Legal Accounts Software

Legal Accounts Software For Law Firms

Integrated, Secure & SRA Compliant

If you are looking for new legal practice management software the legal accounts element is particularly key. LAWFUSION is designed to make life easier for everyone at the firm, and is popular with fee earners, cashiers and support staff alike. Fully integrated with all the other LAWFUSION software modules the solicitors accounts software module is feature-rich and offers many efficiency-enhancing and time-saving tools for a law firm, as well as reliable information for confident decision-making. Across the board LAWFUSION is business-led and highly intuitive. Its legal accounts functionality is no exception.

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Key Features

Client Involvement In Software Design

The authors of LAWFUSION are continually enhancing the many software modules that make up the system. As soon as they finish updating and improving one end of the system, they start again at the other end. It is a continuous development programme. This year is the turn of the LAWFUSION Accounts Desktop Module. The developers are very to keep LAWFUSION clients involved and at the heart of this. The company’s Accounts Focus Group, currently made up of 30+ clients, have contributed many excellent ideas and great user-insight for the accounts development roadmap.

As part of the 2019/2020 Accounts redesign, Team LAWFUSION are making accounts screen improvements available to users in bite-sized chunks at regular intervals. A new Accounts ribbon and menu system was made available in the early part of 2020. This was the first of many new aspects of the system users will see throughout the year in terms of the Accounts overhaul, which is focused on bringing the software in line with the very latest in modern design standards, and making it even more user-friendly for finance-based users. As part of the client focus group system, Select Legal Systems run a wish-list voting system that provides law firms that use LAWFUSION with an opportunity to put forward ideas for software enhancements, and to vote for other users’ enhancements.

If you are not a LAWFUSION user yet, but you would like to discuss your legal accounting needs with Team LAWFUSION – please call 01482 567601 today.

Legal Accounts Software Must-Haves

As you are assessing the leading solicitors accounts packages available to you, there are a number of key questions that should be asked, all of which the authors of LAWFUSION can answer YES to:

Is the legal accounts side of the package designed especially for solicitors?
Is the software functionality fully compliant with the solicitors accounts rules?
Is the legal accounts software a fully integrated element of the practice management system, in the truest sense of the word, and with all other modules in the suite?
Is the software’s integration to other mission critical software packages, such as Microsoft Office & Exchange, robust and sophisticated enough for a law firm?
Is the software regularly updated in line with current and changing legislation?
Is the legal accounts software side of the system as flexible, customisable and secure as the rest of the system?
Does all its functionality come as standard with the system from day one, providing an opportunity for law firms to grow with the software?
Does it offer both cloud and on-premise options?

Ahead Of The Game

Team LAWFUSION is dedicated to staying ahead of the game where market forces for the profession are concerned in terms of integration with other mission critical software packages and industry tools. As well as being fully integrated with all the other areas of LAWFUSION, for example – time recording, case management and costs management etc. the accounts software suite also has sophisticated levels of robust, third-party integration with the Microsoft Office Suite & Exchange and a number of other tools and packages. The authors of LAWFUSION, who are ISO 27001 certified at both company level and also datacentre level are continually enhancing the product ahead of market forces. For instance, they were well ahead of the HMRC April 2019 deadline for adding new functionality for ‘Making Tax Digital‘ which enables law firms to submit VAT returns straight to HMRC online via LAWFUSION, they added a GDPR Module in 2018 to help law firms comply with this important data protection legislation, and Team LAWFUSION constantly works very closely with the LAA to ensure the LAWFUSION software provides everything a legal aid firm would need.

Fee Earner Billing

All firms bill differently and LAWFUSION will allow you to customise your legal bill procedures to suit the way you prefer to work. Some firms prefer their fee earners to bill their own work, others leave it to cashiering. With LAWFUSION the choice is yours. Your billing processes can be triggered manually, or you can pre-set conditions to drive billing. For example the software can be configured to bill once the WIP (work in progress) total reaches a certain limit. Similarly bills can be triggered according to disbursement levels or lockup/unpaid invoices totals etc. and the software provides automatic billing and specialist, comprehensive legal aid billing for crime and family work too. Billing templates can be set-up to follow your firms’ corporate style, billing guides and time reports can be produced and used as the basis for billing. Multiple Fee Earner apportionment options are available including automatically apportioning fees based on time booked. Disbursements not yet incurred can also be added into the bill.

