Upfront Conclusion
The best accounting software for law firms right now is FreshBooks and Zoho Books.
When we talk about law firms, you can’t rely on general bookkeeping software; you need unique accounting software for this. The best software is the one that comes with different accounts, including client trust account and lawyers trust account. Furthermore, it must know how to deal with the time and expenses as it will help in providing accurate information to the client.
Unfortunately, if you are the one who is still handling all the accounting of your law firm by yourself or completely outsourcing it, then you are at risk. Anyone who tries to maintain law firm accounting himself will keep on pushing the bookkeeping to nights. You will not only delay your work but will also notice a negative graph of your firm’s productivity growth.
Trending Accounting Solutions
Using the best accounting software for law firms can save your time, reduce the chances of error, and enhance efficiency. We have reviewed some of the best accounting software for law firms, and you have to go through all of these to select the perfect fit for you.
Before heading to that excellent software, let’s get an idea that why you need it for your law firm!
9 Best Accounting Software For Law Firms (Summary)
| Brand | Starting price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| 1. FreshBooks | $4.50 – $7.50/month | Smartness and fastness |
| 2. Zoho Books | Free | Efficiency |
| 3. Patriot | $20 – $30/month | Bookkeeping and Accounting Capabilities |
| 4. Bonsai | $17 – $24/Month | Extensive Accounting Features |
| 5. PCLaw | $39.00/month | All-in-one features |
| 6. LeanLaw | $25 -$180/month | Affordability |
| 7. Clio | $39 – $99/month | Management |
| 8. Zola Suit | $69/month | Cloud-based all-in-one solution |
| 9. CosmoLex | $89/month | Cloud-based programs |
1. FreshBooks
Legal clients take up a lot of your time. FreshBooks is a simple accounting software that can help you build your firm smarter and faster. The intuitive software tracks your financial health and helps you manage your business by tracking expenses, sending invoices, and accepting online payments.
You can try it free for 30 days with no strings attached and no credit card number required.
Features
- Automate Tasks: Save yourself time by automating tasks like expense organization and time tracking.
- Professional Invoices: As a lawyer, you are all about professionalism. Take it to the next level with sleek estimates and invoices tailored to your brand. With FreshBooks, you can create them with ease.
- Online Payments: FreshBooks offers secure online billing portals and payment options for your clients, so you get paid faster. Online billing saves an average of 11 days from initialization to payment.
- Late Payments: FreshBooks easily lets you automate late payment reminders and fees. You no longer have to track when a client has paid. The software does that for you. It even tacks on an automatic late fee of your choosing.
- Recurring Profiles: Working with repeat clients is good for business. FreshBooks lets you create recurring profiles with auto billing features saving you time.
- App Integration: FreshBooks works hard to continuously add to its growing library of integrations. Customize your account with a range of integrations fit for your business.
2. Zoho Books
Zoho Books knows you have worked hard to earn every client you have. The intuitive online accounting software helps you save time and make informed business decisions based on real time financial reporting. You can work with more efficiency and experience faster invoicing, quicker payments, and expense visibility so you know exactly where your money is going.
Zoho Books offers a free account with limited abilities you can use to test the software, or it offers a 14-day free trial with a valid credit card.
Features
- Receivables and Payables: You can easily track where your money is going with automated expense tracking and real-time reporting. Simply connect your bank securely to your Zoho Books account. The software makes professional invoicing easy, and automations can help you set up recurring invoices for secure online payments.
- Tax Compliance: Zoho Books is fulling integrated with U.S. IRS guidelines. You can easily prepare auto reports, see your sales tax liability, and manage your yearly payments and allowances.
- Integrated Platform: Zoho Accounting offers a suite of more than 40 apps to help you run and manage every aspect of your business. Connect any of these apps at any time as you grow.
- Inventory Tracking: You can track your inventory levels at all times and replenish your stock when it gets low. Easily organize your inventory based on stock, cost, or SKU.
- Contact Management: Managing you customer and supplier contacts is a breeze with Zoho Books. You can securely store your customer’s sensitive payment information and collaborate with them through their client portal.
3. Patriot
Patriot Software provides law firms with accessible online payroll and accounting software. This is intended to make employee management online software programs such as time and attendance, payroll, payroll tax filing service, human resources, and accounting software easier to use. Their offerings include time and attendance software, HR software, full-service accounting, and online basic accounting software.
Patriot’s accounting software is inexpensive and simple for non-accountants to use, yet it includes great features for accountants. Patriot Premium Accounting provides unlimited users with privileges at no extra charge. With branded templates, users can create invoices for their clients.
Features:
- Pay calculation: Pay calculation provides for computation of employee pay with state and federal deductions.
- Off-cycle/On-Demand payment provide employees access to wages accrued during the pay period before the end of the pay cycle.
- Direct deposit files: Direct deposit is the ability to electronically transfer pay to an employee’s personal account.
- Salary revision and increment management: Salary revision is the ability to modify individual employee pay.
- Payroll tracking and auditing.
- Payroll history for each employee.
- Statutory form management..
