Bookkeeping for Solo and Small Law Firms

We recommend QuickBooks Plus and Advanced in order to get the most from your legal billing software. Both plans allow you to get a more granular view of your practice and track billable hours by client, case, and employee. Irvine bookkeeping offers you comprehensive, cost-effective, and long-term law firm bookkeeping solutions.

• When compared, the company’s liquidity can be ascertained, and the rate at which the company generates returns can be calculated.
• While it is the accountant’s job to handle this the right way regardless of anything else, working with the accountant to make things easier can be very valuable for your business relationship.
• Capturing every minute of billable work is critical for accurate law firm billing and, ultimately, profitability.
• However, beyond making the payment and reconciliation process easier, the ability to easily create customized invoices and flexible payment schedules can also lower the chances of non-payment.
• If your firm plans on hiring employees, then you have to set up payroll.

Public accountants spend the majority of their workweeks at various third-party client offices. These professionals must be capable of assimilating into diverse corporate cultures. An accounting career generally has less extensive educational requirements. A traditional CRM serves as a basic database of customers and prospective customers.

Accounting for Lawyers: 4 Basics You Need To Know

When an invoice is paid, you should first deduct a portion to pay for those incurred costs. There are other types of deductions you need to keep track of that incur while doing business. We’ve said it again and again, but never, ever mix your personal and your business finances. If they don’t, you need to go over every single transaction to see where the error lies. The key to good accounting is keeping detailed records of every single transition coming in or going out of your IOLTA. We’ll dive more into the specifics of why you need a CPA later on in this piece, but trust us when we say hiring one will make your life much easier.

Practice Management software is well-suited to manage your firm’s time tracking, billing, calendaring, contacts and tasks. Some Practice Management software also include limited or “light” Document Management. These are vast categories that can be broken down into more specific tasks, which is where they overlap. For example, practice management and document management software may both have features that are intended to boost productivity.

What Clients Say

While AltFee offers alternative fee arrangement software to help you set out the pricing structure that your law firm will follow, you’ll need something to handle the accounting side of things. Oftentimes, traditional accounting software like Quickbooks by itself doesn’t cut it. It is imperative that law firms keep their client’s sensitive information secure. While there is a lot of accounting software on the market, not all are equipped to handle the unique security and compliance requirements needed by law firms. Make sure that any solution you consider has multiple layers of security and encryption to keep transaction history and other account information safe. Manually preparing invoices and following up on payments is time-consuming, inefficient, and sometimes detrimental to healthy client relationships.

• Evernote has a beautifully clean interface and is easy to learn and to use.
• Because of its complexity, legal accounting can be challenging to get right, especially for smaller law firms and solo practitioners.
• Startup founders operating on a limited budget often take on tasks outside their skill sets to avoid hiring staff or independent contractors.
• If you are a Xero user, you will also find a number of application integrations to help you manage your law firm’s accounting.
• Ideally, you should deposit business revenue in your business checking account and transfer excess funds to your savings account for future or unanticipated expenses.
• You undoubtedly have more pressing matters than organizing your financial statements or monitoring your books.

TimeSolv is both a bookkeeping and billing solution that integrates with standard programs such as QuickBooks, Xero, Microsoft 365, and Dropbox. It’s cloud-based software, but it backs up data securely law firm bookkeeping with 256-bit SSL encryption (in non-techie speak, that means it’s very secure). It works for law firms of all sizes and even provides some project management features, like timekeeping.

Tips to Ease Growing Pains During Your Firm’…

This is where the fuzzy terminology makes understanding what any given software package does confusing. Although there’s no free plan, you can access all Xero features for free for 30 days.

Ronika Khanna, founder of Montreal Financial, says they allow business owners to quickly generate reports, review receivables, and assess cash flow. In addition, she says, “The advantage of keeping the bookkeeping in-house is that they are able to save costs and have a better understanding of how their business is doing.” Paul Garibian is the president of Nota, M&T Bank’s fintech platform that provides business banking solutions for attorneys managing solo and small law firms.

As a new partner in a law firm, you have more challenges and responsibilities than ever before with what may seem like a lot less time. We can help manage the time-crunch, at least when it comes to your personal tax situation and transition into partnership, so that you can focus on your billable hours. ORBA’s Law Firm Group can help you monitor your law firm’s cash position at year end to minimize the overall tax liability. In most cases, it will be most efficient to ensure the corporation is as close to a zero tax situation as possible. However, in some cases it will be more efficient to retain earnings for future investment rather than require capital contributions of previously taxed income.

• Regardless of the size of your law firm — even if you’re a solopreneur — it’s important to know accounting and bookkeeping basics.
• A legal accountant and bookkeeper will work towards the same goal — they both want to keep your law firm financially healthy and built for the future.
• Having a Virtual Law Firm gives way to better flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and overall happiness of both your firm and your clients.
• Automated billing and other processes also help improve project and client management.