IOLTA Bookkeeping - Top Tips

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhart.

Welcome back, everyone. This is a special one. This is like such a lan— a milestone for us in so many ways. This year is a milestone for us in so many ways. It's our 100th episode, friends.

That's amazing.

I can't believe it. It's so exciting. I can't believe that we've talked so much that we figured out how to talk about 100 different things.

Really?

And counting.

And counting. That's awesome. We've had some guests. We've learned a lot. We've had some snafus. And I don't know, we've learned what it means to accidentally not record, what it means to record and start over. Because it was not a great recording. Uh, I don't know.

I think— and I think Tiara told us we're at 8,000 downloads, a little over 8,000 downloads. That's amazing. Good job, you guys.

And she told us that in June, that'll be 2 years, like 2 years of us doing this, 2 years of us hanging out and, and, uh, learning all kinds of fun stuff together. That's pretty incredible, I have to say, because when you think about— I look at journeys of podcasts that I start to listen to, I'm like, oh, that was good, like, why did they quit? So, um, but our topic today is, is a top tip, and it's top tips on IELTS bookkeeping, or trust accounting essentially, um, which Lynda, prior to us recording, was saying this is something she always writes about on the blog. We can always see, uh, when she does certain blogs, we can always see a spike of inquiries of different types of things that are needed, whether it be coaching, all kinds of styles. And, uh, so I guess we could get started in what are our top tips, um, as far as bookkeeping with IOLTA and trust accounting.

And— Buy the software. Don't skip on the software. That's my top tip.

That's her number one. She selected one. I was gonna say, you all have one?

Don't be cheap and try to do it without the software 'cause you're gonna take more time and have more mistakes. Invest in Clio, invest in LeanLaw, invest in a platform that makes sense.

Well, don't do it because your friend told you to get that software either.

No, don't pick a software 'cause your friend said, "Hey, you ever heard of XYZ software for legal?" You know, what if they've got some crazy name, some stuff too? It's like, yeah, do your homework on your software. Make sure that you are in something that's been around like a Clio for a long time that's backed by good people, you know, like a LeanLaw that's got some good basis. It's not gonna be here today, gone tomorrow. But still, I mean, there's some software out there and I'll use Build. You know what, for an example, for a while there, they didn't do anything to that software and it was almost like a dead software. There was no competition and it didn't change. And I was like, they haven't added to it, they haven't done anything. Don't go into a software that's been, oh, it's on the roadmap. You hear, oh, oh yeah, we're gonna get to that. It's gonna be on the roadmap. Try to find something that has 85% of what you're looking for.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And invest in something that will really work. 'Cause some of them are specialized by the practice area too. I mean, you can get some, we've heard of some that are just specific to a practice area.

So, Yeah. I was doing my recertification on Clio and there's, you know, very specific markets that they serve, and there's very specific ones they don't serve, and they say that. And then there's the up-and-comers, which—

Mm-hmm.

No problem. But then I wanna know, how do you store data? How can I get data out? What, what are all the different things that we need to know, when we're building out these particular trust management platforms for our clients? And how reliable is it? And will you be around, or is it one that's just gonna get purchased and then it's gonna morph into —like you said, Lynda— a dead software.

And don't box yourself into an all-in-one if you can avoid it, because you won't be in a software that's— I mean, you'll get a software that maybe you'll do the three-way, but depending on the size— Sarah, do you agree? Depending on the size of the firm, you don't want to be boxed into something that nobody knows how to use, and then you're really stuck in that one software where you're, you know, you are just stuck. And if you're stuck with whatever can communicate to it or any apps that can get added to it, a lot of them don't. They're not QuickBooks, so they don't—

A closed loop system.

They have a closed API. Yeah. I mean, you really want to make sure that you've got a software that's able to help you grow. Because if you do, a lot of times attorneys don't realize they get— they come to us and they're like, I don't know my growth. I don't know how it's going to be. And all of a sudden, whoa, you really grew. You bring it up. And show them on the screen like, this is where you were last year at this time and this is where you are this year. It's like, oh, I knew I was busy. I didn't realize I was that busy. And it's, it's, it's nice to see. But also they should be aware that with growth and adding employees and all that, you want to consider all those things. You're not boxed into— I mean, even if you're using Intuit Payroll, you don't be boxed in there. At least you have choices. So if you don't like it, you can go to, you know, Gusto or ADP. You have options because Intuit doesn't make you stay with their payroll. So know that there's options out there for others, other sources that you could use, other reporting. If the reporting is lacking in QuickBooks or lacking in your tool, you can add other tools on top of it. So you want to have that ability to flexibility, really what you're looking at.