4. Bonsai
Bonsai is an all-rounder software that many law firms use for accounting purposes. Billing clients is easy due to this tool’s invoicing and payment options. You can also track expenses with ease using the built-in tracker to keep a record of all your finances.
The great thing about this platform is that it also offers CRM management tools for maintaining good relations with your clients. Meeting with customers is also easy with this software due to the scheduling option. You also don’t have to worry about errors in your documents and other tasks due to various automation by the software.
This software also has a reporting tool that thoroughly analyzes your business tasks and finances. Then, the software offers estimates and other metrics to help you improve your business. For example, you may receive quarterly tax estimates to ensure your books are in order before the annual tax period.
Features
- Time Tracking: Bonsai will improve your firm productivity by helping you understand how much time a worker spends with a client. You can also use this to assess the ability of your firm’s lawyers. This feature also makes it easy to bill the clients according to the hours they’ve used.
- Tax Management: The platform can track your expenses, determine the profit your firm has earned within a year, and offer tax estimates based on the data. It will also send you reminders before the due dates of payments to prevent financial loss.
- Client Management: You can use this software to check your client list using the customer portal, share files with clients, and send them online bills in no time. Updating customers is also easy due to the ease of use of this portal.
- Scheduling: Bonsai also allows you to schedule meetings with clients using the online appointment scheduling feature.
5. PCLaw
PCLaw is best for every law firm that is looking for accounting software for the law firm. If you have this one software, you won’t need any other, because it has all the features you need. Without any need for third-party integration, PCLaw can do everything on its own.
This software is part of LexisNexus suite of products, so you can integrate with this by using different management applications. This helps you in customizing the software according to your firm’s needs. If you plan to have this software, you need an accountant who has a good idea of everything about accounts.
It is one of the best accounting software for law firms, but it still has one drawback. It lacks payroll processing, but you don’t need to worry about this because they partner with ADP for payroll processing.
Features
- Trust accounting: Trust accounting is an essential feature as it helps collect and track all the client’s funds without any error. While managing the client’s account, it makes sure to comply with all the rules. This software provides you with automated tools for reconciliation.
- Manages Everything: From organizing documents to calendars and collecting information on every matter, this manages everything perfectly.
- Track accounting: You won’t find any other software as it will track everything. From paying bills to performing all the essential functions of accounting, this software will handle everything.
- Maintenance plan: It comes with an annual plan, with subscriptions, you can have unlimited customer support, proper training, and all resources.
- Time tracking: Tracking of time will help you improve your staff’s efficiency and tell you much about the charges. By using this, users can transfer the time spent to invoices.
>>MORE: Legal Case Management Software | Paralegal: Job Description, Salary, Duties & More | Law Enforcement Database Software | Attorney Accounting Software
6. LeanLaw
If you are looking for the best accounting software for law firms with fantastic reviews from the customers and are highly affordable, you are in the right place. Bookkeepers and accountants who work on law firms love this software because of its features.
With this software, your accounting of the firm will always remain updated and accurate. LeanLaw is wholly integrated with QuickBooks, so if you like QuickBooks but want a legal accounting system, you must have this software. It is one step ahead of QuickBooks as it is capable of recording everything from general to records to advance accounting systems.
Features
- Billing: It is the first billing software and is most quick and efficient. With this, you don’t have to find out time to charge your clients, and it can create invoices within minutes. You can either set a time or manually enter the time at which your invoices will be automatically generated. It supports hourly, flat fee, and hybrid fees.
- Trust accounting: This software will keep all your trust accounts updates and will reconcile them automatically. It tracks expenses, deposits, and all the transfers from your client’s account. At the end of the month, you can easily do three-month reconciliation.
- Online Payments: By subscribing to Quickbook payments, you can receive online payments through credit cards. You can also receive it through telephone or in-person.
- Reporting: Report generation is critical in law firms. This software allows you to view the advanced reports that include revenue details and client origination.
7. Clio
Clio is thoughtfully designed for all small law firm owners. It is a complete practice management software and is highly recommended by experts. It is cloud-based accounting software that enables you to access it from anywhere by using an internet connection. It is particularly effective for the lawyers who are traveling.
Moreover, this software can integrate with the external programs that include Xero and QuickBooks Online. Users can also export their accounting data to other software by using the accounting export feature.
All the features that your growing law firm needs are present in this software. It has different pricing options; you can scale the software as your firm grows; you have to pay for only those features you need.
Features
- Case Management: It provides you a complete overview of your complete case information. It perfectly keeps the record of all your activities, calendar events, contacts, documents, bills, notes, communication history, time entries, financial, and much more. With the custom field feature, you can choose the feature you want to adopt and ignore the others.
- Task Management: The task management of this best accounting software for law firms helps in managing workload and improving productivity. For different members, you can assign different tasks and to-do lists for every member. You can also track the progress of every task and get an idea of all upcoming tasks. It will automatically set the deadline according to the starting date.
- Time and Expense Tracking: Clio helps you in tracking time and expenses completely. You can directly add time to the tasks, calendar events, notes, and documents. Furthermore, it also allows you to track the time that you have to spend with your clients.
