Can I Use QuickBooks as a Stand-Alone Tool for Attorney Bookkeeping?

This week we're gonna discuss whether or not you can use QuickBooks as a standalone tool for attorney bookkeeping. And this is a question that may come up with some attorneys, especially the solos. They don't wanna pay for the software, they're on a tight budget. So as a legal bookkeeper, you're gonna often engage with attorneys, those solos that will ask you this question over and over and over again. Do I really need Clio? Do I really need LeanLaw? Do I really need practice Panther? Do I really need MyCase? Can I just do it in QuickBooks? Well, there's a lot of reasons why you would want to have the software. And a lot of times it's a conversation with the client about whether or not it's important for them to have the software, because they're going to grow into it even if they're not really ready and we could patchwork things together. It's a good conversation to have with them, but if they want to grow, they need to grow into it. And growing into it, will happen quickly for almost every single law firm I've worked with. It happens really quickly. So the most pertinent question that you can ask the attorney is, how much time do you want me to spend on the manual processes involved with just using QuickBooks Online alone? And how effective would it be to use the software that's designed to help these kinds of businesses, especially if the attorney has Trust accounting. Do we want to stay very rigid in our compliance piece? I have to say that I very rarely recommend not using the software, even if it's a personal injury firm or— and in that case, you would need it more for tracking the expense side of things. But there's lots of reasons why you want to have the software in place. So you can use QuickBooks Online Advanced. You could use it alongside of Clio or LeanLaw. It's beautiful. The combination makes it very simple. And the easiest way to describe this is, say the client gets a new client and the person's paid a retainer. There's like 12 steps. And I have— I'll provide a link in the article of how to get to the free software, the free little mini course that I created that tells you all the steps and all the items you have to set up and how all the workflows you have to set up to make this work. One misstep can make your accounting records wrong. So time savings is probably the biggest reason that you want to have LeanLaw or Clio as your legal tech software that's gonna track the trust, keep the compliance, not make you need to have so many workarounds, and get that very important 3-way bank reconciliation that you need to provide to the trust— the bar association for your client. They need to have that every month. And doing it outside in an outside spreadsheet or something is probably gonna be the way you're gonna have to go. But having the ability to pull that data down into that third piece. You won't have a third piece if you don't have the LegalTech software. So what are the challenges of manual tracking? I think the biggest challenge is time. You're going to have to create a client, create the invoice, create the items, create the retainer invoice. And then when the— when they actually do the work, you have to create the invoice to show that you did the work, that you're invoicing the client, and you got to pay that. There's journal entries involved, there's a lot of steps involved. You'll see that in that course that I created. A lot of times clients will have a desktop software over here. I actually spoke with somebody at Intuit Connect about that. They said that my client's using Timeslips, it's a desktop software. The bookkeeper is doing all the work. They don't want to change. I don't want it there because it's very, very, very difficult to track that that's exactly accurate, especially when it comes to the AR side of it, the accounts receivable side of it. So I've seen some attorneys go to free time tracking software. Usually it's free. There's a reason for it. And you're not going to get all this, all the perks that come along with the software. And that opens the door to having missed time. Missed time is money, money not, not earned or not billed for. And that's the money that you're going to save just with paying for the software. It just makes no sense. And it really will lack, put some limitations on your ability to grow your firm. So I think integrating law firm time tracking software is critical in your firm so you just don't miss time. A lot of them are going to have some AI capabilities coming up. Clio, for example, will see that you're doing work and if the time's not been tracked, it'll say, hey, I noticed you didn't bill for this and this was tracked but not billed. So those are the things you're going to be looking at. Also, when you're working with this kind of a scenario, there's a lot of pitfalls to manual processes. Maybe they use attorneys using a side spreadsheet to track this stuff, to track the trust. I've seen it where they make a trust page for each client and then they have an overview page. I've also seen it where the calculations are incorrect. It's prone to mistakes. So sometimes it's not worth saving a few pennies to really just use the software and get the data out properly. Every penny that you're trying to save here is going to be lost with time. For us on our side to do the work and using the dedicated application like Clio or LeanLaw, which is developed, created for attorneys, it's really gonna give you that perfect product that you're gonna be able to use. If you start to hire staff or other people, paralegal or anything like that, they're gonna be able to come in and see parts of it. Especially with Clio, you're gonna see the practice management side of it. It's just gonna make it so that you don't have redundancy in your record, keeping, you have data that will exactly match your accounts receivables. So that's there. And it's just really important to have the data in a nice, neat, and orderly fashion. So if you're a bookkeeper working with your first attorney client and you're finding that the client is not open to having the software, maybe just let them know that you're not going to be a good fit for me. I really want to use the software for accuracy and compliance purposes. And then give them that— send them this video so they can understand that compliance compliance and legal regulations by the bar. There are rules set by the bar. You're going to need that detail for them. If you ever have to provide that, if there's an audit, it's so critical and it's just worth peace of mind for whatever little savings. I don't know, $65 a month or whatever the software costs per user. It's worth it. So I hope this is helpful. If you are a bookkeeper new to this legal industry and you want to maybe learn a little bit more about legal bookkeeping overall, we have a course and we also have the Accountants Law Lab. It's a group that meets once a month. Once a month too. We also do— I mean, sorry, once a week. Once a month we do do open forums. So it's important to— if you want to have questions, we answer those questions one-on-one. And then you also get the ability to see all the past classes too and kind of review it. So I think if this is helpful, let me know. I'd love to hear about it on, on social media also. So until next week, we'll see you all then. Bye now.