Flexibility for sure. Steve?

I like that a lot, Lynda. That's, that's— no, I really like that, the closed loop verbiage. I mean, um, and also, you know, using a good accountant/bookkeeping company to help you with your three-way trust reconciliation. Don't hide under the rock when it gets out of balance. And one of the things that you need to realize is if you're using some of these different softwares, let's say like a LawPay, Confido, you know, all of that for payments, realize that sometimes when a payment comes into one of those platforms, it's automatically posted in like your Clio or your LeanLaw, you know, it can travel over before it hits the bank. And so that's a float situation that you have to deal with and kind of embrace that and be aware of it.

You mean the bank balance in the— The QuickBooks balance don't have to match?

Well, they should, but you should have a method in place for, you're right, Lynda, you should have a method in place for tracking that float so that you can actually prove the balance and keep yourself sane and protect the money. And don't, top tip that I love is don't spend that money the minute you get it. Don't, you know, they, a lot of times I've seen attorneys take the money in by check even if it's through Confido, Loppay, whatever, ClioPay, you know, it's a check that comes in, but it hasn't cleared the bank yet, and they're already earning the funds and taking it before it even clears the bank. I see that a lot, you know, and I always have to stop them and say, "Don't do that because something could happen here. Wait until that check is bona fide cleared the bank." Well, I would say go back to your regulations.

What does your state—

Exactly.

Require you to have in clearance? The recommended— most have like a 3, 7, 10-day rule depending on the type. And we have seen fraud in ACH, we've seen fraud in U.S. Postal Service money orders, we've seen fraud in cashier's checks. I mean, it sounds weird to say that, but we've seen it. We've seen fraud in— I'm going to give you X amount of money as a client, and then I'm gonna have you pay me back X because I overpaid you. There's a myriad of things that we've seen, and I'm not going to say we've seen it all because we haven't. I'm sure there's something new coming.

The other thing too, don't— if you did earn the money, you got to move it over into operating and show it as income.

You can't let it sit in trust and not let it age in trust.

You can't have it be there as a cushion.

You can have a little cushion if you're— if your regulations— again, your regulations, right? Um, nothing, nothing makes me smile when I see— we see something happening in a client file and then Sarah's right to the, you know, the bar rules and Here you go. Here's what your rules say. You know, we really need to discuss this, but here's your rules. And, you know, to be compliant, this is what your rules are. We were just talking about California and the changes in California because that attorney, that attorney made a lot of— because of what he did, there's a lot of changes now in place in California. And if you are an attorney practicing in California, you better go back and look at the new rules because it seems like they started out trickling in a couple of years ago and it's gotten more and more in depth where There's a lot of rules in place.

You have some compliance things you have to sign off. Yeah, you have some compliance. You, if you have a non-California trust account, there's rules and regulations supporting that within— there's multiple things when I looked at it. The one thing I will say, going back to practice management, and this came up for us with a client, is, well, why would I need Say Clio, if I'm doing it over here. Well, okay, we need a proper ledger of every account if you have a pooled style account. So if you have a pooled bank account, obviously you need proper ledgers to support that and those ledgers need to be absolutely clear. There are methods in which we've seen other accounting professionals use. We have a particular method that we prefer to use because it's easier for us to balance it and ensure that we're seeing and tracking uncleared items, items that have cleared for the wrong amount, banks have transposed things, banks have over-cleared things, um, banks have not cleared the right interest in the quarter if they're quarterly interest. There's a multitude of things. And so with that, you still need the practice management software to ensure that you're tracking the revenues and/or the trust if you're just using for— making sure that you're tracking that with accuracy to support the items that we follow in the bank account. Because we're gonna— we're just gonna follow the money and the sub-ledgers that need to be there. And there are items that we have of late seen where we have got specialty style banks that want to denote the different names and have the interest earned in the different ways, and they have a pooled style account, and they have the sub-ledger style account that we have to follow the metric in the way that it's built. We can't just circumvent it, try and create a whole new system in parallel just because the bank software does X. We have to make sure that we're balancing it. People make mistakes, they do math wrong.

