Office which is money that belongs to the solicitor practice and client which is monies belonging to the clients of the practice.
There are strict rules set out on the Solicitors Regulation Authority website www.sra.org.uk.
In essence there are strict rules on classification of monies between the two types and on how transactions are processed. It is better for you you to read through the rules in there entirety rather than for me to cut and paste extracts here as examples.
Any solicitor firm that holds client money will also have to have an annual SAR report done by external accountants which goes to the Solicitor Regulation Authority to confirm whether the rules have been complied with.
That said, I have done Solicitors Accounts work for over 12 years now and like anything once you get used to it it becomes almost second nature.
This is something I have thought about looking at. I realise its a nisch market, and I don't think anyone specailises in it in my area. There are a few Solicitors locally so was thinking of getting some sort of qualification maybe with a view to maybe looking at getting into it. I hear we can charge more for this type of service??
Do you go to their premises or is it something you do at your offices/home office?
Do you mainly do Solicitors Bookkeeping as you said you have done it for over 12 years now or is this just a small portion of oyur business?
Sorry for all the questions, its just something I have been thinking off for a while now.
Also just found out this month that I may be potentially losing 4 clients!!!
2 are very small but nether the less still paying clients!
Institute of Legal Finance and Management site is worth a look to get idea of salaries / hourly rates etc, qualifications and the accounts systems commonly used
http://www.ilfm.org.uk
Hal AFA FFTA
-- Edited by Hal on Wednesday 11th of April 2012 01:16:13 PM
My experience comes from being employed, however I am considering setting up my own practice.
It is more likely to be based on a firms premises for two main reasons:
1. Becasuse of the differences between solicitors accounts and other businesses most practices will use a legal accounts package that will integrate with their case management system rather than SAGE. 2. Although more firms are starting to use hosted systems, alot still use systems where the software is hosted on a local server.
Although most established practices are likely to have someone who does the accounts i.e. a legal cashier, they may be more than happy to pass it on if it is currently done by a non cashier. Like alot of sectors there have been many redundancies among solicitors some of whom have gone on to set up their own practices and these are the ones that would probably benefit most from bookkeeping / cashier assistance.
They are specialist in the sense that they would only be of use to the legal profession but they are not, in themselves, more complicated than more mainstream accounts packages.
They tend to be integrated with the case management system which the fee earners use so for example the time they record on the case management side is transferred into the WIP records on the accounts side and the accounts postings on the individual client ledgers [both office and client] are visible to the fee earners.
There are some stand alone accounts packages but these are increasinly uncommon.
The key distinction is the separation of office and client monies and how they ares treated within the accounts system.
The regulations in respect of client money are strict and if you breach them then you the solicitor / partners could get into serious trouble.
