Trust Account

You can use Lawmatics to manage your firm's trust account (IOLTA). To view your trust account, hover your mouse on the Billing tab at the top of your page, and select Trust Account.

Here you will find a history of all activity on the trust account. Note that you can change the date range and/or use the filter icon, both highlighted below, to get a filtered view of specific activity in the account.

Your trust account will keep a running balance, shown in the far right column. This balance is debited when invoices are paid using the trust account, and credited when new funds are deposited into the account.

There are a few ways to deposit funds into the trust account. First, you can add a manual deposit by clicking the "Create New Deposit" button shown in the image above. This will be used for payments received via check, cash, PayPal, Venmo, or any other payments collected outside of the Lawmatics payment processor.

When logging a manual deposit, you will see the options shown below.

As shown above, you will enter the amount of the deposit, select which contact made the payment as well as which matter to allocate the funds to, select the payment method, and leave any necessary notes.

You can also request funds from the client for the Trust Account. This is done by clicking the Request funds button on a matter's billing tab.

You'll then be prompted to enter the amount you are requesting along with an email message for the client. The request can be paid directly by the client via online link if you're using LMPay, or manually logged in Lawmatics.

Should you ever need to withdraw money from a client's Trust Account, you will also do this from the matter's billing tab. You'll see that button in the screenshot above as well.

When sending an invoice to a client via Lawmatics you will always need to select whether the payment should go to your Operating or Trust Account. You also have the option to enable online payment. When this option is selected for a particular invoice, and the trust account has been selected as the target bank account, then the credit will come into the trust account automatically when the client makes their online payment.

For invoices that are going to your Operating Account, you have the option to pay the invoice using the client's trust account. To do this you will first need to create and send the invoice, then go to the Invoices page and click the button highlighted on the right below to log a payment:

To pay the invoice as a debit to the trust account, select Trust as the payment method, as shown below. Once you click submit, this will automatically debit the Trust Account.

In addition to viewing the account from the Trust Account page under the Billing tab, you can also view a particular matter's trust account by going to their matter profile. Select the Billing tab on the right side of the screen, then select Trust account.Here you will see the running trust balance from all deposits that were explicitly associated with this matter, which might include transactions from contacts other than the one attached to the matter you are viewing. 

Above you will notice the option to set a minimum trust balance alert. This is optional, and can be used to make sure a matter's trust balance does not fall below the minimum that you have specified. To use this feature, turn on the toggle so it turns green, as shown above, and then click the edit pencil on the far right of that line to set the minimum balance for this particular matter.

Here in the Trust Account tab you will also see any amount that has not yet been allocated for the matter.

You can use a matter’s trust account to log not only deposits, but also a refund of their trust. When a case ends and all claims are settled, you have the option to log any remaining amount that was refunded to the client. 

Instead of refunding a trust balance, you can also choose to transfer a trust balance to another matter within Lawmatics. Simply click the Trust Balance Transfer, as shown below.

Note that you can also view time entires, invoices, and payment activity for this matter using the various billing tabs on the matter's profile.

FAQ's

How do I select which invoices should go to my operating vs. trust account?

When creating a new invoice (Billing > Invoices > Create New Invoice) you will select the target bank account from the options on the left sidebar. This is where you will select either Operating or Trust. When Trust is selected, the payment will automatically credit the trust account when deposited.

How do I log payments that are collected outside of Lawmatics?

Payments can be added as a deposit on the Trust Account page, or logged on an individual invoice. To create a deposit, go to the Trust Account page under the Billing tab and click the Create New Deposit button. You will be prompted to enter the amount, contact, matter, and select the payment method. You can also mark an individual invoice as paid either from the Invoices page or from the matter's profile.

How do I export my trust account table?

To export your trust account into a spreadsheet outside of Lawmatics navigate to your Trust Account page and select the "Export Current View" button in the upper left corner. When you select "Export Current View", your trust account table will export as a .csv spreadsheet with the same filters you applied in the Lawmatics app.