They do. You have to follow it. It's got to balance. And if it's done as a different style and it's not the whole pooled thing and it's separated out, you have to mirror that on the books because if you're audited, it all comes down to the audit. So you put yourself in a position of being audited and you want to be able to comply with what the regulations are. And if you can't comply and you're trying to, you know, do the quick way, you're going to find out that they're not going to be too happy with you. And that's the problem we have that we're up against is, and I'm always amazed at how many bookkeepers do not do the 3-way bank reconciliation for their clients. Like when we have a client, we ask them, do you have a proper— when was the last proper 3-way that you've had? Don't even know what we're talking about sometimes.

Well, Lynda Artesani, isn't it just what's over here in this thing? Doesn't that software do it for me?

Well, and you know, we talked, we talked about this in the Law Lab last Friday. Two different scenarios I think we should touch on. Remember we talked about individually transferring each client's trust balances at the bank to the books.

Yes.

And then the subject came up of, well, what if I've got a law firm client that has, you know, 300 trust accounts and each month we want to do a bulk transfer? And the answer to that was then let your accountant do all of the backend work on that and come to you and say, "Now you can transfer, you know, $27,310, and here's the ledger for it," you know, to prove it and so on, and tie that down in the books. Because how many times have we stumbled into trust cleanups that we're hired to do, and we see those batch transfers being done to keep their cash flow going, and all of a sudden it gets away from them, and they're in trouble, and then they come to us and say, "I need help." Yeah.

And it doesn't equal no matter what you do.

It doesn't equal, right?

Sitting in undeposited funds. It's like we had one where a client said, well, I transferred that money. I actually knew what that was when I did it, but I can't remember what the number was or how I came up with that number.

Can't remember things that you did last week, honestly.

And it was like a year ago thing. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, we'll, we'll help you figure that out, I guess. But, you know, I mean, it's That's the thing with doing it pooled and grouped. But if you have a method and you have a workflow, you can do the grouping and it's a work— but you got to have a workflow and you got to tie out those numbers. Like, I like to do it with LeanLaw because you can pull it down, you can pay it with trust. There's a whole page, just show the trust ones, pay it with trust. It gives you a total at the bottom. And once it's processed, that's what moves over to QuickBooks. When you make the deposit in QuickBooks, that should equal what you just saw on that screen. Exactly.

Yeah. And then same thing, same thing in other software.

Transfer that amount. If they don't transfer the amount you tell them to and they transpose a number, now you've got a problem and you have to fix it.

See, I think it's the same thing in other softwares, but like you said, it's a process and such a good tip and point to bring up, Steve, because we have seen, all three of us have seen the innocence of that wasn't my intention.

Exactly, the innocence. The poor people have gotten themselves in trouble, not intentionally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah. But once they get in trouble, they're— you have them as a client. They've already gotten in trouble once for a legitimate mistake, and then they come to you. They're panicked and terrified. They don't wanna ever get another— have another mistake.

Yeah.

And it, you know, maybe we weren't involved in the original mistake, but now we're compliant for them. And they actually usually the better clients because they're so concerned about errors that—

Yeah. You're right.

You know, that everything's right. But it can happen really easily. We're just typing the wrong number in when they make the transfer. I mean, That's a simple piece that could happen wrong.

When we're in those big messes, Lynda, what don't we do with banks as the client?

We don't go to a new bank, just start over.

There you go. Exactly. I love it when you— you're so passionate on that one.

We've seen it so many times. I'm like, oh, or change software.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Recommended by a professional liability— by a bar. To say, well, why don't you go ahead and just change, you know, start everything fresh and then go ahead and clean that up? Well, that advice is not interpreted that way, friends. That is not what's happening in their brains. They hear, oh, I just start a new account and I'm— And I've got this other one over here.

You got to be careful when you start a new account because once you— what's hanging out there? Because if you— we had that happen with one of our clients. They thought they knew exactly to the penny and they closed one account and moved it over. And don't you know, some old check got cash that everybody forgot about.

Oh no.

