Payments

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What Payments does

When you connect your payment processor, Superpractice imports every payment your firm collects and connects each one to the right contact and matter. That gives you two numbers on every matter, and keeps your revenue reporting honest without any manual bookkeeping:

Payments flow in automatically from the moment you connect, and your history is imported too, so matters reflect what clients have really paid from day one.

How matching works, in simple terms

Every imported payment is matched using what your processor already knows:

1. Payments you have placed before. Once a customer's payment is placed on a matter, every future payment from that customer follows automatically.
2. The payer's email or phone. Superpractice finds the matching contact, then looks for the matter whose balance fits the payment.
3. Subscriptions. A recurring payment remembers its subscription. Place one invoice and the rest of that subscription, past and future, follows it.
4. The payer's name. Some payments carry a name but no email or phone, which is common when your staff types in card charges. Superpractice matches the name against your contacts, but only when it matches exactly and exactly one contact has that name. Two clients with the same name go to review instead of a guess.

When Superpractice is not sure, it never guesses. The payment waits in Needs review, grouped by customer so one decision places their whole history at once. Reviewing a customer takes one click: confirm the contact, choose or create the matter, and place all their payments together.

A few guarantees that keep your data safe:

• Payments never create matters on their own. Only a person can do that, from the review screen.
• Payments never change matters owned by your CRM. If a matter syncs from HubSpot or GoHighLevel, payments only fill in Collected. Value stays exactly what your CRM says.
• Every placement can be undone. Unallocate a payment and it returns to review.

Subscriptions grow Value automatically

For clients on recurring billing, each paid invoice grows the matter's Value by the amount collected. A client paying $500 per month shows $3,000 of Value after six months, attributed to the right service and practice area, with no one touching anything. The matter shows the service with a Tracks payments badge, the booked monthly amount, and how many payments are linked.

Matters created from payments

When you create a matter from the review screen, it is born the way a real engagement should be:

• Named after the contact and the service, for example "Jordan Avery · Trademark filing".
• Marked Retained, with the close date set to the client's first payment. Your attribution reports the engagement in the month it really started, even when you connect the processor years later.

Discounts

If you agree to a lower price, discount the service line item on the matter instead of just editing the price. Open the matter, hover the service, and click Discount (or use the row menu). Enter an amount or percentage and pick a reason. The matter keeps the original price for your records, reporting uses the discounted amount, and you can never discount below what the client already paid.

If a matter closes with money you have decided to forgive, the matter offers a one-click write down so Value matches what was collected.

Payment plans

For fees paid in installments, set up a payment plan on the matter. The full fee stays as Value from day one; each installment fills in Collected as it arrives. Missed installments are flagged, and expected collections show up in Sales Intelligence.

Trust accounting

Payments into a trust account are held, not counted as collected. When the work is billed, apply held funds to the matter and they move into Collected. Trust money is never reported as revenue before it is earned.

Connect your processor

• Connect Stripe
• Connect LawPay