Trust accounting, IOLTA compliance, and billing in one native Mac app. Built for attorneys who went to law school. Not accounting school.
Try FreeNo credit card required. No time limit. Just download and go.
Law school taught you torts, contracts, and civil procedure. It did not teach you double-entry bookkeeping. It did not teach you trust accounting reconciliation. It definitely did not teach you how to set up a chart of accounts for a legal practice.
And yet here you are. Running a law firm. Which means running a business. Which means accounting.
Most attorneys handle this one of three ways. They ignore it until tax season and then panic. They hire a bookkeeper who does not understand legal accounting. Or they try to force QuickBooks into doing something it was never designed to do.
None of those options end well.
Legal accounting is different from regular business accounting. The big difference is trust accounting. Every state bar requires that you keep client funds completely separate from your operating funds. Mixing those funds, even by accident, even for one day, can result in disciplinary action. In serious cases, it means disbarment.
That is not an exaggeration. State bars audit trust accounts. They investigate complaints. Attorneys lose their licenses over trust accounting violations every year. Not because they stole money. Because they got sloppy with their records.
So you need accounting software that understands legal practice. Not general business software. Not a spreadsheet. Real legal accounting software that keeps trust funds separate, tracks every dollar, and gives you the reports your bar association expects to see.
If you use a Mac, you already know the feeling. You find software that looks perfect. You read the features. You get excited. Then you check the system requirements. Windows only.
Legal software has been a Windows world for decades. The major practice management platforms were built for Windows first. Some of them eventually made web versions. A few made half-hearted Mac ports that crash when you look at them wrong.
QuickBooks for Mac is the classic example. Intuit makes a Mac version, technically. But it is always behind the Windows version in features. It gets updated late. Sometimes it does not get updated at all. And it has no concept of legal trust accounting. It is a general business tool wearing a Mac disguise.
Cloud-based accounting tools solve the platform problem. They run in a browser, so they work on anything. But they bring their own problems. Your financial data sits on someone else's server. You depend on an internet connection. And most cloud legal software is subscription-based, which means the price goes up every year.
Private equity buys your software. Prices go up. Support goes down. You know how this works.
What Mac attorneys actually need is legal accounting software that runs natively on macOS. Not in a browser. Not through Parallels. Not as an afterthought. A real Mac app that works with the rest of your Mac workflow.
That is what TimeNet Law is. A native Mac application built specifically for attorneys. It has been Mac-only since day one. Twenty years. Same developer. Same commitment.
Trust accounting is the single most important accounting function in a law practice. Get it wrong and the consequences are real. Not just financial. Professional. Your license is on the line.
Here is what you need to know.
IOLTA stands for Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts. When a client gives you money to hold, whether it is a retainer, a settlement, or funds for costs, that money goes into your IOLTA trust account. Not your operating account. Not your personal account. The trust account.
The interest earned on pooled IOLTA funds goes to your state's legal aid programs. You never touch the interest. You are a custodian of client funds. Nothing more.
Every state requires attorneys to maintain at least one IOLTA account. The rules vary on details, but the core principle is universal. Client money is not your money until you earn it.
This is the term that makes most attorneys nervous. It should not be complicated, but doing it manually is tedious and error-prone.
Three-way reconciliation means matching three numbers that must agree:
The sum of every individual client's trust balance
Your internal record of total trust account balance
The actual balance reported by your bank
If these three numbers do not match, something is wrong. It could be a simple timing issue like an outstanding check. Or it could be a real problem. Either way, you need to find and document the discrepancy. Every month. Without exception.
Most trust accounting violations are not intentional. They are the result of sloppy systems, manual processes, or software that was never designed for legal accounting. The most common mistakes include:
The bar does not care about your intentions. It cares about your records. Good software makes good records automatic.
Every state has its own trust accounting rules, but the core requirements are remarkably consistent. You must maintain a separate trust account. You must keep individual client ledgers. You must reconcile at least monthly. You must maintain records for a specified period, usually five to seven years.
Some states go further. California requires that attorneys notify clients when trust funds are disbursed. New York requires specific account designations. Florida requires attorneys to attend trust accounting CLEs. The details vary. The seriousness does not.