Maybe they thought they stopped payment on or something, and then that threw it into arrears. The trust account in arrears, automatic trigger of an audit. And I mean, and they went through an audit and they passed with flying colors because everything was legit, but still scary, still stressful for the client. Nobody wants an audit, even if it's a random one. No one wants an audit. They're time-consuming. And yeah, I mean, that's all part of— that's why they try so hard when you meet them, like, try to get around having to use the trust accounts. Because they don't want to have to. If they can do it without going into the trust account area, they would love to do that because they don't want to end up in that place.

So I think in there, in like kind of summarizing a few tips, is obviously when you're closing a trust account, you do your due diligence of anything uncleared and you write a formal letter to the client stating there is a new check with a new account just to offer an opportunity to get their money out of the correct account. I feel like the other thing that we were saying earlier was avoiding common pitfalls in the reconciliations or in the money movement is be very clear about reviewing those numbers, having a second pair of eyes. I mean, we see this all the time. 3 AM, you're doing the books.

Yeah.

You're staying up until 11 o'clock trying to get this stuff done. And the, the last tip is that I recall earlier was Steve, you were alluding to, don't take the funds before they're earned. In the sense of like making sure the money hits the bank account, sits in there, the proper amount, the presented bill gets out, and you take the funds at that point. Because—

Exactly.

These are areas that sadly are such common sense things, but are typically the areas that we see in addition to transposing or taking money from one account to the other if you're transferring and putting them in the wrong buckets, like you transferred it the wrong way. You like— there are a myriad of ways that money transfer has happened. So you have to be clear on that first point of how you move money and the accuracy of the number that gets moved over.

Okay, ladies, what about personal injury law firms loaning money on future settlements?

I'm keeping my mouth shut.

That comes through trust. I'm just going to throw that on the table, and I'm turning my mic off.

Well, I mean, it happens, right? And there's plenty of loan companies out there that will loan them money to loan to their clients because—

That's what—

yeah.

Or they take it out of their operating account. We really shouldn't be doing that. Everybody knows they'll have these personal injury things. That's why they do fairly well, is they get settled before they ever get to court, usually. So they're kind of hedging their bets. But if they lose the case, then they're out the money. So, and I'm sure it's in their language of their agreement with their client what they're doing. Uh, I would hope. But I mean, that's just a thing. You know, the other thing too, if you're listening and we're talking about trust accounts, uh, trust accounting, I think if you're a bookkeeper, you need to make sure, especially because one of the other things they do is they put it in the wrong bank account. Sometimes they accidentally deposit it in the wrong bank account. How do you handle that? Because it needs to be moved over. If you're a bookkeeper doing legal accounting, you should never click transfer funds. Even if QuickBooks tells you that in the bank feed, don't use the transfer button because it's not going to work, especially if you're trying to fix that.

Any ledger, any ledger, Lynda. I mean, not just QuickBooks.

I thought they were going to take that away.

Xero is different in that way as well.

I thought QuickBooks was gonna take that feature away and they never did. 'Cause that was a, one of our bigger complaints was that, hey, this transfer thing's not working. And can, and they talked about it and it never happened. But, um, yeah, there's quite a few things you'd wanna do. I mean, and just, just the opening, I think one of the things that trips up a lot of bookkeepers, and we've seen this when we do cleanups, is the client puts $100 in to start the bank account. How is that posted? 'Cause you, you see it and it just shows the transfer.

Yeah.

And it never can balance because the money has to be taken out of the legal income that they've earned already because that's where that income came from. And then you put it in the bank on the trust side. You have— it's like two, two transactions. You can't throw that in with a transfer as easy as that seems. And you are transferring it over, but you have to show it in a liability account to show that that money exists because you're gonna tally it up. And that $100 is part of that overall big grouping of money that's sitting in that account. You have to make sure you're compliant there. Or IOLTA interest is the same thing, even though that comes in and out. How many times have you looked on the books of some new client and you'll see it as interest expense and interest income? Okay, that didn't really have an effect if it's in the same month, but what if it's not in the same month? We've seen that too. You gotta put it in a liability account for it to be held, to be accounted for. And sometimes the bank doesn't take it back.

Mm-hmm.

I've got one client, it's like 32 cents and he's, and this happened in COVID. I said, you gotta let them know that they didn't sweep the 32 cents. I'm not gonna go down the bank and fight about 32 cents. I said, well, then it's gonna sit on your list of stuff. I think you're obligated to do that, to tell them.

I agree.

