9 Ways to Make Online Payments Better in Your Law Firm

Accepting credit card and ACH payments is no longer an exception for law firms but everyday business. Here are the most important improvements that I’ve seen have the most significant impact in law firms:

1. Client Experience: make it easy for your clients to pay by remembering their contact and payment information. They’ll pay faster and more consistently if they don’t have to re-enter their information every time.
   
   
2. Eliminate overpayments: it’s frustrating dealing with overpayments. They’ll never happen when clients are choosing from a list of outstanding bills where the math is done for them. Of course, still need to make it easy to enter partial payments – just no overpayments.
   
   
3. Autopay is the best way to eliminate A/R, and it works wonders in small business and consumer practice areas. New bills are automatically processed against the credit card or ACH on file, either immediately or after a set number of days.
   
   
4. Add autopay to your engagement letters: take it to the next level by requiring autopay from day one in appropriate circumstances.
   
   
5. Evergreen trust accounts are another brilliant way to eliminate A/R. Automating it avoids all the manual tracking that prevents wider use in firms.
   
   
6. Fast deposit clearing: electronic payments are all about getting paid faster, and that includes how quickly they clear the bank. These days, you should expect credit card transactions to be deposited in one day. Quick clearing also eliminates confusion around the paid status of accounts.
   
   
7. Credit cards and ACH integrated together so you only have one deposit reconciliation and one payments system to manage. Give equal footing to lower-cost ACH transactions.
   
   
8. Fees invoiced separately: Your deposits come in for the full amount, matching the bills they’re paying. Credit card fees invoiced separately keep the accounting simple.
   
   
9. Simple pricing that everyone can understand. Merchant accounts are purposely confusing. Flat rates with no additional transaction fees or network fees so it’s easy to see what’s happening. Low-cost ACH transactions.

You no longer need to be tied to a first-generation, traditional legal merchant account. We’ve listened to our firms and created BillingQ Payments for a better online payment experience.