Move from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online with legal add-ons like LeanLaw to automate IOLTA bookkeeping. Use merchant services like LawPay and Confido instead of checks, and stay current on regulatory changes through ALA webinars and the Fast-Track Legal Bookkeeping course.
Chapters
So if you've been following me through these series of videos, there's 3 of them. This is the 3rd one in the series. And we're gonna talk more about not just for IOLTA bookkeeping, but the tools and the software to make an efficient processing of the IOLTA account. So legal professionals can access various tools. So the attorneys use very, they use their own set of tools, their subset of tools to do and manage their work, make their work more efficient. And really what we're looking for is accuracy and efficiency. Those are the 2 things, and you get that with the software. You take out the human element for the most part, and you get more efficiency, and you get everything streamlined. The processes are quicker. For example, if you picked up LeanLaw as that accounting tool to help the billing for your attorney, they enter the name of the client and all the details. Who's the lead attorney? You know, the, the originator and the, the worker bee, and they put all that in and that gets pushed into QuickBooks. All the accounts are made with one click on their side. That takes that off of our plate and they stay the same. They're accurate. So we've got an accurate accounting there. That's the stuff that you want to have happening in your files. You don't need to be in QuickBooks Desktop. It's 2024 as I'm recording this video, and there's really no need for anybody to be in QuickBooks Desktop at this point. The software is there, the add-on software is— remember, QuickBooks is an accounting platform for all. And I always say that the software is like putting the business suit, the attorney's business suit on top of QuickBooks to make it legal specific. That's why you really want to have QuickBooks Online to automate the processes. There's so many things you can add on. I looked the other day at our workflow and somewhere it's in one of these videos. You look at the software we use at our firm and there's a lot of software that we add to our, our day-to-day. We wanna be that tech-forward person. We just came back from Scaling New Heights and people were very fearful of AI and a great quote that was put on by one of our friends at Digits, which is another software you should really look into. It, it said in the quote, if you're afraid of AI, you shouldn't be afraid of AI. You should be afraid of any accounting professional that knows how to use and implement AI. So the fear shouldn't be around the technology. It should be around the fact that you need to stay on top of these technologies. To really push your firm forward to be tech, tech ready, right? You want to be that cutting-edge accountant and bookkeeper. At least I know I do. You don't want to stay in the past with QuickBooks Desktop and Timeslips. That is just the most clunkiest system. Yes, it worked 10, 15, 20 years ago. It's just not part of what you should be using as an accountant or bookkeeper in 2024. That's my opinion, but that's how I see desktop. I mean, QuickBooks Desktop, they're not selling it anymore. That should be your first red flag that you need to get into something more modern and automated. So you want to be that modern bookkeeper. You want to be that dedicated legal accounting. You want to use dedicated legal accounting software, and you want to use that to use the specialized functions for managing the client funds. You want to be able to have the clients, the clients stay in their, in their attorneys or staff attorneys stay in the billing software where we keep QuickBooks very pristine. We kind of keep them out of the accounting piece. That's going to make your workflow a lot better, more efficient. And then there's a lot of tools in that software to help with repetitive tasks. So it's a way to help reconciling repetitive tasks. It's— that's going to become more and more smarter. So those are the things you're going to be looking at as AI starts to take off. And so you want to reduce your errors, reduce the time involved in tracking this, this work, and leverage technology so that you can optimize your law firm workflow. I think that's the most important. Somewhere in the articles, the archives, you'll see our workflow. I made a beautiful Lucidchart for that. So for sure you want to look at that and take a look at the software that we use. The other place that you can be— see, even my computer agrees with me. The other place you can look is merchant services. So clients should really look at— Attorney-client should really look at not having the checks written and sent to the office and manually processing the check payments. Taking those checks, opening them up, stamping them. The office has to take it to the bank or do it through a check, right? A check depositor. You don't wanna be doing that anymore. We need to be in a place where you have merchant services, that you have a way that the client can pay you like that with a credit card. If you're not doing that, you're missing out on a big piece of automation where you're producing less friction in the whole workflow of accounts receivable. I've seen cash flow improves 40% better when the clients implement credit cards. We love the folks at Confido, which used to be called Gravity Legal. There's so many options. That product is superior to any other product on the market as far as you want to be able to set up a way if you have clients that pay by, by a system of paying monthly or anything like that. They've got all that covered. It's just a really good interface, great people behind the product. I highly recommend using Confido. But you, I know some clients have AR-based products. They might use QuickBooks Merchant Services as well for the AR side. But when it's trust, you wanna stick to like Confido, LawPay, ClioPay if you're using Clio, ClioPay, one of those to make sure that you keep that process free of being able to be broken and keep it very transformative and keep it very clean. So as you're trying to track the money, you wanna keep it frictionless for the customer. Your law firm's customer, but you also want it to be secure. You want it to be handled properly. You can help your client by letting them know that you know about these products, learn about them, and then assist them in getting that implemented. They may hit you up with, oh, I don't wanna pay any of those fees. Those merchant fees are high. Products like, uh, Confido will actually let you charge that fee back to the client, to the— their client will pay, pay the fee if they're paying by credit card. Mm-hmm. I always tell them just kind of raise your rates enough to cover it because it looks a little cheap when you do that. But some firms, they really want to do it that way. So I would say definitely if you're going to get into that part of working with your client, this is good advisory conversations that you can have with them. And then the other thing you can do as an IOLTA bookkeeper is really learn more about the legal industry and legal bookkeeping. Take the webinars. There's a lot of them that are out there for— that are coming from places like the ALA, the Bar Association has a lot of them. Get on those lists. Clio does some, LeanLaw does some. Cosmolex, MyCase has some really good ones. There's so many places you can find where they'll maybe talk about law firm finances. A lot of them, like MyCase and Clio, actually do these legal studies and they do, they get a pulse of what the, what's out there and what the trends are for the legal industry. Learn that stuff, read it, absorb it. That's going to set you at a higher space above any generalist bookkeeper. You're going to know what you're talking about. We also have a course if you really are new to this, this type of work, Fast Track Legal Bookkeeping. Take that course really quick. You'll get to know what you need to know to hit the ground running with your first law firm client. And then the other thing is to make sure that you stay compliant with the IOLTA regulations. They change. We just had a couple of years ago a big change in the state of California. So you really want to stay on top of it. Be that smart bookkeeper that knows the changes before the attorney even knows them. Really stay on top of it for the compliance piece. Know what you need to do. And then as you start to have these relationships, the one thing that I can tell you about working at this level, it's going to require you to talk to your client. I know a lot of us, a lot of us are introverts when we come to being bookkeepers or accountants, and we don't like to have those conversations. We just want to put our head down and just do the work and not really talk to the client. You really have to do that. You have to talk to the client, have conversations about compliance, have conversations with them about communicating with what's going on in the file, what you see. Give them that benefit of being with somebody that knows the financial side of things. Attorneys don't really like that work, and they live in a world of words, and if you help them with the number side of everything, they will think you're the best bookkeeper around, and they will keep you will stay in that job for life if you can provide that extra value that they just don't get from the regular bookkeeper that's just doesn't have that specialty or that back knowledge. So I think that if you found this interesting and intriguing, feel free to reach out to us. We've got so many opportunities at the Accountants Law Lab. Look on the website. We have coaching, we have courses. So feel free to check us out and read all our blog posts. They're free. And until next time, we'll see you all next week. Bye now.