Management Reporting

LAWFUSION Accounts comes with 100+ standard reports as well as a powerful report writer which can be pointed at any area of the system for all your ad-hoc reporting needs. All reports can be exported to Excel and PDF formats. Report layouts can be tailored to your exact requirements in terms of content, grouping, sequence etc. Any number of conditions can be used for each report e.g. WIP greater than £100, client balance greater than office balance – and you can set up reports to compare conditions like these. Reports can be grouped and ordered in different ways e.g. by fee earner, by account reference etc. Once created a report can be saved in the report library and re-run at any time. Reports can be set to run automatically overnight, generating pie charts, graphs and interactive tables which can be distributed by email to relevant team members.

LAWFUSION also offers a number of key performance indicator monitoring reports too.

Legal Aid Accounting

LAWFUSION is very strong on Legal Aid functionality right across the board. All Legal Aid claims, which have fees and disbursements agreed, are instantly billed through the system and all bills are paid from a pre-configured Legal Aid account on the system of your choosing. Within LAWFUSION fees can be allocated to the P&L based on Fee Earners or type of work. Legal aid profitability reports are available enabling firms to accurately monitor their legal aid business.

Cash Flow

With LAWFUSION you have both budget cash flow forecasting and true cash flow forecasting available providing a clear, bird’s-eye view of your cash flow situation. Of course a budget cash flow forecast is a summary of likely income and expenditure for a given period. However, a true cash flow forecast is the likely timing and amounts of cash inflows and outflows to and from the business bank account(s). This level of cash flow control and clarity is designed to eliminate financial surprises for law firms.

Debt Management

LAWFUSION provides a number of debt collection tools for law firms to enable fees to be collected as efficiently as possible. E.g. flexible aged debtor reports, debt reminders module, client statements, telephone-based debt collections procedures you can follow, with debt diary and follow up actions.

Client Ledger

LAWFUSION Accounts contains a dedicated client ledger for holding client accounting information. This is divided into client, deposit, disbursement, office and in-house expense ledgers for each matter/case. If required, the disbursement ledger can be combined with the office ledger.

All of the standard posting types are available and include payments, receipts, invoices, credit notes, journals, write-offs and in-house expenses.

Professional Nominal Ledger

LAWFUSION provides a full commercial, multi-level nominal ledger. Two sets of budgets are available for each nominal account (such as projected, worst / best case) for comparison of nominal balances against budgets or previous years’ actual figures. Budgets can be set up quickly and easily by specifying a percentage split, or user-defined calculations, i.e. seasonal. All of the standard posting types are available and include payments, receipts, journals, write-offs, batch journals, recurring journals and reversing journals. Year end journals provide a quick and easy method of clearing down the revenue and expense accounts. Standard reports such as Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss and Trial Balance are available.

Purchase Ledger

The LAWFUSION purchase ledger integrates to both the nominal and disbursement ledgers and also provides for the posting of counsel fees. All of the standard posting types are available – i.e. bills, credit notes, payments, receipts, journals and write-offs. Bills and credit notes can be split to multiple nominal and/or disbursement ledgers. Standard reports such as ‘Aged Creditors’ and ‘Cash Required’ are available so you can quickly and easily see what you owe and to whom.

VAT Ledger

LAWFUSION Accounts contains a full VAT ledger system for completing the VAT returns and provides a full VAT audit trail. The VAT Ledger can be configured for either cash or bills delivered VAT accounting.

LAWFUSION is a HMRC recognised ‘Making Tax Digital‘ Software Supplier. Law firms that choose the LAWFUSION Legal Practice Management System are able to file their VAT returns straight to HMRC via LAWFUSION.

Cash Book

LAWFUSION supports the numerous bank accounts a law firm might need – i.e. client, office, petty cash etc. with user friendly bank reconciliation facilities. Bank reconciliation reports and cash book reports are provided as standard and these can be produced historically if required. Of course the production of a monthly bank reconciliation statement in line with the Solicitors Accounts Rules is quick and easy in LAWFUSION. Standing orders and direct debits can be set-up to post automatically when due. Law firms can upload their list of daily BACS transactions to the bank for payment or they can design their own cheque layout and can print cheques if required , singly or in batches.

Bank Reconciliation

LAWFUSION provides automatic bank reconciliation so you can compare your accounting records with your bank statement.

E-Chitty Posting Requests

In an increasingly paperless world, law firms often need ‘e-chitty’ posting request functionality so that fee earners can issue requests to cashiers electronically. In LAWFUSION this is available for both the client ledger and also the nominal ledger.

