Recently updated on April 9th, 2024 at 12:58 am
Payments Solution for Courts
Court administrators can offer clients the convenience of online and different payments while increasing your collection all while perfectly integrating with your existing case management and financial systems.
LegalAtoms is the most comprehensive payments solution for courts built on the next generation of payment infrastructure in 2022.
LegalAtoms is cloud-based service built on a very secure platform.
- Collect payments against existing cases. These could be in your current CMS for parties visiting the court or accessing it online
- Create the receipt of payments, provide a copy to the payor via email, text, or print out.
- Track the multiple payment types within a transaction so that payors can pay the balance with the multiple payment types (e.g. multiple credit cards or some cash)
- Ability to record the form(s) of payments -- cash, check, bond, money order, credit card -- for each transaction in the case record
- Automatically update the case record of payments made, so that the payment may be tracked on the account.
- Ability to print detail and summary versions of an end of month financial report
- Integrate with your existing financial and accounting software by exporting data in the following formats
- OFX/QFX/QBO format
- QIF format
- IIF format
- QBJ format
- CSV/Excel
- Apply fees based on codes
- Override fees on individual cases
- Users can apply a single payment transaction across multiple cases
- Payment plans i.e. distribute payments over time
- Track adjustments to fines
- Transfer payments from one case to another
- Void payments for any reason
- Setup trust accounts
- Disburse funds to specified accounts based on some business logic
- Create statements at different level of details
- Track account transactions
- Move funds from general to trust account and vice versa
- Consolidate the financials of cases related to one party in a payment plan so that monthly payments are disbursed among case records based on your court's internal prioritization
- Review the history of financial transactions on a case -- financials, payments, payor name, payment types, amounts, or dates
- Search for a transaction using the name, receipt number, case number, or date range
- Issue a receipt for funds collected
- Accurately capture and track fees
- Generate account statement over a period of time
- Ability to print a case's financials such as balances, or payment history
Ability to issue, print, reprint, void and escheat checks.
Ability to refund the overpayment portion of a payment to the treasurer/city (if under the configured threshold amount) or to the payor (if over the configured threshold amount), configured by court
- Ability to track unclaimed refunds and escheat funds to a payee
- Ability to calculate financial obligations based on alternative payment methods (e.g. Jail Credit equals $20 per day and balance is $200. CMS will be able to calculate 10 days Jail would meet the financial obligation)
- Ability to manage cases referred for collection to another agency (e.g., update status, track partial payments, initiate failure to appear process to prevent driver's license renewal, etc.).
- Ability to track status of cases referred to other agencies or organizations for collection
- Ability to utilize predetermined calculation (e.g. one hour of community service equals $50) to apply alternative payment methods (e.g. Community Service, Jail Credit, waivers, probation, etc.) against financial obligations to lower overall case balance
Ability to automatically identify cases with a visual indicator that have delinquent payment statuses based on configurable criteria
Ability to configure a workflow queue to automatically list accounts that are no longer "minor accounts" due to the minor reaching the age of majority
- Notify clients of important payments and deadlines
- Ability to accept and record surety bond information (e.g. description of collateral)
- Ability to close out a previous bond when a second bond has been initiated on the same case (i.e. Disposed/No Forfeiture)
- Ability to conduct bond activities (e.g., record a bond, assess bond fees, reject a bond, modify a bond, record a personal bond, etc.).
- Ability to record cash bond information (e.g. party, bondsman, attorney, etc.)
- Ability to track bond information (e.g. amount ordered, bond status, bondsman, etc.) without a case record (e.g. DA has not yet filed their case)
- Ability to track payments of cash bonds
- Ability to transfer cash bond from one case to another case
- Ability to flag property for release once bond has been paid
- Ability to merge the bond information into a case record (e.g. bond information tracked prior to filing, information can now be merged into the official case record)
- Self service
- Ability to set up a workflow queue that allows a user to update cash bond information directly within the queue (e.g. amount ordered, bond status, etc.)
- Ability to suspend bonding capability when payment is past due
- Ability to track financial obligation payments in joint and several liability cases
- Use money in holding as a form of tender
- View and report on debit and credit transactions
- Calculate financial obligations in joint and several liability cases
- Identify an account as a "minor (under 18) account" with a label
Ability to generate a detail report of deleted financial data
Ability to automatically generate monthly checks to the city, county, state entities based on payee configuration associated with receipt distributions accounts
- Tally a till for a day
- Generate cashier till reports for comparison to financial transaction reports
- Prevent staff members users who do not have a till from taking payments
- Print a daily receipt listing, e.g., by receipting clerk, receipting location, etc.
