Accounting Overview

Clarra’s Accounting features provide Users with a centralized and organized means to track transactions and payments. The all-in-one platform conveniently and effectively covers your Accounting needs and can integrate with your existing workflows via Clarra's Public API or Zapier.

With Clarra, you can utilize our accounting reporting and analytics to enhance productivity, realization, collection, and profitability. Analytics helps you more effectively budget, allocate resources, plan, and track performance by practice area.

The Overview page of the Accounting section displays key Accounting metrics, both across Matters and by individual Matter. As with all of Clarra’s features, Accounting can be customized to meet your company’s specific needs. Clarra’s accounting feature is flexible enough to handle workflows and financial analysis for plaintiffs' firms, defense litigation practices, and in-house counsel.

There are 4 main Accounting elements:

• Forecast
  • Forecast your revenues and expenses to plan more effectively
• Expenses
  • Keep track of costs and split expenses across Matters
• Invoices
  • Generate invoices with payment links and send them directly from Clarra
• Payments
  • Track payments related to invoices and expenses, manually or with automation integrations

Account Creation

To track payments and generate invoices, your company’s Admin must first set up Accounts. There are 4 different categories of Accounts, and you customize Account Types in Accounting Properties:

• Client Account
  • Assigned to a Client, necessary to create Invoices and bill Clients
• Operating Account
  • Your company’s Account, used for sending and receiving Payments
• Trust Account
  • Can also be used as an Escrow Account
• Vendor Account
  • An Account linked to an external Vendor, such as a company you pay or are paid by

Let’s look at how to create an Account, using a Client Account as our example. 

1. Add the Client as a Contact
   • Click the “+” on the top right of the screen
   • Press “+ New Contact”
   • Fill in the relevant contact information
2. Create an Account with the Client as the Account Holder
   • Select the “Accounting” section on the left side of the screen
   • Click the “Accounts” tab
   • Press “+ New Account” on the right side of the screen
   • Write the Name of the Account
   • Select the Account Type (Client Account)
     1. Customizable in Accounting Properties
   • Enter the Account Number
   • Write the name of the Account Holder
   • Enter the Transaction Balance (optional)

Billing Account Contact

• Write the name of the Billing Contact for the Account
  1. Fill in relevant Contact information in the pop-up
• Enter the Billing Contact’s Title and Company
• Choose the Billing Contact’s Phone Number
• Choose the Billing Contact’s Email Address
• Choose the Billing Contact’s Address

Primary Account Contact

• Write the name of the Primary Contact for the Account
  1. Fill in relevant Contact information in the pop-up
• Enter the Primary Contact’s Title and Company
• Choose the Primary Contact’s Phone Number
• Choose the Primary Contact’s Email Address
• Choose the Primary Contact’s Address
• Write any relevant Notes for the Account
• Press “Save” to create the Account

3. Link the Account to relevant Invoices and Expenses
   • Select the Account when creating a new Invoice or Expense

The process for creating and using Accounts is the same for Vendors as Clients, so simply follow the steps above for Vendor Accounts.

Settings

There are multiple settings that you can customize, which take effect across Accounting. This establishes default settings, but you can also change these settings on a Matter-by-Matter basis.

To edit the following options click the “Overview” tab of the Accounting section, scroll to the bottom of the page, and press “Edit”:

• Approver for Expenses
  • If your company uses an Approver as part of your Accounting workflow, select which User to submit Expenses to for Approval
• Approver for Invoices
  • If your company uses an Approver as part of your Accounting workflow, select which User to submit Invoices to for Approval
• Invoice Terms
  • If your company has standard Invoice Due Dates you’d like to specify, select them here. Terms can be edited for each Matter and Invoice.
• Logo on Invoice
  • If you would like to include your company’s logo on the invoices created in Clarra, upload the logo here.