Law Firm Accounting: Resources for outsourcing and for finding help as an accountant.

Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. So today I thought I would do a post, just a real quick one because I'm traveling this week and I wanted just to speak to automation and how you can automate your business if you are a law firm or an attorney and you're smaller, say maybe a solo or solo plus one, you're just starting out. What areas can you automate? So let's face it, when you're in law school, the last thing you really learn about is how to manage your books. So obviously I'm here to tell you, you can automate your accounting. And it can be affordable if you want to work hand in hand with an accountant like myself who specializes in the legal industry and also specializes in some of the automation things. So if you can find an accountant that's not manually typing everything in and doing everything the old-fashioned way, some of the processes that we're able to develop in our firm, we're able to motivate and move the data through quicker, more efficiently, more accurately using tools like LeanLaw, Hubdoc to really get the process going. Also, another piece of the pie here. So this is what the article is about, is a piece of the pie. One of the pieces of pie, if you think about it in the scope of maybe you're an accountant that you're watching my videos, I have a lot of accountants that watch my videos and you're just starting out working with a law firm and you're like, I don't even know where to begin. I don't know where to find good information. So I just wanted to promote a little bit here, my Facebook group, the one I co-admin with Matthew Fulton. Because I'm in the Facebook group, I'm able to help a lot of people who need help. I'm actually in the beginning of— I'm in the middle of mentoring someone about this, and we post the videos of the mentorship in our group as well. And we also— Matthew mentors, and we also help everybody, and the people in the group help each other. So we've got some really great people. Matthew and I are fortunate that we're involved with a lot of groups and we're involved with a lot of projects with Intuit. So we are— we have a lot of friends that have been around the pike for a while. They've been here, they've been doing this for a long time, and they're a great source of information. They're in our group and they're very willing to jump in and answer questions. So we are very fortunate. I know a lot of you are very close friends of mine. In my heart, just like, thank you so much for helping. the people in our group, because that's what we created the group for. We wanted people helping each other. And, you know, Matthew and I both didn't have a job. We'd love to just sit and answer questions on the Facebook group, but we both run businesses. It's a little hard. So it's nice to be able to say that our group is helping each other. We just hit the 600 mark in our group. It's growing. It's a really happy place. So I'm going to share my screen, share where our group is and the name of it and what it looks like. And then also show you a way that you can kind of look around for other Facebook groups that maybe even become a lead source for you. If you are doing what I'm doing and you're just in— and you, anybody, any business doesn't have to be law. I'm going to show you how to do it for law. But maybe if you are not in law and you're in construction, you're an accountant that works with construction companies or whatever, you can go in here and look for the same way I'm doing it for a law firm. So let me share my screen. So here we are in our group. It's a quick— it's QB Community Live. You can see the name up here. You can certainly find us, join our group. It's a public group. And you can ask questions. We've got lots of content here. As you come down here, you can see the different things that it's here. I post my blog posts here every week. We just did a Facebook Live, which is a lot of fun and it was informative. It was on QuickBooks Online Advanced product. We kind of deep dived into the different segments and the features that are really cool in it. Yeah, so we have a lot of different things in here that we try to keep the group motivated. We have fun on Sundays with some Sunday Funday, and some of those get really big. I was in a webinar for Lean Law this week as well. And just, we did this week, we did what are you grateful for? So it's a fun group. But if you wanted to find groups, groups that you're looking for, like for law firms or something like that, we can come in here and just type in law firm. And there's a law firm accountants, bookkeepers. I don't want to go into that because I am in that group and it will pull the page up. So I don't want to show you, but that's an excellent resource. Amanda Aguilar is the one that monitors that. And it's, it's just all law firm and it's a lot of accountants that work in law firms that support one another. So highly recommend that group. As you can see, you can see there's some things in here, Law Firm Mentor Movement, Law Firm Marketing, Law Firm Help. You would go to that and see what pops up and you can actually ask for groups. So you can look for groups and it will bring you up some— obviously brings her group up and it brings up some other groups that will help you, but labor law and things like that, you can just do law firm, just law firms here and just join maybe a law firm group that is specific to— you might find that there's other law firm groups in here that you might want to join. Law firm marketing, if you're a law firm that follows me and you're trying to outsource things, outsource your accounting, you can call me, but outsource your marketing is definitely a place if you're a smaller firm, maybe a solo or solo plus one. That's always a way that you can stay with nice, like, tight budget and kind of control where you're at. And what I really like about kind of scrolling through here is you can see that this has 13 posts a week. So it's a pretty active group. And that might be one that I want to because it's a networking group of South Florida and I'm in South Florida. So I could actually ask to join that group. And then you might find that it'll ask you some questions. That looks like a public group. So just let me in. But some of them, they might be a private group you're not going to be able to go into. But you can see if there's 2 posts a day, that's active. You start to get down to some of the other ones, 9 posts a year, it's probably not going to be really worth being in. But yeah, you can just join some of these groups and I might be in there and I might be able to answer a question for an attorney or a law firm, a small practice that's having trouble with figuring out what, what software should they be using, for example. And then they might reach out to me and I might end up getting a job out of it. So you might want to show your expertise in some of these groups that are specific to your industry and it might be helpful for you to be able to work and get maybe a lead or a job off of it. So Facebook can be used in that way. Years ago, I always went to the Intuit Community Forum as a business owner starting out. That still exists today. But a lot of people who have been around for a while come over to the private Facebook groups because— or even our group— where, you know, you've got some people that are experts in their field that can help you directly. It's got a little bit more of a personal feeling to it. But it's up to you. But that's always a resource because there's a lot of articles. The Intuit community has a lot of articles there posted. So if you find something posted by them, and there's some good smart people in the Intuit community as well. So it's another resource, and I'll put that link into the post too. So I hope that's helpful. I know short video today, but I wanted to at least put a video out there because I'm traveling and put a post because I never like to miss my Sunday post. So I hope you have a wonderful and successful week. Bye now. Bye.