What this article helps with: Turning Hona Disbursements on for your firm, start to finish: choosing an enrollment path, connecting your trust and operating accounts, what our payments partner reviews and how long it takes, the Positive Pay step at your bank, and what to do once you are approved.
Who this is for: Firm admins, office managers, and the finance or accounting staff who will own settlement payouts. You do not need to be a Hona Admin to begin enrollment.
When not to use this article: If your firm is already enrolled and you just need to send a payment, read "How to Draft and Approve a Disbursement" instead. If you are still deciding whether Disbursements is right for your firm, start with "What is Hona Disbursements?"
Key Terms
Key Terms
What do you mean when you say...
Confido Legal = Hona's payments partner. Confido runs the banking rails, the underwriting, and the secure page where your client claims their funds.
Enrollment = the one-time process of creating your firm's Confido account, connecting your bank accounts, and passing review.
Trust account = the account settlement funds are paid out of. You can connect more than one, for example one per state.
Operating account (fee account) = the account the per-disbursement fee is debited from.
Plaid = the service used to securely link a bank account without emailing account numbers around.
Disbursement Admin = the Hona permission granted to the person who completes enrollment. Disbursement Admins control who is allowed to approve payments.
Overview
Disbursements is enabled per firm, not per user. One person completes a short enrollment on behalf of the firm, our payments partner Confido Legal reviews it, and once you are approved the Disbursements tools appear for your whole team.
The five steps
1. Open the Disbursements tab and begin enrollment
In Hona, click Disbursements in the left-hand navigation, or go directly to app.hona.com/disbursements.
If your firm has not enrolled yet, you will land on an overview page with two options:
Begin Enrollment, which takes you to Manage Connection to set your firm up.
Try it out, a demo mode where you can draft an example disbursement and walk through the client experience yourself. Nothing is charged and no money moves in demo mode.
Who should start enrollment
Any Hona user can begin enrollment. You do not have to be a Hona Admin. We deliberately left this open because finance and accounting staff are often set up as regular users rather than admins, and they are usually the right people to own this.
Important: the person who completes enrollment automatically becomes your firm's Disbursement Admin. That person is the one who can add and remove approvers afterward. Pick someone who will still be at the firm and involved in payouts, not whoever happens to be looking at the screen first. It is not a permanent choice though. Once you are live, any Disbursement Admin can add or remove other Disbursement Admins.
2. Choose your enrollment path
On the Manage Connection screen you will be asked whether you already have a Confido account.
Path A: You already use Confido Legal
Choose I have an existing account, then click Connect to Confido. You will sign in to Confido, and your existing firm, bank accounts, and settings are pulled into Hona. You do not need to re-apply or be re-underwritten, and you will not be billed twice.
If your existing Confido account is already tied to another system and needs to stay that way, contact [email protected] before you connect and we will sort out the right setup with Confido.
Path B: You are new to Confido
Choose I do not have an account. An enrollment form opens directly inside Hona. It collects standard business information about your firm plus details for the owners and officers, and it is where you link your bank accounts.
A Confido account is created for your firm as part of this. You will not need it day to day, but it is where you go to add or remove bank accounts later, and it is where your accountant can pull line-itemized statements.
3. Connect your bank accounts
You will connect two kinds of account:
Your trust account. This is what client settlement funds are disbursed from. If you practice in multiple states and keep a trust account per state, connect each one. You will pick which account a payout comes from each time you draft a disbursement.
Your operating account. This is your fee account. The per-disbursement fee is debited from it. Some firms also disburse from their operating account when they are sending a client an advance rather than settlement funds, so it will appear as a selectable source too.
The fastest way to link an account is Plaid, which connects to your bank without you typing account numbers. If your bank is not supported by Plaid, you can enter the account holder name, routing number, and account number manually and upload a statement.
Heads up: you will probably be asked for a bank verification document
Heads up: you will probably be asked for a bank verification document
This is the single most common reason enrollment takes longer than expected, so it is worth knowing about up front.
Part of the review process is confirming that the entity that owns the bank account is the same entity Confido will be processing payments for. Plaid often does not return the business as the account holder, even when the account genuinely belongs to the firm. When that happens you will be asked to send a document for each account showing the legal business name.
Any of these are usually accepted:
A bank statement
A voided check
A screenshot from online banking
Two things you can do in advance to avoid a round trip:
Make sure the business address on your application matches the address on your website. A mismatch gets flagged.
Have a recent statement handy for both the trust and operating accounts, showing the exact legal business name.