- Setup credit card terminals at the clerks counter with direct integration to the same payment system
- Ability to open and close tills
- Print an end of year financial report
- Close the financial day (period), month and year and have the system maintain financial transactions associated to each day, month and year for historical reporting purposes
- Established workflows for eFiling for processing In Forma Pauperis (IFP) waivers
- Allow self-represented litigants to submit filing and IFP waiver without paying fee upfront
- Confirmation of submission when IFP waiver is submitted
- Routing IFP waiver to correct judicial officer for approval or rejection of waiver
LegalAtoms offers courts a comprehensive and extensible payments solution to manage general accounts, trust accounts, payment plans, bails and forfeitures all integrated with the Case Management System
- Clerks can provide a fee schedule for each case type (e.g. based on statutory requirements) and service so the correct fees are charged for each filing type
- LegalAtoms provides a "Shopping Cart" like mechanism for end users to pay for multiple fees or charges e.g. certified copies, filing fees, or fines with a single transaction
- There are extensibility points to interface with a court's other vendors handling payments receipts and payments.
- LegalAtoms provides fee payments to be automatically calculated and processed at the end of the business day for governmental end users who currently utilize vouchers
- Refunds are supported.
- Discount codes can be provided
- Established workflow for processing IFP waivers
Credit, Debit, Checks, Paypal, Venmo and Bond
Courts can increase payments collected by offering relevant payment methods to your customers who are now using a range of new payment methods besides just a credit or debit card.
- Credit Cards: Visa , Mastercard , American Express , Discover & Diners
- Bank Transfers (ACH), Wires and Debit Cards
- Digital Wallets: Venmo, Paypal, Google Pay, Microsoft Pay
- Checks: Accept and pay via checks including: issue, print, reprint, void and escheat checks. Checks can be deposited by mail. Your customer uses the LegalAtoms-provided invoice number and PO box address and the payments will appear on your screens.
Payment flexibility
- Pay in installments: Offer clients to pay their fines in installments. Each installment is managed in a friendly way with reminders for all parties, and handling of missed payments.
- Pay in advance: Client makes a payment of type "advanced" to a clerk account. Later when the clerk creates a charge, LegalAtoms check if there's a credit balance for the client or their lawyer, prompts for confirmation and automatically applies the credit balance
- Lawyer can pay: A lawyer or party designated by the clerk can make payments on behalf of the client
LegalAtoms allows for external to parties and departments involved
- Ability to add rules to update payment plan status for a given case in response to certain actions on that case e.g. case is dismissed
- LegalAtoms additionally sends verification email to all provided email addresses and wait for verification before sending anything else to that email address.
LegalAtoms offers complete managing of bail bonds
- Track the amount of surety bonds
- Track the status of bail bonding companies
- Automatically update bail with case incidents e.g.
- Forfeiture
- Cancellation
- Discharge
- Reinstatement
- Close out a previous bond when a second bond has been initiated on the same case (i.e. Disposed/No Forfeiture)
- Manage a bond
- Record a bond including personal bond
- Assess fees
- Reject
- Modify
- Cash payments, receipts and tallies
- Limit cash features to certain users
- Track deposits to a central entity
- Setup credit card terminals
LegalAtoms offers Trust accounts for your clients
An account in trust or trust account refers to any type of financial account that is opened by an individual and managed by a designated trustee for the benefit of a third party per agreed-upon terms.
LegalAtoms has built in smart technology e.g.
- Autodetect and trigger alerts when a minor on the trust account becomes an adult
- Ability to filter accounts by this field values
A clerk, financial bookkeeper or any member of the court staff with proper permissions setup will have ability to generate reports for viewing, printing and sharing.
Examples of reports: View cases with
- Credit balance
- Payments overdue and the amounts
Convenience features include
- Ability to filter, sort and group by virtually any field on the case e.g. payment type is a bond
- Generate notices in bulk for the selected cases
LegalAtoms offers complete handling of collections scenarios
- Refer payment accounts to collections via automated rules or via case by case
- Track payments made via collections
LegalAtoms provides multiple roles to allow for efficient operation of different teams within a court, while still keeping maximum confidentiality.
Different users can also access the case without viewing all aspects of the case.
Legalatoms allows clerks to setup standard credits which can be triggered by certain financial calculations. Alternatively clerks can provide ad hoc credits
- Waivers: Setup automated criteria for In Forma Pauperis (IFP) waiver. Allow self-represented litigants to submit filing and IFP waiver without paying fee upfront. Routing IFP waiver to correct judicial officer for approval or rejection of waiver
- Credits: Issues credits based on community service, time served in prison or based on other factors
- Refunds: For refunds assign disbursement priority: This basically means which refunds are processed first. Court staff members can override priority of disbursements
LegalAtoms offers some basic accounting and ability to export data so you can connect it with your primary accounting software
- Ability to track daily transactions with payment details
- Automatically routes all submitted documents in the file to the correct queue for verification and acceptance
- LegalAtoms provides convenient data import and export features using open secure formats such as OFX, and CSV
