Linda Artesani reviews TrustBooks, a cloud trust accounting tool for lawyers. It costs $39/month solo or $129/month with CPA oversight, handles deposits, payments via LawPay, and bank reconciliation. It's simpler than Clio or LeanLaw and works standalone without QuickBooks integration.
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Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. I'm going to continue with reviewing some of the attorney-specific software. And for this week's post, it's going to be about TrustBooks. And I almost feel like I took a week off with this one because it's a very basic software. I think that's the main feature of it is that it's very basic and simple. So it's really simple for an attorney to use. I want to try to take off my accountant glasses and look at this from the lens of being an attorney, because I think that the reason behind this software— it was created by a CPA who probably sees what I see all the time. When you meet with an attorney that maybe just started out, they're either handwriting their, their notes and they're keeping track of their trust accounting on a notepad, or they're using Excel. And those are 2 ways that you almost want to go, oh my goodness, because it's, it's how things can be made. It's really where you'll see errors, right? Anytime you do anything manually, which is why we're so big on cloud software. This TrustBooks is cloud software. So it is a login. You log into the cloud. It's web-based. It's not a desktop product. So he created this for the attorneys to use. And I think it's— I almost get the feeling that this is something that the court systems recommend to attorneys that maybe have had an audit and the audit didn't go well and their books were a little messy, because it's very basic. And basic software as opposed to like a Clio or even a LeanLaw where you've got a lot of bells and whistles and things moving around. For the accountant, we love it. But as the attorney, you just want to get in, track the trust accounting, and get out. And you really don't want to get involved in all the other pieces. And maybe you just want something simple. You don't want a practice management software. You don't want something that has calendaring or maybe has the place to save files or docketing or any of the things like last week's Software Practice Panther. Maybe you just want something simple instead of having to write down and track the trust accounts. You're tracking them in TrustBooks. So I'm going to take you to the homepage, their advertising, like I did last week. We'll go through a little bit of their advertising and you'll get a little bit of a sense of where, where this software is at and what it's for. And then we'll get into the product itself. Let me share my screen. Simplify your trust accounting. That's what their homepage says. So pretty much that's exactly what this software is for, right? And you can come down here and you'll see this ensure compliance with your state bar. Very important. You don't stay compliant, you can be sanctioned or lose your license to practice. So very, very, very important. When you're looking at your books and taking care of the trust accounts, remember, that's not your money. Easily, confidently manage your trust account. Very simple program. Automatically generate the reports you need. The 3-way bank reconciliation, really important to back up the numbers. View a software that's simplifying the way law firms do trust accounting. DIY, $39 a month. Team, $129 a month. And by team, they have a dedicated CPA that's actually looking at your trust accounting. So if you need that, You're going to pay a lot more money for that pricing. Let me take you into the software now. We'll take a look at how basic and simple it is. And if you're thinking about this particular one, you probably will be happy to see that it's very easy to use. Here we are in TrustBooks. And I've just basically set it up very simply, created a law firm name, put myself in as the attorney, created one matter, created a deposit for the matter, a couple of deposits, so you can see Pretty much what the program looks like. Dashboard, very simple, gives you what you need to know, right? So this step 1, 2, 3 would go away once you've set it all up. But I create a bank account, Bank of America. I created— you can create matters. Everything can be done right from here or from the side toolbar, kind of like QuickBooks. Sync with Clio, I believe, is for people who are coming off of Clio. And maybe that's something that was happening a lot. They saw that and they wanted to add that feature. So maybe somebody set up their books in Clio and they got very overwhelmed. It's an expensive program, Clio. It's a really good, robust practice management tool. It's expensive. You pay for it, but you're paying for all the bells and whistles. If you're trying to save costs, save money, this might be a solution if you want to get off of all of that and then manually do some of these things. This will just handle the trust accounting. You have enter deposit. It's really easy. I will take you to entering a deposit. So It's simple. I select the matter, a little more clicks than I want. I would rather see a list, but that's okay. And then maybe the person paid by check, or maybe they paid cash, and I just put the money in here. And then record the deposit. That easy. You can get transfer between matters. So if the client has more than one matter, maybe they have a divorce, or they have estate planning or whatever, if you have a larger firm, It's just moving the money from one matter to the next. Have to check with your bar to see the state rules and regulations on doing that. You might have to involve a letter and tracking it. But that is— and if it is a mistake, you can also transfer there as well. But lots of notes. Sync with LawPay. You know I love LawPay. I brought that up in many, many of the videos. It's an application where you can have a client— you can email the client an invoice. They can pay it either with a credit card or electronically. with their checking account, putting the checking account and routing number in. If they're paying by credit card, the fee will come out of the operating account and not the IOLTA or trust account. So it makes you stay— lets you stay compliant. So it's a really great app. I highly recommend it. Do you want to create payments, process a payment, print a check, paying— maybe paying yourself or paying money back to your client if you're maybe you're a PI attorney and you need to process the insurance. Maybe you won the case, the insurance money came in, you got to pay the client back, whatever the, you know, the difference is after you take your, your amount and reconcile the whole transaction, you can do it here. Miscellaneous is just managing the account firm settings. There's Report Builder, you can actually build reports there. There's not a lot of reports in there. And then reconciliation, which is very simple. So you can perform a reconciliation. I'll take you to the screen so you can see it. You just pick your month and you Put in your ending balance. And it's very similar to QuickBooks. If you had checks, they'd be on this side and you just tick them off and then reconcile the bank account. So very, very simple, very reminiscent of QuickBooks. That's it. That's the whole product. Told you this was gonna be a short video. And I thought I was kind of taking a week off here. But it's got its purpose. So it's great for attorneys that don't want complexity, they just want to track the trust accounting. The main reason you want to track that trust, trust accounting is compliance. You'll avoid mistakes using a software and using a cloud software. You can log in from anywhere, you can— it's web-based. Avoiding mistakes— handwriting is probably not a great idea. You can even use Excel, you can make a mistake in typing in the numbers. This way you can never take more funds than are allowed. And you can make sure your trust accounting is to the penny because that's really what we're looking for. Of course, if you're on a software, you want to get off of it, if it's desktop or it's something that's not working out, please reach out to us. This is our specialty. We like getting you off of systems that aren't working, maybe redundant systems or systems that just don't work in your practice. This is not a system that works with QuickBooks. So you'd have to have QuickBooks separately. So it's 2 separate things, one to track that trust account, the other to track all your accounting. There's softwares out there that integrate, you know, you hear me talk about LeanLaw and QuickBooks. It's a great marriage. It works well together. If you want to get off of a TrustBooks and into a LeanLaw and QuickBooks Scenario, reach out, saves time, saves money. If you're happy in TrustBooks, I'd love to hear from you why you love the product. I mean, it is simple. I have to say, I like simple. It's clean. It's got a pretty look to it. It serves its purpose. It's better than paper and it's better than Excel if you're tracking trust accounting. On that note, I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful week. Bye now. Bye.