32 cents. But I mean, I can't— you can lead a horse to water, you can't make them drink. And I get it. I wouldn't wanna go to the bank. Yeah. For 32 cents either. You have to make an appointment nowadays to go to the bank to get that straightened out or call on the phone. And that's not, not a fun thing. So yeah.

Yeah. Well, if you're a new attorney, learn those trust laws, look them up at your regulatory agency that has the oversight on the trust accounting in your state, your county, however it's done where you practice. And like here in Colorado where I'm at, I love our regulatory agency that takes care of all this because they have a website that actually shows preferred trust account banks, the banks they really want you to use. And then they have the list of the other ones that actually do take trust accounts.

A lot of places do that. I mean, we have that here. I mean, there's a lot of places.

There's a big difference in those two tiers of banks though.

There is a big difference, yeah.

But any attorney you've ever talked to that's just starting out and has to go get those accounts, that is not a quick thing. You can't go online and set up an IOLTA trust account. You actually physically go to the bank.

There's a process.

Yeah, there is a process to it, exactly. And we've seen a, we had this happen to us about a year and a half ago where we recommended particular national bank and their process changed and we found out and it took several extra weeks and I was like, oh, that's good for us to know. I mean, because that's our preferred method, you know, if you want to use a local bank too, we, we try to advise on the business side to be business smart savvy. But, um, the thing that's interesting, going back to California's changes, I mean, part of your annual renewal is you're going through these CLEs and you're going through these requirements to renew your— let's say you're multi-jurisdictional, you have rules in one state, it's different than your rules in your primary state. And what's interesting is, is you as the attorney are filling this out, but it does impact those of us that are doing the work, and it'd be worthy to share that data or information.

Exactly.

And I would say that to the same tune to the bars.

Yeah.

You really need to make it accessible to those of us that specialize in these areas or are seeking that information so that we can easily access it to support the proper formats in which you prefer these methods to be offered. And I do find that we tend to come up with a closed-loop system sometimes where we can find as much as we need to, but we're going back and relying on the attorney record basically to help us navigate jurisdictional rules. And so I would say my biggest ask is we are so true about transparency at— when we're serving this profession, we really want to support this in the right way. Help us do that. Help us make sure that we're honoring that the correct way. We see a lot of unintentional moments. It's business in the end, friends. People are doing business. You just have this added layer piece. Help us maintain this accurately and have the transparency support that because we want the clients in the end to be happy with the tracking of their money. That ultimately it's their money. We're just serving it on a different way. So, um, that's— I feel like that's something I'm asking of the bigger picture. But to our point, we have bookkeepers that do this work and we have attorneys that we work with, and this this is to both, to all of it. We, we also want to make sure we're setting up a system that's supporting you and has accurate monthly closes. To your point, Lynda Artesani, a three-way. And to your point, Steve, make sure that you're aware of which style banks you should be banking with to support you having the right information with that jurisdiction. So yeah, I, I do feel strongly that we could, as a team of, on the accounting side, ask a little bit more to make it easier for us to help maintain these things and not just rely on, well, it's just software. Software does it for you. I couldn't believe when somebody said this to me.

Yeah.

The CPA said this to me and I said, twice now, and I said, I'm sorry, there is so much wrong with that statement. I can't begin to tell you. You're relying on a human being putting in information. You're relying on a bank who can make mistakes. We've seen it. We saw a bank make a huge mistake recently, cash a check for an extra zero behind the number, not the $700. Cash it for $7,000. Takes 2 weeks to get fixed. Those mistakes can happen. And that's not software.

Some mistakes you find, Sarah, we find with clients when we start a project list and we bring it to the client and we need this money and really clearly move, transfer from operating trust to correct this issue that there was wire fees or whatever. And then you go back to the client a month later and they haven't done all the things you asked them to do. And now the list is growing. And at that point, they're out of compliance and you have to kind of get back to them and they, oh, I'm really busy. You know, I'm, I'm on vac— I just came back from vacation. I'll take care of that. And then they don't. So you have to have like a, if you're a bookkeeper, have a project list, have a checkbox, you know, do and check 'em off across, you know, Yeah. Right through them as they're completed. So that way you can follow up that with the work because how else are you gonna be able to balance if you've got these hanging things? And sometimes there's quite a few hanging things when we get where Sarah and I get into checking with the client and looking at what the staff is showing and you see this and you're like, oh, and there's certain clients that just constantly have to be on and remind that you've got to do this. You know, you haven't done it. You got to do this. Well, once in a while pop in and go, hey, nice to see you. Well, that's quite a hefty project list. You still got there? Oh, yeah, yeah, I know. I've been— oh, it's not, you know, enter bookkeeper's name fault. She's been reminding me of that for weeks, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Well, get around to it. It's 2025 now. I know you want to say—

Yeah, don't cross a year again, right?

