> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.lexfill.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Invoicing & payments

> Bill clients, take payment online, and track what's owed

## The Invoices page

**Invoices** is your firm's billing ledger — every invoice, its client and matter, due date, total, balance and status. Three figures sit above it: **Outstanding** across all unpaid invoices, **Overdue** with a count of invoices past due, and **Collected** in the last 30 days.

An invoice moves through: **Draft → Sent → Processing → Partially paid → Paid**, with **Overdue** when it passes its due date and **Void** when you cancel it. A draft can be edited or deleted; once sent, an invoice can be resent, paid, or voided — never quietly rewritten.

## Creating an invoice

Bill a client with a flat fee. An invoice carries:

* **Line items**, each either a **Service** or an **Expense** — expense lines are for costs your firm already paid, like filing fees.
* **Saved charges** — your standard flat fees, defined once on **Settings → Payments** and dropped into any invoice.
* **A discount**, a **due date**, and **notes** shown to the client on the invoice.
* **A matter**, optionally — or leave it as general billing for the client.

**Payment plans.** Switch on installments to split the total into scheduled payments, each with its own amount and due date, with a **Split evenly** shortcut. Each installment tracks its own status: due, partially paid, paid, or overdue.

Sending the invoice emails the client a secure pay link. Case and invoice due dates both appear on the firm [calendar](/guides/calendar).

## Getting paid online

Set up payouts on **Settings → Payments** and clients can pay by **card** or **bank debit (ACH)**.

<Note>
  The money goes straight to your firm's own bank account — the operating
  account you use for earned fees and for costs your firm has already paid.
  **Lexfill never holds the money and takes no cut.** Payouts, refunds and
  disputes are managed in your firm's own Stripe Dashboard.
</Note>

Setup is Stripe's standard verification flow, and only the firm owner can start or manage it. Until it's active, consultations stay free and invoices are pay-offline only.

## Offline payments

Not every client pays online. **Record payment** logs what actually arrived — cash, check, Zelle, money order, or other — against the invoice or a specific installment, so the balance is right whichever way the money came in.

## Reminders

An invoice with a balance that is overdue, or due within the next **3 days**, gets a reminder email — and then no more often than every **3 days** after that. Paying, or a change of due date, stops the nudging.

## Retainer agreements

A retainer is the invoice that comes *before* the client exists. Instead of converting a lead by hand and billing them afterwards, send the retainer from the lead's page — see [Sending a retainer](/guides/leads#sending-a-retainer) — and let the first payment do both.

* **One link, no account.** The lead receives a branded email with a single link. The page shows the full agreement on your letterhead, takes their signature, and collects the first payment — card or bank debit, through the same [online payments](#getting-paid-online) setup your invoices use — in one sitting, with no login. It opens in the lead's preferred language (English, Spanish, or Turkish today; anything else falls back to English). When the agreement leaves blanks for the client — a phone number, a mailing address — a **Your details** step comes first, and the lead reviews the agreement with their answers already in place; see [the lead's side](/guides/leads#the-leads-side).
* **The e-signature holds up.** Before signing, the lead reads and accepts the consent to electronic records and signatures. They sign by typing their full legal name, with an optional drawn signature. Lexfill records who signed, when, from where, and on what device, then seals the signed PDF with a certificate page carrying those facts and a fingerprint of the exact document they saw. Two copies matter here. The *sent* copy is frozen when you send it and only the lead can change it — by filling in their details, which rewrites the document with a new fingerprint and keeps the previous version; the audit trail records both. The *sealed* file is written once, at signature, and never changed; when the lead supplied details, its certificate page notes the date and which fields they provided. The **Audit trail** on the lead's Retainer card lists every event, and the **Signed PDF** is filed in the client's Documents after conversion.
* **The first invoice creates itself.** Payment converts the lead: the client and case are created, and an invoice appears on this page already **Paid** — or **Partially paid** when there is a plan, with the first installment settled and the rest scheduled. From then on it is an ordinary invoice: its pay links, installment reminders, and the client's Billing tab all work as described above.
* **Installments count from the payment, not the signature.** A plan on a retainer is set in days after the first payment — at payment, +30 days, +60 days — and the due dates are fixed on the day the lead pays. No installment is ever created already overdue, however long the lead takes to sign.

<Note>
  **Retainer reminders work differently from invoice reminders.** An invoice
  reminder re-sends the same pay link. A retainer reminder — automatic every 3
  days until the lead has signed and paid, or sent on demand with **Remind to
  sign** / **Remind to pay** — issues a *fresh* link and retires the previous
  one, so only the newest email in the lead's inbox opens the agreement. The
  same is true of **Resend link**. When a lead says "the link doesn't work",
  they are opening an older email: point them to the latest one, or resend.
</Note>

Once signed, the link keeps working for payment even past its expiry date — expiry only stops an unsigned agreement. Voiding stops the link immediately, keeping the signed copy and the audit trail; refunds, as with any invoice, are handled in your Stripe dashboard.

## On the client's page

A client's **Billing** tab collects every invoice across all their matters, with total billed, paid to date, balance due, and what's next due — so a conversation about money doesn't need the ledger open in another tab.

## Your own subscription

Client invoicing is separate from what your firm pays for Lexfill. Billing is per firm, your first **3 cases are free**, and the subscription is managed by the firm owner on **Settings → Billing & plan** — see [Billing & plan](/guides/team-and-settings#billing-plan).