If your firm is already on Centerbase for practice management but still running collections through a separate payments tool, there’s a quiet cost to that setup. It doesn’t show up on an invoice. It shows up in the reconciliation steps your team runs at month end. It shows up in trust accounting pieced together from two systems that were never built to share a ledger. It shows up in the retainer you couldn’t collect at intake because the invoice didn’t exist yet, or the refund that took two workflows to finish.
Centerbase Payments closes that gap. Because it’s built into the platform your firm already uses, turning it on doesn’t mean a migration, a new vendor, or a long implementation. Most firms finish onboarding in a single call of 20 to 30 minutes. After that, billing and payments run from the same place.
When a client pays, the rest takes care of itself
When a client pays through an invoice link, the invoice marks as paid, a payment record is created, and a bank deposit record is generated. All at the same time. No one on your team logs into a second system. No one posts the deposit at month end. The payment event *is* the accounting event.
For your billing staff, that turns collections work into confirmation work instead of data entry. For your CFO, the numbers are current without waiting for a reporting cycle. For the firm as a whole, the manual steps that currently connect your payment processor to your billing system simply stop existing.
Seven manual tasks off your team’s plate.
1. Invoices close and deposits post without anyone in the middle
In most split-system setups, a payment arrives in your processor, someone notes it, the invoice gets updated by hand, and the deposit gets posted later that day, or that week, or at month-end close.
With Centerbase Payments, all of that collapses into one event. The client pays. The invoice closes. The bank deposit record generates on its own once the payout confirms. The only transactions that still need a manual deposit entry are paper checks. Everything else moves through the ledger automatically.
This isn’t a faster version of the manual process. It’s a different process. The gap between cash received and cash recognized goes away.
2. Trust and operating funds route correctly before they reach the bank
Trust accounting errors at midsize firms usually aren’t the result of carelessness. They come from moving funds manually across two systems that don’t share a ledger. The processor records the collection. The billing system records the matter. Someone on your team reconciles the two, which means someone on your team can get it wrong.
Centerbase Payments handles the routing at the transaction level. When a payment includes a client principal and a convenience fee, the system separates them before the funds arrive. Principal goes to trust, the convenience fee goes to operating, and journal entries are created automatically.
Your trust ledger reflects reality from the moment the payment processes, not from the moment someone finishes a month-end review. IOLTA and PCI compliance are built in, with both accounts verified independently.
3. Retainers get collected at intake, before any invoice or matter exists
If your intake process ends with a verbal commitment and “an invoice to follow,” there’s a collections gap between the moment a client agrees to work with you and the moment they pay.
Centerbase closes that gap. Your team can share a payment link at intake, before any matter is opened or any invoice is generated. The client pays by card or ACH, the funds route correctly, and the matter is opened when it’s ready.
The retainer is collected at the point of commitment, not after the work begins. For anyone managing cash flow across a practice, that shift changes the financial profile of every new engagement.
4. Clients see what they owe, including any fees, before they confirm
Fee disputes slow collections, and they almost always start the same way: a client sees a charge they didn’t expect. Centerbase Payments shows clients a fee preview before they confirm any payment, so what they see is what they pay.
The fee setup is flexible. Card fees are percentage-based, ACH fees are flat-rate, and either can be applied across the firm or scoped to specific clients or matters. That means existing arrangements can be honored without creating manual exceptions. Clients don’t need a portal login either. They can pay through the invoice email or a firm-branded page.
When clients know what to expect, disputes drop. When disputes drop, your billing staff spends less time resolving exceptions and more time on collections that actually move forward.
5. Your team sees what happened in real time, inside Centerbase
In a split-system setup, finding out whether a payment came in means logging into the processor or waiting for someone who did. That lag is small on any single transaction. Across a busy week, it adds up. It delays follow-up, blurs your cash position, and slows the firm’s response on collections.
Centerbase Payments supports per-transaction notification emails and a daily digest of the previous day’s activity, sent to whoever needs it. Your billing staff sees the activity in the system they already work in. No second dashboard, no separate login, no waiting.
For firms managing collections across a heavy matter load, the speed of that notification loop has a direct effect on days to payment.
6. Refunds finish in one workflow, not two
In a split system, every refund takes two separate actions. Someone initiates the refund in the payment processor, then reflects the accounting update in the billing system. Both steps have to happen, both have to be accurate, and both are an opportunity for the numbers to drift apart.
The Begin Refund workflow in Centerbase Payments handles the Stripe refund and the accounting update in one operation. Full and partial refunds both work the same way. When the workflow is done, the refund is done. No second step, no reconciliation required.
For your accounting team, that removes a category of exception work that currently takes coordination across systems.
7. All your transaction data sits in one place, ready to export when you need it
The Transaction Details report gives your finance team exportable transaction data with configurable columns and date range filters. Each payment has a PDF receipt stored automatically. Payouts are tracked, with full drill-down to individual transactions.
Bank reconciliation and audit prep stop being a question of pulling data from multiple sources. Everything is in Centerbase, sourced from the same system that processed the transaction. The report your finance team runs is the same record the platform created when the payment cleared.
Turning Payments on is easy. Really.
Activating Centerbase Payments is simple. Onboarding takes one call, typically 20 to 30 minutes. Invoice payment links stay the same after the switch. Clients won’t notice any change in how they pay. Your team gets the fully integrated workflow from day one.
What you get back is every manual reconciliation step your team stops running, every trust accounting error your firm stops risking, and every retainer collected at intake instead of chased after the work begins.
If Centerbase Payments isn’t turned on at your firm yet, it’s worth taking a look. Your CSM can walk you through what activation would look like for your firm specifically: what the current workflow looks like, where the manual steps are, and what changes on the other side. Half an hour of your time, and your team stops doing seven things by hand.
See it in action: Contact your Customer Success Manager or visit centerbase.com to schedule a walkthrough of Multi-Payor Billing in Centerbase.
About Centerbase
Centerbase provides cloud-based legal software that centralizes all aspects of law firm management, including billing, accounting, timekeeping, matter and document management, automated workflows, and profitability reporting. Designed for mid-size law firms, Centerbase helps firms modernize operations, optimize productivity, and improve client service. For more information, visit centerbase.com.
Media Contact:
Trish Stromberg
trish.stromberg@centerbase.com
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