The safest approach is to follow the strictest standard. If your software handles three-way reconciliation, maintains complete audit trails, and enforces separation of trust and operating funds, you are covered regardless of jurisdiction.
Monthly is the minimum. Every state bar expects at least monthly reconciliation. For high-volume practices handling many client transactions, weekly or even daily reconciliation is smarter.
The longer you wait between reconciliations, the harder it becomes to find errors. A mistake caught the same day takes five minutes to fix. A mistake discovered three months later can take hours to trace. And if a bar auditor finds it first, no amount of fixing helps.
TimeNet Law was built by an attorney who understood that legal accounting is different. Every feature exists because attorneys need it. Not because a product manager thought it would look good on a feature list.
Every client gets their own trust ledger. Deposits, disbursements, and transfers are tracked individually. The total always ties to the master trust account. Always.
Run a three-way reconciliation report with a few clicks. Client ledgers, trust ledger, bank statement. See immediately if the numbers match. Fix discrepancies before they become problems.
Every transaction is logged with a timestamp, description, and source. When the bar asks to see your records, you print a report. That is it. No scrambling. No reconstructing from memory.
Move earned fees from trust to operating with proper documentation. Both sides of the transaction are recorded automatically. The audit trail stays intact.
Generate the reports your state bar expects. Trust account summaries. Client ledger statements. Transaction histories. Reconciliation worksheets. All formatted and ready to submit.
Your financial data stays on your Mac. Not on a cloud server. Not in a browser cache. On your machine, under your control, protected by FileVault encryption.
Trust accounting is critical. But it is not the only accounting you do. There are billable hours to track. Invoices to generate. Expenses to record. Retainers to manage. Payments to apply. Reports to run.
Most attorneys cobble this together with multiple tools. A time tracker here. A billing app there. QuickBooks for the accounting. A spreadsheet to bridge the gaps. Every handoff between tools is an opportunity for errors. Every manual entry is a chance to type the wrong number.
TimeNet Law handles the entire flow. Time tracking feeds directly into billing. Billing feeds directly into accounting. One entry. One system. No double data entry. No exporting from one tool and importing into another.
Track your time. Generate an invoice. Record the payment. Transfer earned fees from trust to operating. Run a report for your CPA. All in the same application. All on your Mac.
That is not just convenient. It is safer. Every time you manually move data between systems, you risk introducing errors. In legal accounting, errors have consequences. One integrated system removes that risk.
Every attorney asks this eventually. "Can I just use QuickBooks?"
The honest answer is: for general business accounting, QuickBooks is fine. It tracks income and expenses. It generates invoices. It handles payroll. For a restaurant or a retail shop, it is a perfectly good tool.
But a law firm is not a restaurant. You have trust accounts. You have client retainers. You have ethical obligations around how you handle money. QuickBooks does not understand any of that.
| Feature | QuickBooks for Mac | TimeNet Law |
|---|---|---|
| Native Mac app | Limited version | Yes. Mac-only. |
| Trust accounting | No | Yes. Per-client ledgers. |
| Three-way reconciliation | No | Yes. Built-in. |
| Legal billing | Generic invoicing only | LEDES, hourly, flat fee, contingency |
| Time tracking | Basic | Running timers, batch entry, 6-min increments |
| Retainer management | No | Yes. With trust integration. |
| Pricing model | Monthly subscription | One-time purchase. $479.99. |
| Client data location | Cloud (Intuit servers) | Your Mac. Locally. |
Trying to force QuickBooks into handling legal accounting is like using a screwdriver as a hammer. You can do it. It is not the right tool. And eventually, something breaks.
Some attorneys use both. QuickBooks for general business accounting and separate legal software for trust accounting and billing. That works, but it doubles your data entry and your costs. Solo attorneys and small firms rarely need that kind of complexity. One tool that does both is simpler, cheaper, and less prone to errors.
What accounting mistakes actually cost. And what prevention costs.
A native Mac app does not just mean it runs on macOS. It means it works with macOS. The difference matters more than most people realize.
Your accounting data is backed up automatically by Time Machine. Every hour. If something goes wrong, you restore from backup. No special procedure. No exporting to an archive. Time Machine just handles it.