Right. Don't let it go for a year. If you ever get in trouble, you don't want to be in trouble. So I mean, those are the things that—

I have one more thing I want to add in here too. This just came up this last week. This is not a political statement, but this is a realistic thing. Our government is cutting many agencies, staffs, those sorts of things. And the news came out on the post office the end of last week. Our Postmaster General resigned after 5 years and there are new rules and requirements on the flow of the mail and how often you'll be receiving it depending on where you live, how long it will take for that mail to get to you. And they do have certain requirements that they have to cover. But I'm just bringing that up because if you're an attorney, especially listening to this podcast today, be aware that if you're still dealing with lots of manual checks in— Snail mail. Snail mail. Yeah, you're— you really need to take a look at that. And back to our point on the software, you guys, you know, really embrace the software. Parentheses, softwares that will help you do all of this and automate the payment system for you to increase your cash flow.

So I can't, I can't believe how many law firms still print and mail out things and get checks because they don't want to get paid by a fee when you have to wait for— I don't— I think that's already happened at my post office because I'm lucky if I get mail twice a week here and it comes in big giant stacks. It's like, oh, you not been putting it in every day.

Right. And that's going to increase. You know what?

In today's world, I could live I'm really just getting my mail twice a week. I don't really— I mean, it's junk most of the times. It's just junk or mail from the state of Oregon. Yeah, yeah, they like to send me paper.

They love to send paper, which is so funny. That's interesting, Steve. I just— you bring up a valid point in general, in most— like when we go to pay taxes, when we go to handle things, I always, as our clients, like Lynda and I, make sure you do that online. So that you're not mailing a check for the most part. Sometimes you do have to mail a check and it feels kind of different.

Have you ever had somebody say to you though, oh, check is safer? And it's like, no, your account is on that.

Or think about bill pay. Bill pay is a check method. I had this conversation with someone recently where it's like, bill pay is— they're like, oh, I thought it was just going from bank to bank. I'm like, no, how would they know that?

No, some of them are checks.

Physical check, right? I understand the need to have things centralized too. I get it. But that's a really interesting point and something, yes, we should be aware of in this current market of things are changing rapidly, just like we've seen things change rapidly when we adopted the cloud, with AI, with all of these things.

Well, think about that, you know.

Yeah.

Golly, cloud came out, remember how scared everyone was and, oh my God, what is this? And, you know.

Yeah, the internet came out, see?

Right, right.

I don't know if I wanna put my stuff out there. Is it safe? I mean, those are all the same questions we're asking with AI too.

Yeah.

All the same things. I think we're more— I think this will be an easier adoption because of the fact that we already did the cloud and all of that was a big deal. I remember how many times— I can't tell you how many times moving to Florida, I had to explain what the cloud was.

Yeah.

To people.

Well, and while you're talking about AI, friends out there, do not go into AI to research something and say, oh, ABC Company sent us a $10,000 retainer check and we need to know how to do this and how to do blah, blah, blah, blah. Don't do that. Don't put their name out there. Don't put the dollar amount out there. Be very generic.

Or their documents in there.

Yeah.

Unless you're paying for the software and you're protected and you've got the box checked that says, don't use my data.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right, right.

So true.

You have to pay for that. It's not free.

I feel like the tips, there's so many more. I mean, we have other, we're just talking about IOLTA, but there's so many more. So many more items that can come into play with this.

Episode 200, we'll cover that.

Episode 200 will be done by AI and it'll just not be us. Oh my God.

It'll be our AI robots on the screen, I guess.

Because we've just, we've had, you know, 100 episodes, I'm gonna do my balloons.

Oh. How did you do that? Oh, you picked it up.

You didn't just grab it. Yeah, you can just, but you can do this if it'll work.

If it works, but it doesn't always work. I might have had it off.

