Maintaining law firm financials that comply with all CRA & Law Society requirements is challenging. Until now, Canadian law firms met these requirements by using desktop programs built specifically for the legal profession. Other Cloud-based practice management programs like Clio® require an additional, separate accounting program, such as QuickBooks™. As countless lawyers have discovered, trying to do law firm bookkeeping in a generic accounting program like QuickBooks™ is like trying to jam a really big square peg into a really small round hole. It’s always a problem — it never gets easier.
Law firm accounting is inextricably intertwined with billing & practice management details — which adds yet another level of frustration when working with stand-alone, generic accounting software. The need for duplicate data entry and complex data sync/imports/exports makes the whole situation unpleasant and error-prone.
CosmoLex accounting solves BOTH problems. It’s designed from the ground up to specifically handle all the nuances of Canadian legal business & trust accounting. CosmoLex understands GST/HST, retainers, trust funds, disbursements, cost recovery, input tax credits, transaction levies, fee income allocations, contingency fees, etc. Generic business accounting programs don’t. All the Canadian rules & account types are hard-wired, ready to work for you. And it’s all built-in, sitting side-by-side with your billing and practice management data. Which means that all your billable activities & expenses get automatically added to your bookkeeping ledgers — you’ll never have to deal with a failed import/export or cumbersome duplicate data entry procedure ever again.
Perhaps most important, CosmoLex helps keep you compliant. Built-in accounting makes it possible for CosmoLex to include a full menu of automatic safeguards to protect you from compliance problems. Remember, a failed audit disbars the lawyer, not the lawyer’s bookkeeper or accountant.