6 Ways You Can Use QuickBooks Online Advanced for your Law Firm

QuickBooks Online is not a legal-specific accounting software, but it offers customizable full-featured accounting solutions, including the ability to create and send personalized invoices to clients, set hourly billing rates for your legal services, and process electronic payments through QuickBooks Payments. 

In this post, we’ll discuss six ways your law firm can benefit from QuickBooks Online Advanced.

1. Customize User Access Based on Roles

If you have several admin assistants managing payment collection, then you can create a custom role for each admin, which will give them access to a certain part of the A/R process, but not the other aspects of your business. You can set a specific set of permissions based on what they need to work on, helping you improve liability and security. For example, you can let one admin see when deposits arrive at the bank, but you can’t let him view sales transactions and sales tax information. 

2. Create Automated Workflows

QuickBooks Online Advanced allows law firms to set up customized workflows to improve productivity, liability, efficiency, and outcome satisfaction. For instance, legal firms that often struggle with collecting payments from clients can set up automated workflows to streamline their processes. Here are three sample automated workflows you can create in QuickBooks Online Advanced:

• Automatically send invoices: With Advanced, you can customize your invoices by location and attorney and then automatically send the invoices that are saved for the future. 
• Send overdue invoice alerts: With Advanced, law firms can generate reports to see which clients have overdue payments and then automatically send an invoice alert.

• Remind yourself about upcoming bill payments: You can set up a reminder to alert yourself of your own due dates. This is especially if you have recurring bills to pay, such as utilities and loan payments.

3. Get paid faster with batch invoicing

QuickBooks Advanced reduces the time needed to process thousands of invoices per month with its batch invoicing feature. If you have multiple clients that use the same services, then you can send a standardized invoice and then batch-send it to all your clients without having to personalize each one. Additionally, if you collect taxable payments, then QuickBooks will automatically calculate and apply the appropriate tax rate based on your client’s location. 

Learn how to use batch invoicing in QuickBooks Online Advanced.

4. Use Bank Rules to Categorize Transactions

With bank rules, you can automatically import all bank and credit card transactions in QuickBooks Advanced and then categorize them accordingly. If you download similar transactions every month, then you can create bank rules to automatically set the transaction type, ledger account, or customer. Advanced also allows you to batch-categorize downloaded transactions from the same vendor or supplier. 

5. Run Custom Reports to Track Profitability 

Advanced enables you to use customized KPIs, including revenue per attorney and revenue per matter to gain useful insights into your business. You can run reports based on creative KPIs, such as client growth rate, client retention, and marketing cost per client, to help you better understand financial weaknesses and design strategies for growth.

6. Integrates with LeanLaw

Advanced integrates with LeanLaw, a cloud-based legal timekeeping and billing app that allows you to create and send invoices in LEDES format, manage Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA), and run various comprehensive reports, including compensation reports. When integrated with LeanLaw, Advanced becomes a powerful legal accounting and billing solution. 

Discover the other best-in-class apps that integrate with QuickBooks Online Advanced.