Turn on FileVault and your entire drive is encrypted. That includes all your client financial data. If your Mac is lost or stolen, nobody can access your trust account records. That is the kind of data protection your ethical obligations require.
Search across client records, invoices, and transactions from Spotlight. Hit Command-Space, type a client name, find their records instantly. No need to open the app first. No navigating through menus.
Web-based accounting tools cannot do any of this. They run in a browser sandbox. They do not integrate with your operating system. They cannot be backed up by Time Machine. They depend on your internet connection. When Safari crashes, your accounting session is gone.
A native app is part of your Mac. It works the way Mac software is supposed to work. That matters when the software is handling your clients' money.
At tax time, your CPA needs specific reports. They do not need access to your software. They do not need to understand trust accounting. They need numbers they can work with.
TimeNet Law generates everything a CPA typically requests:
Most attorneys tell us their CPA needs about fifteen minutes with these reports to have everything required for tax preparation. Compare that to the shoebox-of-receipts approach. Or the "I need to log into three different apps" approach.
Good accounting software does not replace your CPA. It makes your CPA's job easier and your bill smaller. When your records are clean and organized, your CPA spends less time sorting and more time advising. That is a better use of everyone's money.
TimeNet Law is $479.99. One time. That includes trust accounting, legal billing, time tracking, expense tracking, and every other feature. No per-user fees. No annual renewals. No "premium tier" that locks away the features you actually need.
Most cloud-based legal accounting subscriptions cost $50 to $100 per month. That is $600 to $1,200 per year. Every year. Forever. With annual price increases baked into the terms of service.
TimeNet Law pays for itself before most subscriptions finish their first year. See full pricing details.
Yes. TimeNet Law is a native macOS application. It is not a web app running in a browser and not a Windows app ported to Mac. It is built from the ground up for macOS, which means it works with Time Machine, FileVault, Spotlight, and every other Mac feature you rely on.
Yes. TimeNet Law maintains separate trust ledgers for every client, tracks trust-to-operating transfers, generates three-way reconciliation reports, and creates a complete audit trail. It is built specifically to meet state bar trust accounting requirements.
Three-way reconciliation is the process of comparing three records that must match. The individual client trust ledger balances. The overall trust account ledger balance. The bank statement balance. All three numbers must agree. If they do not, there is an error that must be found and corrected before it becomes a compliance problem.
Most solo and small firm attorneys do not need QuickBooks alongside TimeNet Law. TimeNet Law handles time tracking, billing, trust accounting, expense tracking, and financial reporting. Your CPA may want an export at tax time, and TimeNet Law provides that. For firms with complex general business accounting needs beyond legal practice, you may want a general accounting tool for those non-legal finances.
No. TimeNet Law stores all data locally on your Mac. Your client financial records, trust account data, and billing information stay on your machine. You control the backups. You control the access. No cloud server holds your clients' financial information.
Trust accounting rules vary by state, but the core requirements are consistent. Maintain separate client ledgers. Reconcile monthly. Never commingle funds. Keep detailed records. TimeNet Law provides the tools to meet these requirements regardless of your jurisdiction. The trust ledger system, three-way reconciliation, and audit trail satisfy the strictest state bar requirements.
Yes. TimeNet Law tracks trust and operating accounts separately with proper controls between them. When you transfer earned fees from trust to operating, the system records both sides of the transaction and maintains the audit trail. Every dollar is accounted for from deposit to disbursement.
TimeNet Law generates income reports, expense reports, accounts receivable aging, trust account summaries, and detailed transaction histories. These reports can be exported in formats your CPA can work with. Most attorneys find that their CPA needs about fifteen minutes with these reports to have everything needed for tax preparation.
TimeNet Law is a one-time purchase of $479.99 with no monthly subscription fees. That includes trust accounting, billing, time tracking, and all features. There are no per-user fees, no annual renewals, and no surprise price increases. You can try it free before purchasing.
Trust accounting compliance. Billing. Time tracking. Expense management. One native Mac app. No subscription. Download it and see for yourself.
Try FreeNo credit card. No time limit. No sales calls. Watch the tutorials if you want a head start.