What is Accounts Receivable?
Accounts Receivable (AR) refers to the money owed to your firm by clients for legal services that have been invoiced but not yet paid. Managing AR is one of the most important financial disciplines for a law firm — it directly impacts your firm's cash flow, profitability, and overall financial health.
Unlike many businesses, law firms often carry significant AR balances because of the time gap between when work is performed, when it is invoiced, and when it is actually collected. Without a clear process for monitoring and following up on outstanding invoices, even a busy, productive firm can struggle with cash flow.
PracticePanther gives your firm several tools to stay on top of AR — at the firm level, the client level, and the matter level — as well as automated invoice reminders to help with collections.
Viewing Outstanding Invoices at the Firm Level
The Invoices section in PracticePanther gives you a real-time, firm-wide view of all outstanding invoices. To access it, click Billing in the top navigation menu and select Invoices.
At the top of the page, you will see a summary of your firm's invoice totals broken down into three categories:
All — The total value of all invoices across all statuses and currencies
Due — The total outstanding balance across invoices that are not fully paid
Overdue — The subset of due invoices that have passed their due date
Below the summary, you can filter the invoice list by a range of criteria to zero in on the invoices that need attention:
Status — Filter by Any, Due, Overdue, Paid, Viewed, Saved, Pending, or Sent
Bill Date — Filter by a specific date range based on the bill's Issue Date. You can also change this filter to focus on the bill's due date, sent date, or created date.
Assigned To — View invoices by responsible attorney or staff member for the contact or matter level.
Tags — Filter by any invoice based on the tags applied to the invoice's contact or matter.
Each invoice in the list shows the invoice number, date, status, total, remaining balance, contact, and matter — giving your billing team everything they need to prioritize collections activity at a glance.
Pro tip: Set the Status filter to Due or Overdue to immediately see all invoices requiring follow-up, sorted by the largest outstanding balances.
Viewing Outstanding Invoices at the Contact or Matter Level
For a more focused view of a specific client's billing history and outstanding balance, you can view invoices directly from the Contact or Matter record.
The contact view shows an at-a-glance financial summary at the top of the page, including:
Trust — The current trust balance on file for this contact, which can be applied to outstanding invoices
Paid — The total amount the contact has paid to date across all matters
Due — The total outstanding balance currently owed
Billable — The value of unbilled time, expenses and flat fees not yet invoiced
To access invoices for a specific contact click the Invoices tab when viewing a contact.
You'll see the full invoice history for that client, with the ability to filter by status or date. This view is especially useful when following up with a client directly — you can see exactly which invoices are outstanding, how old they are, and whether there is a trust balance available to apply.
The same is available at the Matter level, allowing you to view outstanding balances for a specific case or engagement. This is helpful for matter-by-matter billing reviews and ensures no work goes unbilled or uncollected.
Accounts Receivable Reports
PracticePanther includes a suite of invoice-related reports specifically designed to help your firm analyze and manage AR. To access them, go to Reports in the top navigation menu and scroll to the Invoices section.
The following reports are available to help you track and manage accounts receivable:
A/R Aging Reports
The A/R Aging Reports are the most important tool for managing collections. They show how much each client owes, organized by the number of days the balance has been outstanding:
A/R Aging Report by Contact — Shows every contact with an outstanding balance, the total amount due, and how long it has been outstanding. Use this to identify which clients owe the most and how long their invoices have been overdue.
A/R Aging Report by Matter — The same aging view broken down at the matter level, useful for firms that need to track collections per case or engagement.
Pro tips: Sort the A/R Aging Report by the Total Due column in descending order to immediately see your highest-balance clients at the top. You can also filter by assigned attorney to understand which team members' clients have the most outstanding AR — helping identify workflow or follow-up gaps.
Both A/R Aging Reports can be exported to Excel or PDF for sharing with firm leadership or your accounting team.
Additional Invoice Reports
Beyond aging, PracticePanther offers several additional reports to give your firm a complete picture of your AR and billing activity:
All Invoices by Contact — Shows the total amount invoiced for each client across all time periods, helping you understand your billing volume by client relationship.
All Invoices by Matter — Shows billing totals at the matter level, useful for matter profitability reviews.
Invoices Due by Contact — A focused view showing only outstanding balances by client — a quick collections reference.
Invoices Due by Matter — Outstanding balances broken down by matter, helping you track what is owed per engagement.
All Invoices Over Time — A trend report showing how much your firm has invoiced over a selected time period. Use this to track billing growth and spot seasonal patterns.
Invoice Reminders: Automating Your Collections Process
Chasing down unpaid invoices is one of the most time-consuming aspects of law firm billing. PracticePanther's Invoice Reminders feature allows your firm to automate follow-up emails to clients with outstanding balances, reducing the manual effort required for collections while keeping client communication consistent and professional.
How Invoice Reminders Work
Invoice reminders are automated emails sent to clients before or after an invoice's due date. You can create an unlimited number of reminders, each with its own timing, subject line, and message body.
For example, your firm might set up a reminder sequence like:
7 days after the invoice due date — a friendly first reminder
15 days after — a firmer follow-up
30 days after — an escalated notice
60 days after — a final collections notice
Reminder timing and messaging can be fully customized to match your firm's communication style and collections policy.
Setting Up Invoice Reminders
To configure invoice reminders for your firm:
Go to Settings and select Invoice Reminders
Click New Payment Reminder to create a new reminder rule
Set the number of days before or after the due date the reminder should be sent
Customize the subject line and body of the email. You can use merge fields to auto-populate details like the contact's name, invoice number, and outstanding balance.
Invoice reminders can be configured at two levels of granularity:
Firm-wide default — Set a default reminder setting that applies to all new invoices unless overridden
Per invoice — Turn reminders on or off for an individual invoice via the invoice's Payment Options section
Best Practices for Managing AR in PracticePanther
Review your A/R Aging Report weekly. Make it a habit to pull the A/R Aging Report at least once a week to identify balances that are aging past 30, 60, or 90 days.
Set up invoice reminders before you send. Configure your firm-wide reminder schedule in Settings so that every invoice automatically enrolls in your collections workflow from the moment it's sent.
Use trust balances proactively. When reviewing a contact's outstanding invoices, check the Trust balance shown at the top of the contact record. If the client has funds on deposit, you may be able to apply them to reduce the outstanding balance immediately.
Apply available operating or trust retainers in bulk. When viewing your due invoices, you can select multiple invoices and choose to apply any operating and/or trust funds available, ensuring your firm has applied as much retainer funds as possible, before reviewing what's still due.
Filter by overdue at the firm level. Start each billing review by filtering the Invoices list to Overdue status so your team focuses attention on the highest-priority collections first.
Track AR by responsible attorney. Use the A/R Aging Report's assignment filter to understand which attorneys or staff members have the most outstanding AR — this helps identify whether specific clients or matters need special follow-up attention.