4. Wait for review
Once you submit, your enrollment goes to Confido's underwriting team. Review usually takes about 4 to 6 business days.
Your status is shown on the Manage Connection page and moves through: submitted, then in review, then approved or rejected.
If something on your application needs fixing, Confido's underwriting team reaches out to your firm directly. If your enrollment is rejected, or if it has been sitting longer than you would expect, email [email protected] and we will chase it down with Confido for you.
Processing limits are set during underwriting
Processing limits are set during underwriting
As part of underwriting, Confido sets processing limits on your account. They are sized so that your normal course of business never trips them, and they exist to catch unusual activity.
If you know a large distribution is coming, a mass tort settlement being the usual case, tell us before you start so we can have Confido raise your limits for it. Otherwise a big batch can stop partway through.
The Positive Pay step at your bank
This step is easy to miss and it will stop payments if it is skipped, so please do not treat it as optional.
Most firms have Positive Pay or a similar debit filter on their accounts to prevent unauthorized withdrawals. As part of onboarding, Confido's banking IDs need to be added to your bank's Positive Pay allow list. This is what keeps you from having to individually approve every single disbursement at your bank.
This is an action only your firm can take. Neither Hona nor Confido can add Confido to your allow list on your behalf. You or your bank contact will need to do it. Confido will tell you which banking IDs to whitelist during onboarding.
If you are not sure whether your accounts have Positive Pay enabled, ask your bank's treasury or business banking contact before your first live payout.
5. Add your approvers and go live
Once your firm is approved, the Disbursements tools switch on. Before you send your first real payment, do these three things:
Add your approvers. Anyone at your firm can draft a disbursement, but nothing sends until someone with the Approver permission signs off. Go to Manage Connection at app.hona.com/disbursements/connection to add them. If you completed enrollment, you are the Disbursement Admin and you are the one who can do this. See "Disbursements Permissions: Disbursement Admin and Approvers" for the full breakdown. You can also appoint additional Disbursement Admins from the same screen, which is worth doing so nothing stalls when you are out.
Review your client messages. These are the texts and emails your clients receive at each stage. Defaults are already in place, but most firms want to adjust the wording. Edit them at app.hona.com/disbursements/messages.
Decide how this fits your existing payout process. The most successful firms make the digital payout the default and treat exceptions as the fallback, rather than the other way around. Practically, that means at the point in your process where a check would have been printed, the disbursement gets drafted in Hona instead.
FAQs
Do we need the rest of Hona to use Disbursements?
Do we need the rest of Hona to use Disbursements?
No. Disbursements can run on its own. You can draft a payout straight from the Disbursements tab, pick a recipient, and optionally type in a case ID by hand. That said, it works better when your cases are already in Hona, because the case and the client are linked for you and the payout shows up on the case timeline.
Someone else at my firm started the enrollment and I cannot see the connection page. What do I do?
Someone else at my firm started the enrollment and I cannot see the connection page. What do I do?
Your firm's Disbursement Admin and approvers are now shown on the Manage Connection page, so start there to see who owns the setup. If enrollment is complete, any existing Disbursement Admin can add you as a Disbursement Admin directly, so you do not need to come to us for that. If an enrollment was started and left unfinished, anyone at your firm can open the connection page and finish it themselves.
Can we add more bank accounts later?
Can we add more bank accounts later?
Yes. Bank accounts are managed in Confido, and there is a link out to the Confido portal from the Manage Connection page in Hona. Any account you add in Confido, or turn on for disbursements there, is pulled into Hona. Your Disbursement Admin can also rename accounts in Hona to something readable, for example "Arizona Trust", so staff pick the right one.
Can we test it before going live with a real client?
Can we test it before going live with a real client?
Yes. Use Try it out on the Disbursements overview page to run yourself through a full example, including the client-side payment page. Nothing is charged and no funds move. If you would like a longer sandbox period for training your team, ask [email protected] and we can set one up. Note that demo and sandbox mode caps each example disbursement at $1,000, so use a small number when you test.
Does our accountant get access?
Does our accountant get access?
Yes, and most firms do this. Your accountant can be given a user in Confido, where they will see a line-itemized statement for each billing period including client name, matter, disbursement amount, and transaction ID. Fees are billed from your operating account. They can also be added as a Hona user so they can draft and view disbursements without being an approver.
Conclusion
Enrollment is mostly a waiting game on underwriting, so the two things worth getting right are having your bank verification documents ready and completing the Positive Pay whitelist step at your bank. If anything stalls, chat with our support team or email [email protected].