QuickBooks is in use in thousands of small law firms throughout the US. The program is quite capable of handling most of the needs of these firms, as long as it is set up properly and transactions are entered correctly and consistently. The methods presented here will provide you with what we feel are the most efficient ways of handling the needs of a typical small firm.
One of the trickiest record-keeping tasks for law firms is the proper handling of client monies held in trust. In this chapter, we’ll show how you can handle both client trust activity and the firm’s accounting in the same QuickBooks file. However, if your client has a high volume of transactions in the trust account, and a relatively low volume of transactions for the firm itself, you should consider setting up a completely different QuickBooks file for Client Trust Activity.
Read the attached pdf chapter from our book, written in 2004 for some recommendations on how to set up Law Firms in QuickBooks. Also, there is a QuickBooks file attached that matches the text so you can try out the methods in a test file.