Time is of the essence at any personal injury law firm. But keeping up with your finances is vital to maintaining profitability, and you need legal accounting software like QuickBooks. It can streamline your financial processes, including billing and expense tracking, giving you more time to focus on your clients and cases.

Personal injury law firms face quite a few financial complexities, from tracking the expenses involved in each case to creating accurate and easy-to-follow client invoices. Legal accounting software is an important tool, but you don’t need anything unfamiliar or challenging. Instead, QuickBooks is an excellent, well-known financial solution. 

For lawyers, this powerful software can automate billing and streamline expense tracking, making your business finances more accurate and easier to manage than ever before. Here are some tips to get it working effectively for your firm.

1. Customize QuickBooks for your law firm’s needs

It’s easy to customize QuickBooks to match the needs of your law firm. Financial management becomes a breeze with separate workflows for each client and type of task. From automatic transaction categorization with bank rules to automated reports, it’s worth taking some time at the beginning to work your way through the software and set up each element in the ways that suit you best.

2. Automate billing and invoicing

Billing can be a headache, especially for new lawyers. One of QuickBooks’ biggest strengths is its ability to automate billing and invoicing. You can create and save generic invoices for common tasks so that you don’t have to create them from scratch each time. Then, simply bring up all the invoices you want to work on in a single window, make any necessary edits, and send them out as a batch. If you have additional client details on file, you can set them to attach to the relevant invoices, even when batch billing.

3. Implement efficient expense tracking

QuickBooks helps personal injury lawyers track expenses with ease. When you set up bank rules, QuickBooks will automatically download all of your transactions from your linked bank accounts and business credit cards. It then categorizes them according to your customized rules. You can use if-then statements and keywords. The system will even look for fees and split transactions based on the rules you provide. 

Of course, it’s always smart to test that the rules are producing the desired results before you start to rely on them. And you can always manually change a transaction that was automatically categorized.

4. Enhance financial reporting

The only way to know whether your law firm is turning a profit — or even pricing your services correctly — is to identify and track financial key performance indicators (KPIs). These might include such metrics as:

• Revenue billed per month
• Collection rate
• Projected annual revenue (known as run rate)
• Run rate vs. expected annual expenses
• Net overhead
• Average fee per matter

You may have a list of other financial KPIs that are important to you as well. Whatever metrics you are tracking to ensure operational profitability, regular reports are essential to making the best possible decisions for your firm.

QuickBooks can help you track all these metrics with simple, easy-to-understand financial reports. You can decide which reports to run when and even set up automatic reporting for a specific day and time (such as Sunday nights at 10 p.m. or the first Tuesday of every quarter). You’ll even have access to a dashboard that lets you track your most important KPIs in real-time.

5. Simplify tax preparation and compliance

Tax season is never fun for law firms, even if you rely on your accountant to handle preparation. There are so many things to consider, from accurately documenting all your income to ensuring that you don’t miss any relevant business deductions. You also need to make sure you’re paying the correct payroll taxes for each employee and generating W-2s and 1099s for your team members and contractors.

With all of your financial records at your fingertips, you can easily generate all the necessary reports and documents. Simply tell the software what you need, and you won’t have to worry about anything important being overlooked.

6. Integrate QuickBooks with case management software

QuickBooks legal billing and expense tracking solutions integrate easily with personal injury case management software like CloudLex. With features such as Expense Manager, you can enter all of your financial transactions directly into the CloudLex platform and then transfer them to QuickBooks with just a few clicks. 

Your team members can also enter their expenses, and your CFO or financial manager can review the records and push them to QuickBooks as desired. You won’t need to ask people to submit expense paperwork manually or log into multiple software programs.

7. Leverage QuickBooks for strategic planning

QuickBooks is also a valuable tool for strategic planning. You can generate a wide range of reports including profit and loss statements and future revenue projections, and track a wide range of KPIs. This allows you to make smarter, data-driven decisions for all your future business growth. 

Even better, CloudLex’s Expense Manager integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks.  Legal teams can record and track expenses right in the CloudLex system and then move them to QuickBooks with just a few clicks. This makes it easy for your financial team to properly manage and pay those expenses.

Using QuickBooks for law firms in tandem with CloudLex offers numerous benefits:

1. Seamless integration makes the entire financial process quick and easy.

2. You can seamlessly manage the entire team’s expenses.

3. It’s simple to prioritize and streamline spending.

Overall, you’ll have more insight into your financial processes and cash flow, allowing you to invest money in your cases in an efficient and effective manner, increasing your ROI.

Pair QuickBooks with CloudLex for all your law firm’s documentation needs

QuickBooks and CloudLex are a natural pair. Not only is the CloudLex’s Expense Manager fully integrated with QuickBooks, but this all-in-one personal injury case management software solution provides everything you need to streamline all of your operations. 

From contact and legal document management features to personal injury settlement calculators and workflow task automation, CloudLex can help move all your cases seamlessly from intake through pre-litigation, trial, and final settlement. If you’re ready to learn what CloudLex can do for you, request a demo today.