In this solo presentation, Linda Ardissani of Ardissani Accounting introduces the firm’s data‑migration service for law practices and previews the six sessions she will co‑teach with Sarah Prevost at the Scaling New Heights accounting conference (Oct 24‑27, 2021, Fort Worth, TX). She explains why moving legacy desktop legal accounting systems (Juris, PC Law, CosmoLex, PracticePanther) to cloud platforms such as QuickBooks Online Advanced, LeanLaw, and Clio is far more complex than a simple software switch. Key challenges discussed include selecting an appropriate migration start date, back‑building trust‑account balances, handling opening balances, cleaning up charts of accounts, and migrating large accounts‑receivable (AR) histories. Linda describes the collaborative workflow with in‑office admins, the use of tools like Dext for document capture, and how the migration process can uncover hidden revenue, improve reporting (including compensation reporting), and position accountants as strategic advisors rather than commodity bookkeepers. She promotes the Scaling New Heights conference as a high‑level educational opportunity, invites viewers to attend, and encourages law firms to contact Ardissani Accounting for migration assistance.
Chapters
Hi there, Linda Ardissani, Ardissani Accounting. This week I'm going to talk about data migration, and it's a topic that's near and dear to our heart because we do have this as a service at our firm. And I wanted to talk about it because I'm going to be speaking about it with my business partner Sarah at the conference that we are going to in a few short weeks, which is Scaling New Heights. And I was surprised— I mentioned this to our Law Lab group, and I was surprised at how many of the accountants and bookkeepers didn't even know what Scaling New Heights was. And we got into a little bit of a discussion. So if you're not familiar with Scaling New Heights, it's an accounting conference. It's held every year, and this year it's in Fort Worth, Texas on October 24th to the 27th. It's put on by the Wardard Group, and it's by far, I think, the one with the highest level of education. So you can get educated with watching some of the QuickBooks Connect. Right now that's virtual, but in-person ones was always kind of a big party. But you did have some opportunity to learn at QuickBooks Connect. But I always felt like the level of the education wasn't at that advanced ProAdvisor level. And Scaling New Heights is definitely that. I can remember sitting in the, the main stage the first year that I went, and it was in Salt Lake City. And I can remember watching Misty Mejia come up and do a speech. And she actually asked anybody who was a ProAdvisor to stand, anybody who was an Advanced ProAdvisor to stand. And I couldn't believe how many people in the room stood up. So that told me that there was a lot of people there really invested in their business, invested in their education. And that's the kind of content that's there. So if you're a bookkeeper or an accountant and you want to grow and maybe grow your firm, grow your practice, learn a little bit, it's always good to learn. Ongoing learning is always good. You might want to join us in Fort Worth. I'd love to have you. I'm going to be teaching 6 sessions there. So I'm not going to go each week I'm going to be going through what they are. And this one's all about data migration. And we have this as a service offering at our firm. And it's basically a service we've offered because it helps us to get attorneys off the antiquated systems and, and products that they use, like Juris and PC Law and desktop products, and move them to the cloud, move them to the future, move them to QuickBooks Online Advanced, move them to LeanLaw, move them to Clio. So that's what we do. And we take the data And sometimes they're in QuickBooks, sometimes they're in a PC Law and they're not. We take the data out, we make sure everything is balanced, and we put it into QuickBooks. And it can be quite the process. So data migration is basically moving data from one system to another. So we could actually move them off of like a CosmoLex, which is a system that's a full accounting system but works with attorneys, but it's really rigid and has a lot of things that's not great about it, and take them from that, or maybe a PracticePanther, and move them into QuickBooks and QuickBooks and LeanLaw, QuickBooks and Clio. So those are the things that we do. And so changing software sounds maybe simple. It's really not. It's not a simple process. There's a lot of working and moving parts and a lot of processes that happen at law firms. We've got the trust account, we've got the compliance piece. So those are the things that, you know, right away we have to dig into. We've had to move trust accounting over. Sometimes it's held in a separate place and we actually put it in the accounting. So we have one true source of data, a data point where we can track the ins and outs of the trust account to the operating account. account if the attorney's earning revenue. So some of the challenges that we run into with data migration, it can be choosing that start date. It's really critical to pick the right start date for the firm. Sometimes we'll go with going with last good tax return. It's always a good start date, but that might— you might find that when you get into the books, the last good tax return and the books are perfectly aligned. But sometimes you find out that the trust doesn't balance, and then you might have to backbuild that trust account all the way back, maybe to the beginning or the last time it was We move opening balances over, and that involves a lot of data entry because we're moving trust. We have to take all the open trust accounts and backbill those. So they're like little mini check registers for each person's money that the attorney's holding until they've earned the money, and then they move it to their own operating account. We might have to move some historical data entry, so that might involve accounts receivable. A lot of firms we work with Have a lot of open AR. And, um, when we see the big amounts of accounts receivable, we don't just put opening balances for like 15 invoices, especially like with family law or immigration law. There might be a lot of complexity around moving that over. So it's always good to have somebody who knows what they're doing. And Sarah and I are definitely going to dive deep into what we do with our processes. So if you're interested in learning this, the key about learning data migration and moving the data from one source to The workflow that you use is it's been really pivotal, pivotal in our firm because we're able to bring a client over. We'll not only bring the data over, we might find areas where it's not right. We'll align the data, and then we may set it up with the intent in mind that they're going to need certain reporting, maybe compensation reporting. And once you put all those pieces together, you'd be amazed at how the attorneys are blown away by maybe they have an admin in their firm doing this bookkeeping that doesn't really understand. accounting. And then they see what we can do, and then they'll step up and ask us. You know, we're not taking the job away from the admin that's doing the work. We work together with that admin. So we'd still— they still need that person in the office that's there in the place that may be getting the mail, putting things into— hopefully they're not getting mail with bills, but maybe collecting the source documents. And then they upload them up into our favorite software, Dext. And then we work hand in hand to make sure that this— the account stays balanced. They may do the invoicing. We do the matching of the payments and the moving of the funds in our platform, be it LeanLaw or Clio. So that's basically what I'll be teaching at Scaling New Heights. It's a long version of the description. We might go in and clean up your chart of accounts. There's so many things that we do. We might help you with cleaning up the accounts receivable. So there's a lot there. A lot of times we'll look at the firm and figure out what workflow would work best for them. We'll design a workflow. It might involve a lot of working pieces. But we take people who have been doing segmented sections of work and make it all flow smoothly. And a lot of times that will be as part of looking at how the AR is being handled in the firm or not handled so well. And we'll put a system in place to collect on some of that. So we might be able to help the law firm get in some old money that's been sitting on the books, not collected. So there's lots of reasons why you want to step into that role. This is how you're gonna step into being that unstoppable advisor by learning how to do these practices and then moving and growing and getting your firm to really accelerate and stay above the automation and the things that are happening in our industry with commoditized bookkeeping. So I hope this is helpful. I know it was just a little short video, but hopefully this will help you understand what's happening at the conference. And not only going to the conference is a lot of fun, you get to be with a lot of your friends and meet people that maybe you've been following online and have never met in person. So it's always great to have that personal touch, especially in the world we live in now. So I hope to see you at Scaling. And if not, please, if you're a law firm or just finding this video and you want to find out more about data migration, reach out to us. We will help you. And on that note, have a wonderful, wonderful week. Hit the subscribe button if you want to follow me for more, and I will see you on the next video. Bye now.
