Tips to Manage your Law Firm Accounting with the Help of QuickBooks Online

I have yet to meet an attorney that loves accounting. It's a necessary evil for businesses, and unfortunately, somehow, it often ends up as a part of what entrepreneurs end up doing themselves. Suppose the attorney is bootstrapping their business and is not hiring an external party to help them with bookkeeping or doesn't have the money for outsourcing or the accounting software. In that case, they can quickly find themselves overwhelmed.

QuickBooks is the world's leading accounting software. It is more than just an invoicing tool; it is a complete accounting system. Its easy-to-use and comprehensive design supports you in your business. Law firms are more focused on providing excellent service, so having a system that makes you more efficient is a must. QuickBooks is the perfect solution for law firms because of its ease of use and powerful features. You can manage your cash flow, bill your clients, manage your employees' tasks, and much more.

Why accountants love QuickBooks

QuickBooks is an online accounting tool that simplifies and streamlines work for accountants and small businesses. Accountants and small business owners love it because it helps them save time and makes their lives easier by providing all the information needed to make accurate financial decisions.

Why attorneys should love QuickBooks too

Attorneys have that extra task of compliance and tracking trust accounting. QuickBooks Online makes this task easy, especially when you layer software like LeanLaw to make QuickBooks law specific. But the main reason attorneys will want this accounting software is that they can create incredible financial reporting if you use QuickBooks Online Advanced. With this product, you get a bonus inside, with a reporting tool called Fathom.

Smart Reporting

Fathom will help your business grow smartly. Many of the reporting features have graphs and ways to track KPIs or key performance indicators. One of my favorite tools is using goal-setting. The goal-setting feature allows you to play around in your live data and test out scenarios with raising rates and lowering expenses.

Fathom also has forecasting and budgeting built right into the system. There are many templates inside, so you don't need to have an accounting degree to make it work for your firm. Although the assistance of a good accounting firm is always recommended as we can help guide you with making good decisions on your business and your firms' growth.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)

The KPI feature allows flexibility for you to track specific metrics in your firm, like marketing and tracking some metrics, like a net promoter score. You can get very creative in selecting KPI's but be careful not to follow too many as they can make understanding the data a little more complex. We combine that with custom field tracking in QuickBooks Online Advanced and it is a win-win for the attorney and the accountant or bookkeeper.

Wrap-Up

As you can see outlined above, there are multiple reasons why you want to leave the spreadsheet behind and head over to QuickBooks Online. You can implement layers of software to automate the processes in your firm. See this article for my preferred workflow.

Cloud-based software, including QuickBooks Online Advanced, is the wave of the future. Why not hop on board the technology train and drive your firm to be future-ready today.