead by $4,700. So we're good there. So here's more of a middle case that Shea Holmes has $6,000 in un-billed work, but they have $10,000 in trust, which puts us $3,800 ahead. So we can work more on these matters and not end up having the client owing us money and with that, we've just run through a quick example of how to use the matter balance summary report within Clio to manage client trust balances. If you need any accounting help with your law firm, please give us a shout at Law Firm Velocity. Thanks, Bye-Bye.
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