Paul W. Carlson, CPA (00:00):
Hi, this is Paul Carlson, CPA with Law Firm Velocity. We have a few clients who will print trust account checks from QuickBooks Desktop, that is hosted on Right Networks' hosting service. This happens when the firms use a practice management system that cannot print checks. For example, Clio is very popular, but the system cannot print checks. So this process is to first get the connections installed to your computer. So you go to the Right Networks website, go to the Support page, scroll to the bottom, and run this Right Network Setup Wizard. At this, we'll install two items on your computer. The first is a terminal server, a remote desktop service icon on your desktop that you use to connect to the remote server. A second application installed is TSPrint. That is a little application needed to print from the remote server to your local computers and to your local printers. So with that, we'll assume you can get through these details and run those applications.
(01:06):
Once that is done, you'll have a Right Networks icon on your desktop. So to connect to the QuickBooks server, you click, and here you would enter your Right Networks login. We will provide this to you, that you have two logins. So one is Right Networks, and that connects to the server. A second login is your QuickBooks login. So you'd enter those credentials here, click OK, and you'll log in.
(01:36):
Here, Right Networks is starting to log in. We get to this screen, and we click OK. Sometimes it takes a moment or two for the service to spin up. This is a good time to go get your check stock and double-check the first check number we're going to print.
(01:55):
All right, and here's your Right Networks desktop. Law firms will typically only have one QuickBooks icon on the desktop. We have a bunch because we keep old copies to support new clients. So start QuickBooks. Typically, in this process, you'll be prompted for your QuickBooks Desktop username and password. I'm using an example database that doesn't have a password on it, so it skips that screen. Just after you click the QuickBooks Desktop icon, you'll be prompted for a second username and password that we will provide.
(02:30):
Okay. Here, QuickBooks Desktop on the remote server has spun up. So first is the Accountant Center window. If you don't want to see this anymore, just uncheck this box and close it, and it will go away. A home screen, you can maximize this. We're not going to use it. It just bugs me when it's little. So we're going to use these three shortcuts in the shortcuts bars. The first is to... We have a memorized shortcut to post IOLTA checks. The second shortcut is to print the checks. Then third is to look at a check register. So let's go ahead and click the shortcut into Memorized IOLTA Transactions. So here we have a memorized IOLTA draw. So we click on this link, and we get a template of the check we need to enter.
(03:18):
So we're going to write it on the Chase IOLTA account. We have Print Later selected, so that way we can print all the checks as one batch. On today's date, this check is going to client A, and they are receiving $25,000. So here we want a description and the client name, and do settlement funds, again, client A. This account name is always a liability account. This amount will populate from here. From this customer job, we want to again select client A because this is money coming from that client. We're going to do Save and Close, never Save and New, because that doesn't use the shortcut. Go to Save and Close.
(04:16):
From the IOLTA draw, so we want to write a second check. This will go to a doctor that helped with the matter. So again, it goes from the Chase IOLTA account. On today's date, this is payable to Doctor D, and they are not an existing vendor within the system. So we do select New, it's going to be a vendor. The vendor name will be Doctor D. So this is just the vendor name within QuickBooks. In this window, we need to print the vendor name and address that we want printed on the check. So Doctor D, 100 Main Street, Mesa, Arizona 85201. So now, we have the vendor added, click OK.
(05:11):
The physician is receiving $2,500. So we need a description of the check along with the matter name. So this will be Doctor D Services for Client A Matter. This account is the same dollar amount as pre-populated for this customer job. This work was done for client A. So we select client A. If this client is not set up, type the client name here in the memo, and we will go back and we will add the client name to the specific checks. Below the screen record, there's two buttons that say Save and Close or Save and New. So I'm going to go down and hit Save and Close.
(06:09):
All right. So with that, we have entered two checks into QuickBooks Desktop, that now we want to go ahead and print those checks. So we're going to use this second shortcut. So here's the two checks that we know we want to print. We're going to print from the IOLTA checking account and the first check number. So we're looking at our pre-printed check stock that we've purchased, that we want to confirm that check number 10 is the first available check. So we click OK.
(06:45):
Remember when we were doing the setup, we said we're going to install TSPrinter? Since we're printing from Right Networks, our printer name is TSPrint. So we're going to go ahead and leave this to TSPrint and click Print, and we need to wait a second. So now we can see the local printers on our computer. So we would load the check stock into our laser printer, click OK. We can hear the printer kick in, and it's printing our checks. From there, we would make sure that the checks are okay. If the checks have printed fine, we just go ahead and click OK, and we are done.
(07:39):
The third link is a link into our IOLTA Check Register. And so this brings up all the check registers. We need to select our IOLTA account. Click OK. From here, we can see the history of the checks that have been printed against the IOLTA trust account. Firms typically don't do a whole lot with this. I just wanted to show that you can go back in and see the history.
(08:01):
So to wrap up what we've talked through is how to record IOLTA checks into QuickBooks. Then how to print those IOLTA checks from QuickBooks. Now, some firms will have us post the checks for them into QuickBooks. So we do this step, and then all the firm does is they log in, and they print the checks directly from their office. So talk with us on which options you want to use. With that, if you need any help with your law firm's accounting, please give us a shout over at Law Firm Velocity. Thanks, bye-bye.
