How to automate expense management in Aderant

Key takeaways

• Aderant's Expert Sierra covers AP, disbursements, GL and trust, with a time and expenses module for claims and approvals.
• In a law firm, the costly mistake is a client-recoverable charge coded to overhead, because it never reaches the invoice.
• Aderant describes disbursements as usually reaching a client invoice from an expense report or an AP entry.
• Vergo proposes the matter for each charge, texts for receipts and posts entries into Aderant once your IT enables access.

Where should you go next?

• Vergo's Aderant integration
• What expense management software integrates with Aderant?
• Get started with Vergo

How do you automate expense management in Aderant, step by step?

1. Enable access once. Your IT team enables API access in your Aderant environment once; Vergo then posts card spend coded to matter into Aderant, and posts AP invoices and reimbursements coded to matter into Aderant.
2. Connect your existing cards. Connecting your existing cards involves no card applications, no re-issuing and no banking change.
3. Collect receipts by text. Employees handle everything by text message — no app to download, no portal login — and Vergo chases missing receipts itself instead of waiting for a report.
4. Separate recoverable from overhead. For each line, Vergo proposes whether it belongs to a client matter or to the firm, and which matter.
5. Deliver to Aderant. Confirmed entries are posted to Aderant, ready for billing and the GL.

What does a law firm need on each card charge?

• Matter: the client matter a recoverable cost is billed to.
• Recoverable or not: whether it goes on the client invoice or stays as firm expense.
• Account: the GL account for the firm's books.
• Receipt: clients and outside counsel guidelines often ask for backup.

Why do disbursements slip through?

Aderant ties expense management to recoverable expense policies and to fewer billing delays, write-downs and unbilled expenses. Those problems start on the card. A partner pays for a court filing, a courier and a client dinner in one week, and a statement arrives with vendor names but no matter numbers. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the GL account from what was actually bought, not just the vendor name on the header, and the matter comes from how similar charges for that attorney and client were coded before.

A practical example

An associate books travel to a deposition and pays an expert witness's retainer on a firm card. Vergo texts for both receipts, proposes the client matter for the travel and the retainer, and flags a working lunch as firm expense because similar lunches were never billed. The billing coordinator confirms, and the entries go to Aderant coded to the matter.

How Vergo handles this

Vergo proposes the coding by inference from your own accounting structure and history — no rule library to build, no keyword lists to maintain, and new vendors are coded on first sight. At a firm, that history is which matters each timekeeper spends against and which costs your billing team has passed through. Every coding shows why it was chosen, so a reviewer confirms in seconds instead of re-coding by hand. Approval workflows are optional and fit how you already control spend: route by GL account or by amount — or skip approval flows entirely and let policy flags catch only what breaks a rule.