I don't know. I've had to press my buttons lately or put fireworks.

I've had to press my buttons lately.

Well, I'm proud of you guys and I love our podcast. Just love you guys.

Oh, confetti. That's a good one. Yeah, like little sparklers. Ooh, look at you.

I found my buttons.

For those of you just listening, we're using our little emojis on our Apple computers.

Yes.

You have to have an Apple.

I did a little horn.

You did a little horn.

I love it. But thank you both. It's such an honor to fulfill a dream, but do it with some people I adore and love and have some good times talking about, I mean, a lot of things accounting related. 100 episodes. We still have more to go. There's so much out there.

And it does change a lot. I mean, I'll never forget the day I decided I'm going to do a blog post a week on software for attorneys. And I was like blown away, like, oh my God, I could do this for years and never hit them all up. There's a lot of different software out there. You just got to do your homework and find somebody that knows what they're doing.

We owe a big thank you to Tiara for all she does.

Yes, Tiara. I wish we could— I know she's in the woods right now, but if we—

Tiara, jump in with us for a minute.

She's our girl. Yeah, jump in.

Jump in, Tiara. Show us your beautiful face.

So people can see you say the "off" thing. Look, she's like—

There she is. You know, Tiara told us, oh, how many, maybe 7 or 8 months ago, that we were being watched in like 7 countries or something. And this morning you shared 8,000 downloads, um, or uploads, whatever. And, and I'm like, wow, thank you to everybody that listens to this podcast.

Thank you.

But you know what, Tiara, you keep this thing going, and thank you for all that you do.

He whips us into shape.

He does.

Yeah, keeps us on schedule.

How many times has she chased us down?

Story of her life in general.

Background check in everyone's calendars, just making sure they can make a podcast recording for the week.

Yeah, we've played around with the dates. We've done all kinds of things.

She sends Steve a Zoom link every Monday.

What's that?

She sends you a Zoom link every Monday.

I know, bless her heart, to 2 email addresses to make sure I'm happy.

And he still texts me and asks if we're meeting that day.

No, I haven't done that for a while.

He's always the first one here. Usually.

I'm usually the first one here because I don't want to get in trouble.

This is fun. This is one of my favorite, one of my favorite jobs that I do for you guys.

So I love to be a part of it.

Well, thanks all for, for being a part of this, our journey, and listening and having fun with us. And, and please, you know, keep giving us feedback on things that you want to learn, things that we should talk about, we need to discover. I mean, that really helps us. It it kind of creates a fun part in our minds because like, oh, that's a challenge, let's go figure out what that means. So please send in your requests, we, we enjoy them, and, um, we'll tailor it to that. So, all right, you want to go live with your, uh, outro?

Wow, first time. To support the Accountants Law Pod, don't forget to like, share, and leave a review. And if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button on YouTube or wherever you enjoy your favorite podcast. Casts. If you have questions or topic requests, shoot us an email at info@accountantslawpod.com or send us a message through our website, accountantslawpod.com. To join our weekly Accountants Law Lab mastermind sessions, head over to accountantslawlab.com to sign up.

I have a question for you, T. Yay, I want to do it! Yeah, hearts and love. I have a question for you. Are there like some episodes that you have liked or there's little things that you've created, shorts that you've created, that we should like kind of put together as a little series of fun things to post, like funny moments that we've done.

Oh, you want to do that? I had like outtakes of—

Oh man.

Me popping in and being like, guys, I didn't hit record.

That wasn't a fun day.

That was a fun—

That only happened a couple of times.

Or silly conversations. But yeah, I could probably make a fun compilation of I think it would be fun just to celebrate us and this moment for all of us.

I mean, it's all of us that are a part of this. So I appreciate some kind of something fun and enjoyment because we laugh a lot on this thing. My cheeks hurt sometimes after this.

Usually before we go live. But yeah.

And then we get all serious. We're like, okay.

Huge shout out to our editor who I send him these recordings and I say, "Hey, can you cut from 0:00 to 38:55?" And that's when the actual episode begins because he has to wait for—

He does a great job too. Really big shout out. He's— Yes.

Thank you, Lilo. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yeah. I see your emails come across my email once in a while. So— Well, thank you all. And—

We'll see you on 101.

Yeah, bye-bye!

Next time, bye-bye!