hello and welcome to this video series QuickBooks for attorneys this video is simply an introduction
and an overview of the course and this course is designed to give attorneys and the bookkeepers of
the attorneys all the knowledge they need to use QuickBooks to keep books and records for almost
any law firm attorneys should use QuickBooks the way every other business does for at least
most things however lawyers have unique challenges that these videos will specifically address well
first of all what do attorneys need to do first they need to record retainer payments in advance
as unearned income these are payments that they received before giving the legal service to the
client they need to make sure that the unearned income gets recorded as earned income as time
goes by or as services are given to the clients lawyers must also keep track of each client's
balance and keep track of how much is prepaid and how much is owed to or from each client lawyers
must give retainer receipts when receiving clients payment in advance for services that will be given
to the clients in the future attorneys also need to apply clients retainer payment to expenses that
relate to that client they need to issue a refund for unused retainer payments they need to give
timesheets to the lawyer associated giving the lawyer associates who are working in the firm this
way they can track their income and expense by client okay they contract the time each associate
attorney worked on each particular client and many more like I just mentioned tracking income and
expense per client now this video is not the first video in the original series it originally began
with a file that was already set up for law firms and that was specific to law firms the original
first video just showed the specific steps that attorneys needed to add after the general setup
of a business many attorneys starting to learn QuickBooks wanted to learn everything from the
very beginning the course has been edited to add things that attorneys have requested based
on need so in other words what I did was I went back and I added the first few videos showing you
every step of the setup for a general business and then the rest of the videos start telling
you how to put in the specific things for a law firm you must do the first half of the course
in order this way you'll understand the ideas as they progress if you get to the first half
and you look at the titles of the videos and you see some of the future videos do not apply to you
you can skip some of the videos in the second half but all the videos in the first half or at least
approximately the first half are the foundation or the founding ideas of how to keep books and
records of a law firm you should really do them in order one last note before you start the course
the focus of this course are things specific to attorneys sometimes other transactions arise in
your firm that are not included in this course fill the only very few if any but if that happens
then probably the transaction type is one that applies to any company not just law firms don't
worry I have videos for all of those and if I don't have a video for any transaction that
comes up in your law firm just contact me and I will make one for free I am absolutely sure
that the video that apply to general companies that have been on YouTube for a very long time
will satisfy anything else that's not included in this course and of course if I am mistaken
you have to let me know because if you need this video probably other attorneys need it as well so
please help future students and other attorneys by letting me know what you would like me to add
to the course I hope you enjoy the course and I thank you for your time and attention