QuickBooks for Law Firms: Complete Review, Features, Pricing

Accounting is an essential function of any business, and law firms are no exception.

However, law firms have unique needs when it comes to accounting.

Most law firms need:

A common point of confusion are the different types of law firm accounting software. The term “law firm accounting” tends to be thrown around pretty liberally, and is often (inaccurately, in our view) used to describe billing and trust features, but lac the core/traditional accounting software fundamentals (like a Chart of Accounts, P&L, Balance Sheet).

In addition, there is general-purpose accounting software (that is: accounting software meant to be used by any type of business, but does not necessarily include the law-firm-specific functions that you may need.)

Juris is dedicated legal accounting. It provides sophisticated, end-to-end legal billing and all accounting functions that a law firm needs.

Accounting vs. Practice Management Software

Law Practice Management, Billing, and Accounting are three related, but discreet functions. And each can be managed with different software (or, all in one software suite). This is where the fuzzy terminology makes understanding what any given software package does confusing.

Broadly speaking, Law Practice Management software manages a firm’s clients, contacts, calendars, cases, time and expense tracking, billing and other “front-office” functionality.

Some Practice Management applications include complete accounting (including everything you see above), and some practice management applications provide time tracking, billing, and expense tracking… but leave the actual accounting to separate software (which it may integrate with).

Law Practice Management applications like Clio, Practice Panther and Time Matters do provide time tracking, billing and even reporting on billings… but they do not provide the “rest of accounting,” and instead integrate with applications like QuickBooks to complete the picture.

This is not to say one method is better than the other; rather it makes defining and understanding the classes of law firm accounting software important.

Introduction to QuickBooks for Law Firms

QuickBooks, by Intuit, is long-running and almost undeniably the most well-known small/midsize business accounting software.

QuickBooks is industry-neutral accounting software, which means it can be (and is) used by many different industries, including law firms.

QuickBooks has two product-lines, it’s Professional product, which runs as an installed application on your PC or within a Virtual Desktop (more on this shortly), and their Online product, which is the web-based version of the QuickBooks software.

QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online is the web-based version of QuickBooks. The advantages of QuickBooks Online are that it runs in your web browser, no software installation (or updates) required. The disadvantage is that QuickBooks online doesn’t provide as many features as its older, desktop counterpart (Professional).

Broadly speaking, QuickBooks Online is a good fit for law firms that:

QuickBooks Professional

QuickBooks Professional (sometimes also referred to as QuickBooks Desktop) is the traditional, desktop-installed version of QuickBooks. The advantages of QuickBooks are a more robust, more developed set of features.

Broadly speaking, QuickBooks Professional is a good fit for law firms that:

Some of the more advanced functionality available in QuickBooks Professional, but not QuickBooks Online, include:

Another important consideration is your Practice Management solution. Yours may integrate with only Online, Professional, or both.

If your firm needs the sophistication of QuickBooks Professional but prefers to work in the cloud fear not, we’ll explore the various cloud options for all editions of QuickBooks next.

The Company

QuickBooks is the flagship product of Intuit, Inc, the makers of QuickBooks, TurboTax, personal finance software, and Lacerte and ProConnect tax software.

Using QuickBooks: Desktop, Hosted or Online

As described above, QuickBooks comes in one of two families: Professional (Desktop) or Online, with the former being more developed and robust.

There are effectively three ways you can use QuickBooks:

1. QuickBooks Professional installed locally on your firm’s desktops/server (On-Premise).
2. QuickBooks Professional run within a Private Cloud / Virtual Desktop (Cloud).
3. QuickBooks Online (Cloud).

QuickBooks Professional Installed Locally

Your first option is to simply install QuickBooks on your law firm’s local desktops and server(s).

This involves installing the QuickBooks server component on your firm’s on-premise server, setting up a shared folder to hold your QuickBooks company file, installing the QuickBooks software on the appropriate users’ desktops, and connecting the desktops to your server.

This is probably the least desirable option, as it requires managing and maintaining in-house IT infrastructure, and limits your team’s ability to work from anywhere.

QuickBooks Professional in a Private Cloud / Virtual Desktop

Your second option is to run QuickBooks professional (the desktop edition) in a hosted Private Cloud, or Virtual Desktop. (We use these terms interchangeably here.)

This involves hiring a Cloud Service Provider to host QuickBooks professional (likely along with your other software, documents and data) in a completely hosted environment, and providing a Virtual Desktop for everyone if your firm to work in (from anywhere).

This is probably the most desirable option, as you get the robust feature-set of the Professional version of QuickBooks, and all the benefits of the Cloud (no servers to manage, increased data security, the ability to work from anywhere).

QuickBooks Online (Web-based)

Your third option is to simply use of the editions of QuickBooks Online, which is web-based and lightweight. This involves simply signing up for a QuickBooks Online account (pricing information is below), and creating logins for each person in your firm that needs it.

This option is probably best suited for solo and very small law firms (5 total people or less). If your law firm needs quick-and-dirty accounting, and doesn’t need the richer feature set and capabilities of QuickBooks Professional, QuickBooks online may be a great option.

See QuickBooks in Use

QuickBooks Professional and Online have similar fundamentals, but slightly different interfaces. QuickBooks Online arguably has a simpler, cleaner interface, while QuickBooks Professional has more in the way of features and capabilities.

QuickBooks Professional

QuickBooks Online

Complete Feature List

QuickBooks does an excellent job of managing the core of business accounting, but lacks certain law-firm-specific features.

Practice Management Integrations

As described, QuickBooks is a strong accounting platform, but lacks certain law firm-specific capabilities, namely around time tracking, legal billing and trust accounting. Fortunately, QuickBooks integrates with many Law Practice Management products.

These include: