Paul W. Carlson, CPA:
Hi, this is Paul Carlson, CPA. In this video, we're going to continue the Clio example for a flat fee immigration matter. So there's going to be a couple things happening within this example. So one, an $800 check for the immigration filing fee was cut from the firm's operating account. This is an operational choice by the firm that they want to pay filing fees from operating and then reimburse themselves from trust. So that payment is not posted into Clio, that's posted only over in the accounting system. The second step is we're going to reimburse the filing fee from trust funds, and then the third step is we're going to use the remaining $1,200 in IOLTA funds and apply it to the invoice balance. So let's jump over to Clio.
(00:46):
All right, from Clio, we go to 'Bills'. We find the immigration client that we want to apply payments to, so we're going to view the invoice. The first step is to record a payment to reimburse the firm for the filing fee, so we are going to put a note on here. It's going to be a direct payment from IOLTA, and the firm actually maintains a separate filing fee operating account, and it's a payment of $800, and record that payment. Then the second payment we need to record is applying the balance of IOLTA funds to the invoice and be a IOLTA payment. We're going to deposit that to the operating account, and we need to make the payment for the amount that's remaining in IOLTA, so we record the payment so we can see both payments here. Let's go take a look at the invoice.
(01:58):
So from the invoice total, we can see we have the total of $3,850 minus $800 payment, minus $1,200 payment, so the balance owed on the matter is $1,850. The statement of account shows the total invoice charges. There's now zero money in trust. We've received $2,000 in payments, and again, we have a summary of $1,850 outstanding. So the next step would be to send a copy of this to the client and we need to make two transfers from IOLTA. One transfer goes into the filing fee account, and the second transfer goes into the operating account. If you have any questions with Clio or law firm accounting, we'd be glad to help. Thanks.
