Integration with Finance or Practice Management Systems
In most deployments, Clio Operate will be integrated with external finance or practice management systems. Like any other integration, Finance integration is managed via
- REST APIs – Clio Operate is designed “API first” this means that all of its APIs are published and available for consumption by third party applications.
- Event Triggers and workflows – when significant business events occur in Clio Operate a business event is raised. These events can then be used to trigger business functionality or workflows
- Smart Plans - Clio Operate enables extension of its functionality via a javascript engine. To assist in the rapid construction of these scripts a fluent API is provided over common tasks.
- Portal Widgets – with direct API access to your finance system.
Typically, users will initiate Finance Transactions such as Payments within Clio Operate. These will then be sent to the finance system once approved and often Clio Operate will receive an update as to the status. A common pattern for these integrationsis as follows
- When a user performs a finance related action within Clio Operate a “Business Event” will be raised e.g. Payment Approved.
- A workflow or SmartPlan will subscribe to this event and call the external finance system’s API.
- As the financial transaction is processed in the Finance system it will in turn update Clio Operate via its API’s so that users are at all times kept aware of the financial status of their Case or Matter.
Showing Information directly from your Finance System
Whilst the case accounting structure is typically used to record accounting transactions that are relevant to your case this is not always the case.
For example, it is common for Cash Receipts and Invoice Ageing to be managed outside of Clio Operate. In these case’s you can either
- Add integrations to enable your finance system to post this information to the case ledger
- Create Widgets to enable your case handlers to visualise this information directly from your finance system via direct “live” API Integration.
In the latter case these widgets are typically created within the Clio Operate IDE; please contact your implementor for specific examples of these widgets.
Common Integration Patterns
Some examples of common integrations are as follows
| INTEGRATION | INTEGRATION TYPE | DATA FLOW | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send New Matters to the PMS (Matter Inception) | Event Driven | Clio Operate -> PMS | A workflow will communicate will send through Matter inception details where Matters are incepted in Clio Operate |
| Received New Matters from the PMS (Matter Inception) | API | PMS ->Clio Operate | In the cases where matters are incepted in the PMS they will be sent directly to Clio Operate |
| Payments | Event Driven | Clio Operate -> PMS | A workflow will communicate with the PMS to send details of a disbursement once approved. |
| Update Payments with Payment details | API | PMS -> Clio Operate | A workflow will be triggered by the PMS once a payment has been processed to update the Clio Operate payment record. |
| Send Time Entries to the PMS | Event Driven | Clio Operate -> PMS | A workflow will be trigger based on the Time Submitted event to submit time to the PMS API |
| Send Invoices to to the PMS | Event Driven | Clio Operate -> PMS | A workflow will be trigger based on the Invoice status to submit invoice details to the PMS API |
| Update Clio Operate with Supplier details mastered in the PMS | API | PMS -> Clio Operate |
Upon creation or update of an PMS record of that type the system will start a workflow and call the Clio Operate API to create these entities. Clio Operate will be configured to prevent the creation of these entities other than via the API. |
| Fees – WIP | Visual widget -> Finance API | Clio Operate – PMS | Clio Operate will show PMS balances via a Portal Widget embedded within the Matter Portal |
| Fees - Actual Fees | API | PMS workflow -> Clio Operate API |
Upon the recording of Actual Fees in the PMS the balance for a matter will be sent to Clio Operate via a workflow. This balance is required in Clio Operate in order to facilitate the automatic alerting of actual versus estimated fees. |
| Invoices – Ageing | Visual widget -> Finance API | Clio Operate ->PMS API | An aged debt report will be shown via a Portal Widget communicating with the PMS API |