The three-way reconciliation your bar requires
Triple checked.
Your bar requires your bank, your books and every client’s ledger to agree to the penny. Most firms check two of the three, once a quarter, in a spreadsheet.
Bank statement
$187,750
IOLTA Trust Account
General ledger
$186,500
Client Trust Funds Held
Every client ledger
$186,500
Across 7 client ledgers
$1,250
is in the trust account and belongs to no client. Two of the three agreed with each other perfectly. The third one is why anybody knows.
Trust Accounting
The three-way reconciliation your bar requires: bank statement against books against every client ledger. A clean, empty exceptions list is the goal.
1 · Trust bank balance
$187,750
IOLTA Trust Account
2 · Client funds liability
$186,500
Client Trust Funds Held
3 · Client trust ledgers total
$186,500
7 client sub-ledgers
Exceptions
Every dollar the three records disagree on, and what to do about it
Trust bank holds funds not attributable to any client
Money sitting in the trust account that no client ledger accounts for — usually an earned fee or cost reimbursement deposited to the wrong account. Move it to Operating and record the correction.
$1,250
Client trust ledgers
What is held for whom — each must never go below zero
Trust activity
Every movement through the trust account, newest first
Finding the $1,250is the easy half. It is named, explained — an earned fee deposited to the wrong account — and it says what to do about it, with every movement through the trust account sitting beside it. Figures as at 28 August 2026.
Why the third one matters
A two‑way tie‑out agrees with itself.
Bank against books catches a missing deposit. It cannot catch money in the account that belongs to nobody, because the bank and the books can both be internally consistent and still be wrong about whose money it is. Only the third record — what each client’s own ledger says is theirs — answers that.
Connect once
QuickBooks by invitation, plus Ramp, Clio or Gusto if you run them. You never share a password, and you can withdraw access from inside your own systems.
Checked every day
Not monthly, and not at quarter end under pressure. All three records are checked against each other while there is still time to do something about it.
A CPA works the exception
Automation finds it; a licensed CPA decides what it is and what to do. Nothing changes in your books without you seeing it first.
Beyond the trust account
Every screen is built like that one.
Six months of a real firm’s books sit behind these: clients, matters, invoices carrying hours and rates, vendor spend, payroll, and every dollar held in trust.
Dashboard
Hartwell & Voss LLP’s books are current. 3 items need a look before close.
Operating cash
$134,881
Operating Checking
Trust (client funds)
$187,750
1 exception
Open receivables
$115,490
6 open · 30 AR days
Collection rate
87%
Published median 93%
Close readiness
Computed from the books on every sync
Held back by: trust exception open · collection below the published median.
Needs your attention
Every item links to where it gets fixed
Top clients
By billing, with collection health
Cash, trust, receivables and collection rate across the top; underneath, a readiness score computed from the books and every item standing between this firm and a closed month. The score reads 65, not 100. A dashboard that is always green is not telling you anything.
Invoices & AR
The lockup report: every invoice aged in dollars and days, largest stuck balances first. Cash you have earned but not collected is the cheapest money there is to go get.
Open receivables
$115,490
6 open invoices
AR days
30
Profession median lockup 75 days
Collection rate
87%
Collected vs billed · median 93%
Aging
Open balances by how long past due
Not yet due
$64,275
1–30 days
$0
31–60 days
$12,740
61–90 days
$38,475
90+ days
$0
Largest open balances
Named, oldest exposure first — the calls that release the most cash
$115,490 open across 6 invoices, aged in dollars anddays, with the matter named on every line — so a stuck balance has a name and someone to call. 30 days of billing is tied up here, where the profession's median is 75, per Clio Legal Trends Report 2025.
The record behind the software
Someone’s name is on your books.
Twelve years keeping real books before any of this was software. Automation does the volume; the judgment calls are signed by a person who is accountable for them.