Attorney Bookkeeping: Entering Historical Opening Client Trust and Accounts Receivable Balances

The Client Trust liability account in QuickBooks Online is critical when you work with attorneys. It is an account that should be entered with a history. This post will explain why the full accounting history needs to be entered into the client trust liability account as part of the opening balance process and the steps to do this.  

 Note:  If you've been following along in the past series of videos, don't miss the other essential steps to properly set up your attorney accounting in QuickBooks Online.

There are many reasons to start a new file or new records.  One is when the law partners part ways and create a new law firm altogether. Another reason could be that your law firm client has decided it is time to move off of old-school software-maybe it is desktop-centric, and you have made the critical decision to move forward to having a future-ready law practice.

Don't guess! Moving the balances over is not as simple as one journal entry booking a debit to the trust account, and a credit to all the individual trust ledgers. Whenever a partnership dissolves or if partners separate and move on to another company, it's critical that you get guidance from the tax professional to know exactly how to set this up.

The line in the sand is essential. When you stop using one software and move to another, it must be an exact move regarding trust accounting and compliance.  There has to be complete transparency.  In our example, we consider that the same law firm is moving from one software to QuickBooks online. The move happened on January 1 in the new tax year.

My example below shows that the client Chris Hemsworth had a balance in the old software that ended at $5000 in the retainer balance. When I look at the old software, I can see that his file started in 2020. He initially gave the firm $10,000 as the opening retainer. The attorneys did some work for Chris in 2020, resulting in an invoice for billing time equivalent to two separate invoices of $2500. The attorneys moved the funds from the trust to operating to recognize their revenue for the work that they had done for Chris.

The net result of the retainer balance at the fiscal year-end of 2020 was $5000. I need to show the opening balance of $5000, but I want to re-create how that balance came about in QuickBooks. I'll need to enter the original retainer received of $10,000, dated the date he paid it. Then I'll need to also enter the two invoices for $2500 each.  Lastly, I enter the payments of those invoices and the funds moving out of the trust bank to operating.

Entering all of these transactions is much manual work, but it's crucial to have these details in place for compliance purposes. We also make these entries so that you won't have to revert to the old software if the client questions the balance at any time.

If an old firm moves IOLTA trust funds to a new firm, you must book that opening entry by debiting the trust bank and crediting client trust ledgers. Since the firms changed, there would most likely be no back-building of trust ledgers. Again, using your tax professional's guidance is extremely important to ensure proper accounting from one law firm to the new firm.

The same is going to hold for entering accounts receivable that are open in the file. We need to show what is still unpaid so we continue in 2021 we're trying to collect.  99% of the attorneys we work with are filing their tax returns on a cash basis. They live in a hybrid world. Most live on an accrual basis during the year, and it's only at tax time do we do switch over to a cash basis. Because of this, we need to show that opening accounts receivable when we start a new file, as it will not be in the opening tax return entry.

I hope this is helpful and that getting the meat of your data in place to start working on your QuickBooks online file.