- Billing and Payment: Clio Manage feature also includes billing and invoicing features. It supports hourly, flat fees, and contingency. You can also add particular items to billing like custom rates, discounts, or grace periods. It also receives credit card payments from your client, making the payments easy to transfer.
>>MORE: Invoicing Software For Lawyers | Attorney Billing Software | Attorney Time Tracking Software | Is Lexington Law Legit & Worth It?
8. Zola Suite
For all the professionals looking for a cloud-based all-in-one solution, the Zola Suite is the best option. It is one of the best accounting software for law firms as it comes with all advanced features. This software promises to give you all fantastic features at the least price.
This law firm case management software includes a complete accounting platform. It helps you in staying more and more organized. Every aspect of the interface is specially designed according to the user’s demand. The best thing about this software is that it offers you a free trial of 10 days.
Features
- Email Management: It is the only practice management software that has built-in email in it. It ensures to keep all the email-related cases organized, record proper time when drafting, avoid sending emails to the wrong recipients. It also informs everyone about important matters.
- Document Management: Zola Suite automatically creates a word document with one click, based on the information you have already added to the software. You can also add matter-related data to make customize your documents.
- Rate cards: Rate cards assign different rates to the users. These cards are usually assigned to the individual clients, and a discount is set that is applied to rates.
- Lead and Matter Management: It tracks leads and then converts them to client matters if it is converted into a client. Zola shows you all the time and expenses, contacts, documents, communications, invoices, and much more.
- Remote Training: This feature of the training is available with an annual subscription only for core subscribers. Enterprise subscribers enjoy unlimited training.
- Reports and analytic: Zola provides access to all key metrics and comprehensive reports. It provides you reports of work in progress, pending work, balance sheet, and timekeeper productivity.
9. CosmoLex
Another best accounting software for law firms is CosmoLex. If you are looking for cloud-based software, then this is the right option for your firm. It offers you trust accounting, business accounting, client billing, and all practice management tools. You don’t have to subscribe to any other accounting software like QuickBooks or Xero.
You can easily access the cloud-based account from your mobile phone. It provides you 14-days free trial and a 90-days money-back guarantee.
Features
- Task Management: It includes essential task management, and this means that it will only assign specific tasks to the lawyers and tell them about the due date.
- Credit Card Payments: It is fully integrated with LawPay, so you can effortlessly receive payments from the client through a credit card. You will LawPay’s monthly fee along with your CosmoLex subscription; however, an individual transaction fee will be different.
- Trust Accounting: All the payments and deposits are made automatically to the client’s accounts. You can perform triple reconciliation with a single click. Users can also have a look at the detailed transaction reports.
- Billing: You can track time and expenses by using the app from your mobile. Either you can enter the time yourself or track it through the built-in timers. With a single click, you can generate multiple invoices.
Why do you need accounting software for a law firm?
If you are still stuck on the paper system and couldn’t find any way to come out of this, then here are some reasons why your law firm needs accounting software.
#1 Tracking of time
In the 21st century, you don’t need to jot down the time taken on the task on the sticky pads. Tracking time is very important for your firm’s success because you will never have an idea how much time you are spending on one project without it.
Mainly, if you have many clients, then you can’t rely on unreliable methods of time tracking. For this, all you need is software that will track your staff’s time and let you know how much time they are spending on a particular project. Furthermore, it will also help in increase the productivity of your staff as you can track whether they are doing work or just sitting.
Without accurate time tracking, you may charge extra or less from your clients, which isn’t good for a long-term reputation. Undercharging will affect your firm’s reputation, while overcharging will damage your client.
#2 Tracking Expenses and Fees
No matter what business you are doing, you will never get successful without tracking your expenses; if you haven’t any idea that your money is going, you will break your bank in no time. From the expenses spent on the client to overhead costs, you need to maintain everything.
The best software is the one that helps you in categorizing activities, expense types, and fixed fees for every matter. It also reports everything about your tax and adds it correctly on your financial report.
Without accounting software, your staff will keep on saving receipts and writing payments. This manual system is potentially problematic because receipts go on missing, data can disappear, and memory is unreliable.
#3 Trust Accounting
Trust accounting is an essential and efficient way of gaining the trust of your client. Although it seems easy, trust accounting comes with lots of rules and duties. You must know how to maintain accurate records, and you should have an idea of your state guidelines.
The right accounting software considers the rules seriously and keeps you away from the problems. This helps in tracking all the money going in and out of the account. It also makes sure that money withdrawal is made after earning and helps prevent overdrawing from the account.
Final Verdict
The best accounting software for law firm is necessary to keep it organized and error-free. We have provided you with some fantastic software; choose the one that matches your needs.
Read More
- Law Firm Marketing Agencies
- Law Firm Knowledge Management Software
- Law Firm SEO Agencies
- Law Firm Time Tracking Software
RELATED: Accounting Tools Best For Grocery Shops | Best Accounting Software For Bakeries | Top Accounting Tools For Contractors