Weekly Clio collections digest with drafted client follow-ups
Every Monday, see exactly who owes your firm money, with personalized follow-up emails waiting in your drafts for review before anything sends.
Every Monday at 8am, review my law firm's accounts receivable in Clio and prepare the week's collection follow-ups for me to review.
Start with Clio's List Outstanding Client Balances to get every client who still owes the firm money, along with the aging buckets showing how long each portion of the balance has been outstanding. This is the backbone of the run. Total the balances to get firm-wide AR, and keep the per-bucket split (current, 30 days, 60 days, 90 plus days) for use in both the emails and the digest.
For each client with an outstanding balance, use List Bills to pull the specific unpaid invoices behind that balance, capturing the invoice number, issue date, due date and amount for each one. A single client may have several unpaid invoices, so keep them grouped under the client rather than treating each invoice as a separate item.
Use List Matters together with Get Matter Client to work out which matters the unpaid work sits under and who the responsible attorney is for each client. Carry the responsible attorney into both the email context and the digest so the right person can own the follow-up.
Skip any client whose total outstanding balance falls below a configurable minimum, defaulting to 500 dollars, so nobody spends the week chasing small change. Put that threshold somewhere obvious and easy to change.
For every client that is past due and above the minimum, use Gmail Create a Draft to prepare a personalized follow-up email. These must land in my drafts for a human to review and send, and must never be sent automatically. Address the client by name, reference the specific matters, and itemize the unpaid invoice numbers with their issue and due dates. Escalate the tone based on the age of the oldest unpaid invoice: a friendly nudge at 30 days that assumes it simply slipped through, a firmer reminder at 60 days that asks for a specific payment date, and a direct request at 90 plus days to arrange payment or discuss a payment plan. Keep every version professional and relationship-safe, because this is a lawyer writing to a client, not a collections agency.
Flag any client that has appeared for three consecutive weeks as needing a phone call instead of another email. Work this out by checking the digests this workflow posted in the billing channel in previous weeks. When a client hits three weeks, still include them in the digest, but mark them clearly as a call and note that email has not been working.
Finally, post a single ranked digest to our billing channel using Slack Bot Send a Message, sorted by dollars at risk so the biggest problems sit at the top. Include the firm's total accounts receivable, the amount sitting in each aging bucket, the top overdue clients with their balance, oldest invoice age and responsible attorney, any clients that need a phone call rather than an email, and how many drafts are waiting in Gmail for review. Post one message for the whole firm, not one per client.
What does this prompt do?
- Pulls every client who still owes your firm money and groups what they owe into 30, 60, and 90-plus day aging buckets
- Attaches the specific unpaid invoices behind each balance, along with the matters involved and the attorney responsible for the client
- Writes a personalized follow-up email for each past-due client and leaves it in your Gmail drafts, getting firmer as the debt ages, and never sends anything on its own
- Posts one ranked Slack digest to your billing channel showing total money owed, each aging bucket, your biggest overdue clients, and how many drafts are waiting for review
What do I need to use this?
- A Clio account with billing in use and invoices already issued to clients
- A Gmail account belonging to whoever will review and send the follow-up emails
- A Slack workspace with a billing channel the weekly digest can post into
- A minimum balance you want to start chasing at, so the firm does not spend time on small change
How can I customize it?
- Change the day and time it runs, or move to twice a week during an end-of-quarter collections push
- Raise or lower the minimum balance so small leftover amounts get skipped automatically
- Rewrite the wording for each stage of lateness, or add a final stage that hands the account to outside collections
FAQs
Will this email my clients automatically?
What happens if one client has several unpaid invoices?
Does it handle a firm where different attorneys own different clients?
How does it know when emailing has stopped working?
Will it chase tiny balances?
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Stop letting unpaid legal invoices age quietly.
Get a ranked picture of your firm's receivables every Monday, with the follow-up emails already written and waiting for your review.