Deposit Interest Calculator

LAWFUSION users do not need to keep separate deposit accounts because all monies can be held in one high interest bearing account and any deposit interest due to clients is calculated by the system as per Law Society Rules. Calculations can be produced on a single matter, all matters for a specific client, or across the entire client ledger. The system caters for multiple interest rate tables and any number of rate changes. Use of a clearance period table for different transaction types ensures calculations are applied to cleared balances only. The interest can be automatically posted to the account ledger if required. It will also post the appropriate inter-bank transfer for you. Reports showing all interest calculations are available for audit and verification purposes and a tax file can be produced for reporting high interest client accounts to the Inland Revenue.

The interest calculator can also be pointed at the debtors’ ledger to automate interest charges on outstanding bills. It will automatically post the appropriate interest to the bill and to your nominal ledger. The interest calculator also allows the entry of manual transactions for ad-hoc calculations.

Anti-Money Laundering Compliance

LAWFUSION allows you to write your own anti-money laundering procedures as a workflow chart, making sure you follow best practice and satisfy the necessary due diligence. However, as standard, within the AML software law firms get a whole raft of AML functionality. For example the software:

warns you if you accept funds and the anti-money laundering checks have not been completed for the client.
warns you if you accept funds over a certain value.
reminds you if your anti-money laundering checks are out of date.
reminds you if the anti-money laundering checks are incomplete.
allows you to enter the checks done and also to scan in documents, papers, etc.
optionally, integrates to external identity checking and KYC services such as Call ML and the 192.com service.
produces a “suspicion letter” to the Anti-Money Laundering Officer (AMO) in your firm.
optionally, passes on your suspicions to The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

Requisitions & Remittances

To maximise cash flow and improve the management of outgoing payments, LAWFUSION provides a comprehensive requisitions and remittance facility. The Purchase ledger has a BACs export facility which allows an upload to your bank saving manual entry or sending out cheques. Remittance advices can also be produced via the purchase ledger and distributed electronically, or printed.

On the Client ledger, requisitions can be raised and sent electronically to cashiers, who can check and post them instantly to the ledger. Printed cheques are available if required. This can significantly speed up the payment process and reduce posting errors.

Office and client account payments can be requested from multiple locations, against multiple matters.
Each payment has a notional cleared date and a cleared funds check is performed on client payment requests. An undertakings check is also performed on client payments.
When payments are reconciled, the reconciled date and sheet number shows on the ledger.
Additional information such as file/case/matter numbers and fee earner details can be included with the cheque payment.
Cheques, which are totally configurable with different layouts for different banks, can be produced in batches or singly, and printed via dot matrix or laser printers.

Expenses / Disbursements

When a fee earner claims an expense, such as mileage or car parking it can be immediately available for billing as a disbursement if appropriate, or for submitting to the LAA (for a legal aid claim) and also for analysis and reporting. As the expense is entered it becomes part of an expense claim that is submitted for approval (where necessary) without any duplication of effort. Acceptance / rejection of the expense claim is instantly visible to the fee earner on screen (and a paper form can be produced if required). The Fee Earner ticks a box to indicate he/she has a receipt for the item (and for those striving for a paperless office receipts can be scanned in and attached to the expense claim.) The system handles different rates for mileage e.g. if a Fee Earner is paid mileage at 25p per mile, but the firm has agreed mileage will be charged out at 40p per mile to the client – the system picks up the relevant rates and bills the client at the correct rate, and pays the fee earner accordingly. The software also handles the public and private mileage rates required for LAA work. A single payment is made to the fee earner for aggregated expenses claims. LAWFUSION also manages the recharging of internal expenses such as photocopying and faxing, etc.

Making Tax Digital

Select Legal Systems is a recognised ‘Making Tax Digital’ VAT Software Supplier. LAWFUSION provides comprehensive VAT functionality including the ability to post VAT returns digitally direct from LAWFUSION. VAT Adjustment Journals are also available, and users of LAWFUSION also have the means to record transactions (sales / purchases) to / from parties within EC (European Commission) member states.

KPI Monitoring

Many law firms use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor how well the business is doing. KPIs are quantifiable measures that help the partners and leaders of a firm evaluate the success of their teams in meeting the objectives that have been set for their performance. LAWFUSION provides some key business intelligence, through KPI Monitoring Reports for this purpose.

Case Studies / Relevant News

Video Case Study

One of the UK’s largest providers of Legal Aid

“With the introduction of LAWFUSION and its billing wizards our fee earners are now able to bill their own work and it’s been great because they take more commercial responsibility for their work.”

Rupert Hawke, Managing Director, Cartwright King

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