Law Firm Accounting You Can Rely On

If you need it, we’ve got it. Here’s how we help legal professionals:

• Cloud-based bookkeeping, taking care of the books so that you can focus on your practice.
• Fractional CFO services like helping with budgeting, forecasting, strategy, key performance indicators and where to focus your energy to ensure your growth and opportunity.
• Assistance with cloud-migration and integration with popular tools like QBO, Xero and Clio. Modern systems ensure that you can keep up with your client’s demands and surpass your competitors’ capabilities.
• Payroll is a pain. Our payroll services remove the pain. Simple.
• Yearend compliance services (financial statements and tax returns).
• Law society reporting, including startup reports are necessary and confusing. We help you cut through the compliance clutter.
• Trust reporting, reconciliation and preparation helps you stay in compliance with the law society’s requirements and stay in your client’s good books.
• Tax planning for lawyers, including remuneration planning and advanced tax reduction strategies.
• Family Trust and Estate planning for legal professionals.
• Tax structuring for limited liability partnerships and professional corporations.
• Indirect tax (GST/PST/HST) varies for the legal profession depending on where you are selling services to across Canada. We understand the various indirect tax regimes to keep your firm compliant.

We understand the needs of a trusted legal partner

We understand the particular needs of professional services firms, because we are one!

• Attention to details: Like law firms, we thrive on detail. Every transaction, every record is treated with utmost precision.
• Specialized resources: Our accounting and tax experts have extensive experience in partnership accounting, trust reconciliations and reporting, tax structures for law firms, and compliance requirements for lawyers, ensuring a deep understanding of your unique needs.
• Understanding cash-flows: A project-based professional business can be hard on cash flows. We’ve thought long and hard about how to improve our professional firm’s cash flows, and we’ve helped a lot of lawyers do the same. There are lots of tools and tricks that can smooth out your law firm’s cash flows.
• Pristine Records: Clean, organized books are like a fresh-pressed suit: they are n direct reflection of a trustworthy business, and an organized operator. Not only will better books help you make better decisions, you’ll stay out of hot-water with your professional college, and the Canada Revenue Agency.
• Keys to the cloud: All of your data, and your entire accounting team, is accessible at the push of a button.

Flexibility for independent (freelance) lawyers

There are a lot of advantages to ‘going it alone’. You answer to (almost) no one, giving you the freedom to set things up exactly as you want them. As you know, resources are always the problem!

• Your time is valuable: Every moment you spend agonizing about bookkeeping or trust accounting, or doing administrative tasks is a moment that you cannot spend with your clients. Achen Henderson frees up your time so you can focus on what really matters: your clients, building your brand, or simply enjoying life.
• Peace of mind: Our experts act as your financial guardians, ensuring your books are impeccable, letting you concentrate on growing your business.

Did you know?

• $150 Billion dollars flows through Alberta Lawyers’ trust accounts annually, and have an average daily balance of $2 billion.
• 14% of billable hours are not billed to clients.
• The median days in total-lockup (realization + collection) that firms carry is 97-days. The lower this number, the better your cashflow, and there is a correlation to increased realizations.
• Firms that have cloud-based apps to bill and collect payments reduce their lockup by 12-days on average, significantly improving cash flows.
• The industry is shifting, 27% of lawyers believe AI could make paralegals less necessary, where jobs in the legal industry are expected to grow by 4% / year for the foreseeable future. Technology is the key to reconciling this, and your competitors are getting more tech savvy.
• 0% of lawyers love doing their own accounting and administration.

The legal accounting software we use and support

Achen Henderson proudly supports the most popular cloud-based legal softwares, including

• Clio: Optimized for the legal industry, ensuring streamlined operations.
• Xero: Trusted globally for real-time financial clarity.
• Quickbooks: Simplifying complex financial tasks for law professionals.
• Wagepoint, Payment Evolution, Ignition, and more!

If you use EasyLaw, PCLaw, Cosmolex or any other “all-in-one” platform, instead of one that integrates with QBO or Xero. WE’VE STILL GOT YOU COVERED!

While we cannot help you with your bookkeeping, we can still help you with your tax planning and yearend financial statements and taxes, as well as GST/HST/PST and law society reporting.