QuickBooks Online Bookkeeping for Law Firms

Yes, if it is structured correctly. We do not require “two sets of books” or a second QuickBooks subscription just because your firm has an IOLTA account. In a clean setup, trust activity is tracked as a trust bank asset that is offset by trust liabilities, and client-level tracking can be supported through customer records and properly designed trust liability accounts. QuickBooks can also be structured to support both day-to-day accuracy and the three-way reconciliation workflow when you know what you are doing.

It depends on how many accounts you need and how complex your trust tracking is. QuickBooks Online Advanced includes an unlimited chart of accounts, while Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus are limited to 250 accounts. If your firm’s trust structure requires a larger chart of accounts due to a large number of matters, Advanced is often the right fit for that reason alone.

Yes. Clio and Filevine have mature QuickBooks Online integration options that have been used across thousands of firms, and our job is to make the accounting side align. Specifically, we focus on keeping invoices, payments, and deposits reconcilable, avoiding duplicate deposits, and setting up how client costs and expenses should flow so your books stay clean over time.

Yes, for operating-side legal fee income. If you also accept trust funds, you generally want a legal-specific processor that is designed for IOLTA handling, such as LawPay or Clio Payments, rather than trying to force trust payments through a generic payments tool. We will help you keep operating invoicing and payments clean in QBO while keeping trust activity tracked correctly.

The fastest tell is your Profit & Loss. If settlement deposits or trust activity are showing up as revenue, or trust disbursements are showing up as expenses, your file is probably structured incorrectly for a law firm. Another common clue is client costs: if advanced client costs are living on the P&L as overhead instead of being tracked in a consistent workflow, your reporting is likely misleading. We offer a free diagnostic review that gives you a clear, high-level read on what is fine, what is risky, and what it would take to get the file audit-ready and lender-ready.

Yes. Cleanup and restructuring is a core part of what we do for law firms. We typically start from the last properly reconciled period, rebuild the foundation (reconciliations, clearing accounts, misclassifications, trust structure where applicable), and then move the firm into ongoing monthly bookkeeping so it stays clean going forward.

For solo and small firms, we offer flat-rate monthly pricing of $699.00 per month for ongoing bookkeeping. Catch-up or historical cleanup is scoped separately because the workload depends on how far behind the file is and what has to be corrected but usually would cost $249.00 per historical month that is needed to catch-up.