Bookkeeping & Accounting Services for Law Firms and Legal Offices

Content

Billing and A/R Management
Stay on top of your accounting
Our Promise in Legal Accounting Services
With a Strategic Accounting Partner
Differentiating income from revenue
Always keep your trust and business accounts separate

Below, we outline common legal accounting mistakes for you to avoid. Improves Cash Flow
Modernizing how your firm accepts, tracks, manages payments is essential to boosting your law firm’s cash flow. Accounting software helps optimize your billing processes, bookkeeping, and client communication in ways that make your firm more efficient and ensure more consistent payment overall. Using digital tools to manage accounts was once seen as a convenient, but ultimately unnecessary, part of law firm operations.

Legal accounting will let you analyze and collect information to make decisions with data in mind. These numbers are based on money that is coming into your firm and leaving your firm. Drives Better Decision-Making
It’s impossible to accurately evaluate your firm’s strengths and weaknesses without real-time data. Customizable dashboards and reports let you visualize and hone in on the areas that matter most to you. A clear and comprehensive view of your firm’s performance is vital to making meaningful long-term decisions.

Billing and A/R Management

This is because a professional legal bookkeeper and accountant can help you manage your firm’s revenue and ensure your firm’s financial transactions are handled ethically and accurately. Just as your clients rely on your expertise with the law, there comes a point when you need to call in accounting professionals. Whether it means using legal accounting law firm bookkeeping software to simplify and automate your accounting, hiring a professional legal accountant, or both—don’t be afraid to delegate when you need to. Law firms need to spend extra time setting up their accounting software before opening for business. To ensure you set up to track CTAs and retainer payments correctly, engage a law accountant.

And with one error comes many more, so it’s crucial to keep things organized.
It is imperative that law firms keep their client’s sensitive information secure.
Using digital tools to manage accounts was once seen as a convenient, but ultimately unnecessary, part of law firm operations.
The asset and liability amounts should always match, making no impact on your financial statements.
In this system, all transactions are categorized as one or the other.
We recommend scheduling a time to track your finances at least weekly.
Bookkeeping is the process of recording daily transactions in a consistent way and is a key component of building long-term financial success.

Refundable retainers — where the client may have a refund for hours prepaid but not worked during the month — are what accountants call unearned or deferred revenue. The retainer fee goes into a CTA, and you can draw from it as the client approves invoices for services rendered. Cogneesol has completely streamlined our client onboarding and setup process. With client accounts being updated on a real time basis now, our income, therefore, follows a structured flow. This has given the firm’s partners good freedom to take important decisions of expansion and vertical integration.

Stay on top of your accounting

Setting and sticking to a budget is essential to keeping track of your business finances. By knowing your expenses and revenues, you can make sure that you are not spending more than you are making. In addition, using software like Clio Manage to keep your financial https://investrecords.com/the-importance-of-accurate-bookkeeping-for-law-firms-a-comprehensive-guide/ records up-to-date can be a huge time saver. Automated accounting software can help streamline the process, freeing up time for other tasks. It is important to accurately record all transactions on a daily basis in order to avoid mistakes and maintain accuracy.

Once you develop a bookkeeping system, business owners will want to consider working with a CPA or professional tax accountant around tax time to handle tax returns. While there are some outsourced services that offer this functionality, so far I’ve found that working with individuals and small accounting firms is better for this task. Here’s the list of tax accountants that we’ve vetted at the Biglaw Investor. Cash accounting is also beneficial because you can look at your bank balance at any time to understand the amount of money available. Since revenue isn’t recognized until the cash is paid, there are no income taxes until the money is in your bank account. Money leakage occurs when a firm struggles to send out invoices on time, track billable hours, and sending out late invoices.