What this article helps with: The day-to-day workflow: how to draft a disbursement, what every field in the draft window does, and how an approver reviews and releases it to your client.

Who this is for: Case managers, paralegals, accounting and finance staff who draft payouts, and the approvers who sign off on them.

When not to use this article: If your firm is not enrolled yet, start with "Getting Started: Enrolling Your Firm in Disbursements". If you want to know what your client sees after you hit approve, read "What Your Client Sees: The Disbursement Payment Link".

Key Terms

What do you mean when you say...

Draft = creating the disbursement. Nothing is sent and no money moves at this stage.
Approve = signing off. This is the step that generates the secure payment link and texts it to your client.
Recipient = the person being paid. In Hona this is a contact.
Case = the matter the payout belongs to. Shown as a Project elsewhere in Hona.

Overview

Every disbursement follows the same two-step path:

Someone drafts it. Anyone at your firm can do this. The disbursement sits in Needs approval and your approvers are notified.
An approver reviews and approves it. Only then does Confido generate a secure payment link and text it to your client.

Approving does not push money into your client's account. It releases the funds to be claimed. Your client still has to open the link, verify who they are, and choose how they want to be paid. Nothing leaves your trust account until they do.

Drafting a disbursement

Option 1: From a case (recommended)

Open the case in Hona, then use any of these:

The Actions menu at the top right, then Draft Disbursement.
The Messages and Activity section, where Draft Disbursement is the last option.
The plus button in the messaging area. This is also available in the Hona Chrome extension, so your team can draft a payout without leaving your case management system.

Drafting from the case is the better path because the case is linked automatically, the recipient is pre-selected from the case contacts, and the payout appears on the case timeline where anyone can see its status.

Option 2: From the Disbursements tab

Go to app.hona.com/disbursements and add a new disbursement there. You pick the recipient yourself and can optionally type in a case ID.

This path exists so accounting staff are not blocked when a case has not synced into Hona yet, and so firms can use Disbursements without the rest of Hona. It is also the way to pay a beneficiary who is not listed as a contact on the case.

What each field does

Field	What to put in it
Recipient	Required. Who is being paid. You can search by name, phone number, or email, which matters when two contacts share a name. If the person is not in your contacts, create them from here.
Amount	Required, and must be greater than zero. There is no balance check against your trust account and no check against the case's own funds, so the number you type is the number that goes out. This is what the approval step is for.
Case ID	Optional. Enter your Case ID to match your disbursement to a specific case in Hona.
Bank account	Which account the funds come from. Normally your trust account. If you have several, for example one per state, pick the right one; there is no per-case default. Your operating account also appears here, for the occasional advance rather than settlement funds.
Notes	Internal only. These are for your approvers and your own records. Your client never sees the notes field.
Expiration days	How long the payment link stays valid. Leave it blank to use your firm's default, which is 60 days.
Client messages	The texts and emails your client receives at each stage. These come from your firm's templates and can be adjusted for this one payout if the situation calls for it.
Notify approvers	A checkbox, on by default. Leave it checked and everyone with the Approver permission is notified. If you are an approver yourself and are going to approve it immediately, you can uncheck it.

Click Draft Disbursement to save it. The disbursement now sits in Needs approval. Nothing has been sent to your client.

Reviewing and approving

Approvers can find pending items in either place:

The Needs Approval section at the top of app.hona.com/disbursements, or by filtering the table by status.
The disbursement card on the case timeline.

Click Review and Approve. You will see the full details: recipient name, phone, and email; the case; the amount; the source bank account; the expiry date; the notes; and who drafted it.

What to check before you approve

The amount. Nothing in the system validates it against your trust balance or the case's net to client.
The recipient, and their phone number and email. This is what the payment link and the verification code go to.
The source bank account. Especially if you run multiple trust accounts.
The client messages, if the drafter changed them.

You can edit any of these before approving. Every change is written to the audit log with the before value, the after value, and your name, and your approval is recorded as its own separate line.

What happens when you approve

Confido generates a secure, single-use payment link.
The disbursement status changes to Sent.
Your client is texted the link from your firm's existing Hona phone number, the same number they have been talking to your team on all case long. If their notification preference is email, they receive it by email.
From there your client verifies their identity and picks how they want to be paid. See "What Your Client Sees: The Disbursement Payment Link".

After it is sent

Watch the status. The Disbursements page and the case timeline both show where each payout is. See "Disbursement Statuses and Notifications" for what each one means.
Resend the link. The payment link can be copied from an approved disbursement, so if your client says they never got the text you can send it to them directly.
Fixing a mistake. An approved disbursement cannot be edited. If the amount, the recipient, or the source account is wrong, cancel it and draft a replacement.
Stopping a payout. You can cancel a disbursement any time up until your client accepts it. Once they accept an instant payment, it cannot be pulled back, so act quickly if something is wrong.
Export your records. From the Disbursements page you can export your full disbursement list, including case IDs, at any time. The same data is also available line-itemized in your Confido account.

FAQs

Can I send more than one disbursement on the same case?

Yes. Draft one per recipient. This is the normal pattern for multiple plaintiffs or multiple beneficiaries. There is no split-payment feature, so each person gets their own disbursement and their own link, and each carries its own fee.

The beneficiary is not a contact on the case. How do I pay them?

Draft a disbursement and create a new contact as the recipient. This comes up often in wrongful death matters. The same approach works for a medical provider, lienholder, or any other third party who needs paying but is not a contact on the case.

Does approving mean the money has left our trust account?

No. Approving authorizes the payout and sends the link. Funds move only after your client opens the link, verifies their identity, and accepts. Until then nothing has left the account.

Can the person who drafts also approve?

Yes, if they hold the Approver permission. Hona does not block self-approval. If your firm wants two sets of eyes on every payout, enforce it as a process and use the audit log to verify it. See "Disbursements Permissions: Disbursement Admin and Approvers".

How does this fit with our trust accounting and check-printing process?

Nothing about your trust accounting needs to change. Keep doing your reconciliation and staging exactly as you do today. The change happens at the point where a check would have been printed: instead of printing, the disbursement gets drafted in Hona.

The firms that get the most out of this make the digital payout the default and treat exceptions as the fallback. If you leave it optional, adoption tends to stay low because staff default to the process they know.

Can disbursement activity flow into our accounting system?

Yes, through Hona's automations. You can trigger an action on a disbursement status change, most commonly when funds are accepted, and pass through fields like amount, recipient, case ID, and the last four digits of the source bank account. Firms use this to create a record in their case management system's collections section, which then flows into their accounting software.

Automations need setting up the first time. Contact [email protected] and we will help you build it for your stack.

Can we set up recurring payments to the same client?

Not today. Each payout is a separate disbursement with its own link, so a client on regular payments needs a new one each time. Confido is building stored payment details that will allow repeat payments without a new link; it is in testing now.

Conclusion

Draft, review, approve. The approval step is your control point, so treat the amount and the recipient's contact details as the two things worth double checking every time. Questions? Chat with our support team or email [email protected].

How to Draft and Approve a Disbursement