Does LeanLaw handle trust and IOLTA accounting?

Yes. Trust and IOLTA accounting is part of LeanLaw’s Core plan, built directly on top of QuickBooks Online rather than added on as a separate module. Each client’s trust liability is tracked individually, and trust funds can be applied to that client’s invoice from within the same system.

Trust accounting as core architecture, not an add-on

IOLTA accounting exists because client funds a firm is holding — for costs, retainers, or settlements — aren’t the firm’s money yet, even though they typically sit in one pooled bank account alongside every other client’s funds. The bar’s requirement is that the firm track each client’s own trust liability separately in its own books, so the pooled bank balance and the sum of every client’s individual liability always agree. LeanLaw builds that tracking directly into the same QuickBooks Online books a firm already uses for its operating accounting, rather than running trust through a disconnected tool that has to be reconciled against everything else by hand.

What three-way reconciliation is actually checking

Three-way reconciliation is the industry-standard check behind that agreement: the bank statement for the trust account, the firm’s trust ledger, and the sum of every individual client’s trust liability all have to match, every time. It’s a discipline, not a feature — any trust accounting method, software or otherwise, either supports doing this regularly or gets in the way of it. Because LeanLaw’s trust ledgers live inside QuickBooks Online rather than a separate system, the reconciliation draws on the same records a firm’s accountant already works from.

Applying trust funds to an invoice

Once trust liability is tracked per client, applying a client’s trust balance to that client’s invoice is a capability built into the same workflow, rather than a transfer handled in one system and recorded by hand in another.

What this depends on

• Which state’s IOLTA or trust accounting rules govern the firm.
• How the firm’s chart of accounts is currently structured in QuickBooks Online.
• Whether trust has been tracked in a separate system up to now.
• How many distinct client trust balances are active at any given time.

Where this leaves you

No software satisfies a bar’s trust accounting rules on a firm’s behalf — that responsibility stays with the firm and its own state bar. The question worth asking is whether your current trust records already reconcile three ways, and how quickly you’d know if they didn’t.

Related questions

You do integrate trust accounts within LeanLaw? Yes — trust accounting is part of the Core plan, built into the same QuickBooks Online books as the rest of a firm’s accounting rather than a separate add-on.

Is there a reason to use LeanLaw from the IOLTA perspective? The main one is architecture: trust ledgers live inside the same accounting system as billing and operating accounts, rather than in a disconnected trust tool reconciled against everything else by hand.

We don’t currently use IOLTA or trust accounts — is that also something your software has? Yes. If a firm holds client funds in trust, LeanLaw is built to track that from the start rather than adding it on later. Whether a firm is required to hold funds in an IOLTA account at all is a question of its own state bar’s rules on client funds.