Accepting Trust/General Retainer Payments into Actionstep Payments

In this article:

• Setting Up a Retainer
• Understanding How Initial Retainer Amounts Are Calculated When They are Partially Paid
• Automatically vs. Manually Paying Invoices from a Retainer

You can accept trust/general retainer payments through Actionstep Payments. The retainer information can be set on a matter-by-matter basis. 

Setting Up a Retainer

To do this:

1. In Practice Management, go to your matter and click the Billing menu icon.
2. Choose Matter Billing Options from the options on the left. 
3. In the Retainer section, provide the following information:
   • Enable: Toggle this option to on to enable any type of retainer: general/operating or trust.
   • Initial retainer amount: Enter the amount of initial retainer amount (amount required to initiate paid work on the matter).
   • Type of retainer: Choose between the Trust or General retainer.
   • Pay new invoices from retainer: This can be set to Automatic or Manual. (See the section Paying Invoices from a Retainer Automatically vs. Manually below for more information.)
   • Replenish retainer: Toggle this option to on ONLY if you require a minimum balance to be retained in trust and when a top-up request should be triggered.
   • Minimum balance: Enter the minimum balance that is always required to be in the retainer.
   • Top-up trigger amount: Enter the amount that determines when a top-up request should be triggered. For example, if you require $1,000 to be kept as a minimum amount in the retainer and your top-up trigger amount is $1,000 then if the balance on trust falls to $999, a request will be triggered to request $1 from your customer which may not suit your requirements. Setting the top-up request amount to $900 means that a request for retainer replenishment will not be sent until trust funds fall below $900.

Understanding How Initial Retainer Amounts Are Calculated When They are Partially Paid

Once you save an initial amount to the retainer section, that amount will be available for a user to pay on the Actionstep Payments payment page. This amount may be partially paid in which case, Actionstep will calculate the remainder owing for the initial retainer by totaling all the payments into the retainer.

• If the matter is set to trust retainer, Actionstep will total all trust deposits made into your trust retainer bank account for the matter and compare that to the initial retainer to see if the initial retainer is paid in full.
• If the matter is set to a general retainer, Actionstep will total all general retainers deposited for the matter and compare that to the initial retainer to see if the initial retainer is paid in full.

The retainer replenishment / top-ups will not be calculated until the initial retainer has been considered paid in full. 

For more information on general retainers, see Using General Retainers with Actionstep Payments. For more information on trust retainers, see Using Trust Retainers with Actionstep Payments.

Automatically vs. Manually Paying Invoices from a Retainer 

You can pay an invoice automatically from the general/trust retainer or else pay it manually. This option is managed at the matter level. Some jurisdictions do not allow you to process a payment from trust against a bill until a number of days have passed. If you fall under such restrictions, then you will not be able to apply a trust payment to an invoice either manually or automatically.

To do this:

1. In Practice Management, view the matter. (See Editing a Matter.) 
2. Click the Billing menu icon. 
3. In the Retainer section, click the Pay invoices from retainer drop-down list and choose from the following:
   • Automatic: Invoices will be made automatically once the invoice is saved and approved if there are funds in the general/trust retainer.
   • Manually: Payments will not be automatically made to invoices where there are funds in the retainer - payments will need to be processed manually