On PracticePanther, retainers can either be added to the trust/escrow account or operating account for your clients/matters. If a retainer is added to the operating account, it's treated as "credit" towards billable items.
To learn how to add retainer payments, click here before continuing.
To check if you have trust money or credit available for your client or matter, follow these steps:
1) Open the desired contact or matter.
2) If your client/matter has available trust funds, it will appear in the blue trust bubble on the left. If your client has available credit (operating funds), it will appear as "Unapplied Amount" when you hover over the operating bubble as seen below.
Note: If you're looking at the contact's page, and they have multiple matters, these bubbles will be a total financial summary for all their matters. To see what's available in a specific matter, open the matter itself.
If you do not see these bubbles inside of your contact/matter, follow these steps to view the available trust or credit:
1) Open desired the contact.
2) Click on the "Payments" tab inside of the contact/matter, and pick which account you would like to check the balance for.
3) Click on the "Choose Columns" button displayed on the top right of the payments list.
4) Make sure "Unapplied Amount" is checked on.
5) The total number displayed on the bottom of the "Unapplied Amount" column is the amount of trust or credit your client/matter currently has available.
