Migrate from Clio to Freshsales

Clio clients may be individuals or organizations. We split them: organization-type clients become Freshsales Accounts; person-type clients become Contacts with AccountId linking to the related organization. All other client properties (address, email, phone, custom fields) map to their Freshsales equivalents. Clients without an email address are flagged for manual review before migration runs.

Clio custom fields on clients (e.g., bar number, referral source, practice-area tag) map to Freshsales Contact or Account custom fields of the matching type. Text, number, date, and dropdown types map directly. Contact Select fields in Clio have no Freshsales equivalent and are stored as a text reference field on the contact record.

Clio matters map to Freshsales Deals. Practice area, court jurisdiction, opposing counsel, and billing preference are stored as custom fields on the Deal (Practice_Area__c, Court_Jurisdiction__c, Billing_Preference__c, Flat_Rate_Amount__c). Matter status maps to Freshsales Deal stage. If the firm uses Clio's matter numbering system, Source_System_ID__c preserves the original matter ID for traceability.

The primary client on a Clio matter becomes the primary Contact on the Freshsales Deal. If the matter has additional parties (e.g., opposing counsel, co-counsel), we create additional Deal Contact Roles with the party name and role stored as a custom field on the role record. This preserves the complete party list from Clio without collapsing the relationship.

Clio matter custom fields — such as insurance carrier, statute of limitations, or filing deadline — are created as Freshsales Deal custom fields. Fields using Clio's Integer or Time type are mapped to Freshsales Number and Date fields respectively. Custom fields requiring multi-select behavior map to Freshsales Multi-select pick-lists.

Freshsales has no native time-tracking module. We create a Custom Sales Activity record for each Clio time entry, linked to the corresponding Deal via a lookup relationship. Fields include: Activity Date, Duration (hours), Billable flag, Activity Category, Rate used, and a link to the Matter source ID. Custom module limits in Freshsales (max 100 fields per module) are respected during mapping.

Clio bills (invoice headers, line items, totals, outstanding balance) are stored on the Deal as a set of custom fields (Last_Invoice_Date__c, Last_Invoice_Amount__c, Outstanding_Balance__c). Full invoice line-item history is preserved in a custom Invoice_Lines__c custom object with a lookup to the parent Deal. Trust accounting transactions require separate documentation for your Freshsales admin — Freshsales does not have native trust accounting.

Clio users (attorneys, paralegals, billing staff) are matched to Freshsales users by email address. The migration plan flags any Clio user without a corresponding Freshsales user — your team creates the Freshsales account first or assigns those records to a fallback owner. User permissions, roles, and billing rates do not migrate (those are destination-side configuration).

Clio documents attached to matters are downloaded from Clio's storage and re-uploaded to Freshsales as file attachments on the corresponding Deal record. Large files or bulk document sets may require staged upload. We preserve the original file name and uploaded-by user for audit purposes. Inline document links in Clio notes are converted to Freshsales note attachments.

Clio tasks and notes attached to matters map directly to Freshsales Tasks and Notes, both linked to the corresponding Deal. Original timestamps, due dates, and assigned user are preserved. If a Clio note references a document, we attach the migrated document to the corresponding Freshsales note record after the file migration phase completes.

Clio rate hierarchies (custom rate > fixed rate > matter rate > client rate > activity rate > user default) cannot be represented natively in Freshsales. We preserve each user's default rate as a Custom_Rate__c field on the Freshsales User record, and per-matter custom rates as Flat_Rate_Amount__c on the Deal. Rate hierarchy logic must be rebuilt manually in Freshsales using Workflows or custom validations.