The QuickBooks Online integration
This is the connection that turns billing-based numbers into true ones. Practice management shows what got worked and invoiced. QuickBooks Online shows what actually landed in the bank.
The person setting up LawKPIs usually doesn't control QuickBooks
At most firms, QuickBooks Online is run by a bookkeeper or an outside CPA, not by the owner or firm administrator setting up LawKPIs. Asking someone to track down accounting credentials before they can see their first Daily Pulse email is the wrong order of operations, so we don't require it. Firms typically connect their practice management system first — Clio, MyCase, Smokeball, or Lawcus — and start getting value from Daily Pulse and the core dashboards immediately.
Once that's running, you send a connect invite to whoever handles the books. They sign in to QuickBooks Online on their own schedule, approve read-only access, and that's it. Nobody shares a password. From that point on, every dashboard that used to run on billed amounts starts running on what was actually collected — which is usually where the real story of a firm's profitability lives.
What LawKPIs reads from QuickBooks Online, and what it builds
Nothing is written back. LawKPIs reads the fields below on a regular schedule and joins them against your practice management data.
- •Bank deposits and payments applied to invoices — what was actually collected, not just invoiced
- •Expenses and vendor bills, by category and by client where they're tracked that way
- •Accounts receivable aging, so unpaid invoices are visible by age, not just by balance
- •Chart of accounts and classes, so revenue and cost can be grouped the way your firm already reports them
- •Overhead and operating expenses, so profitability can be measured against the whole cost structure, not just direct time
- •True matter and practice-area profitability — what a matter actually returned after real collections and costs, not what it billed for
- •Realization against cash, not invoices — the gap between what work was worth and what the firm actually kept
- •Firm-level margin, tracked against overhead the practice management system never sees
- •Collections aging joined against matter and attorney, so slow-paying work is visible by who's responsible for it
- •The matter #4471 problem, caught automatically — a matter reading as profitable in your practice management tool that isn't once collections and cost are factored in
Connecting QuickBooks Online takes a few minutes
Connect practice management first
Get Daily Pulse running from Clio, MyCase, Smokeball, or Lawcus. This step doesn't wait on QuickBooks at all.
Invite whoever runs your books
Send a connect link to your bookkeeper or CPA. They sign in to QuickBooks Online with their own login and approve read-only access.
Dashboards upgrade automatically
Every profitability and realization figure that was running on billed amounts switches to real collections, no extra setup required.
QuickBooks Online integration FAQ
Do I have to connect QuickBooks Online before I get value from LawKPIs?+
No. Most firms connect their practice management system first — Clio, MyCase, Smokeball, or Lawcus — and get Daily Pulse and dashboards running the same day. QuickBooks Online is the upgrade that turns billing-based numbers into true, collections-based ones. It's never a requirement to get started.
The person setting up LawKPIs doesn't have QuickBooks login access. What do we do?+
That's the normal case, not an exception. Whoever runs the firm's numbers day to day connects practice management first. Then you send an invite to whoever controls QuickBooks — usually a bookkeeper or an outside CPA — and they connect it on their own time, with their own login. Nobody needs to share credentials.
What does our bookkeeper or CPA actually have to do?+
They click an invite link, sign in to QuickBooks Online the normal way, and approve read-only access through Intuit's own connect screen. It takes a few minutes and doesn't require them to understand LawKPIs or change anything about how they do the firm's books.
Does LawKPIs write anything to our QuickBooks file?+
No. The connection is read-only. LawKPIs reads transactions, invoices, payments, and the chart of accounts to build dashboards — it never posts, edits, or deletes anything in QuickBooks.
What changes the day QuickBooks Online connects?+
Profitability and realization numbers that were based on what got billed switch to being based on what actually got collected. For most firms, at least one matter or practice area that looked healthy turns out to be running thin, or at a loss, once real cash and cost are in the picture.
Do you support QuickBooks Desktop?+
This integration is for QuickBooks Online. If your firm runs QuickBooks Desktop, talk to us about your setup — depending on your accounting workflow there may be other ways to get accounting data joined in.
See what changes once accounting joins the picture
Take the tour with practice management alone, or book a demo and we'll show you what a real QuickBooks-joined dashboard looks like.