Our PC Law Accounting Services in Toronto
The Zen Tax team combines a wealth of legal accounting knowledge, over 30 years of experience, and PC law software to deliver accurate and compliant accounting reports.
Your law firm is a business like any other in Toronto. You have expenses, taxes, and revenue to manage, which can be overwhelming. Even legal professionals who rely on PC Law software, an accounting error could cost your law firm money, disrupt operations, or draw regulatory attention.
At Zen Tax, we have a team of accountants with hands-on experience who bring legal-specific accounting expertise to keep your law practice compliant and confident in every financial report. Here are the PC Law accounting solutions we provide.
Trust Account Reconciliation & Compliance
Managing trust accounts may seem relatively straightforward, especially if you use PC Law, which helps track these accounts. As a licensed lawyer, you understand the importance of trust reconciliation and how easy it can be for legal professionals or law firms to unintentionally fail to adhere to those compliance guidelines.
Your law firm must reconcile trust accounts monthly within 25 days. When these reconciliations fall behind, you risk non-compliance. This can draw regulatory attention and lead to potential non-compliance issues.
At Zen Tax, we work with lawyers and law firms to ensure all their trust accounts are accurate and up-to-date. We take a detailed approach, which involves reconciling the relevant bank statements, individual client records, and your firm’s internal accounting records.
Our experienced accountants compare these sources of information to identify any discrepancies and resolve potential issues related to trust accounts. This way, we ensure each trust account balance is accurate and complies with the regulatory requirements. Our trust account reconciliation and management services provide an extra layer of transparency and accountability.
Trust Account Ledger Review and Cleanup
Over time, your PC Law trust account ledgers can accumulate discrepancies that could lead to confusion and unintended non-compliance. Examples of such discrepancies or anomalies in trust accounts include:
- Uncleaned deposits, such as client cheques that were recorded but never cashed or reconciled
- Duplicate postings (same funds recorded multiple times)
- Unapplied receipts or transfers that were entered in your ledger but not matched to a client
- Money entries were made to the wrong client
These are some of the ledger errors that affect the real trust account balances, making automated reconciliations appear out of sync with bank statements. If not addressed, errors in your trust account ledger can cause liabilities and make regulatory reviews or audits challenging.
Remember, your trust accounting must comply with By-Law 9 and maintain accurate, up-to-date client trust ledgers. PC Law has in-built features that track client trust listings, transfers, and reconciliations. However, these tools provide accurate information if the original data in the ledger was accurate. If the trust account ledger isn’t correct, the final reports can be misleading.
Here’s a table showing how our accountants can help review and clean up your law firm’s trust account ledger.
| Ledger Review Step | Description | Why it matters |
| Data extraction & baseline audit. | We export the trust journal, client trust listing, trust transfer journal, and bank trust statements for a sample period (like 12 months). | This gives us a snapshot of current anomalies and mismatches. |
| Reconciling the trust journal to the client’s ledgers. | We check that the sum of all client trust ledgers (like total client trust liability) equals the trust journal balance. Any variance is flagged. | Ensures internal coherence of PCLaw trust accounts. |
| Identify stale or unapplied entries. | We filter for entries older than a threshold (e.g.,> 90 days) that remain outstanding or unapplied. | These are high-risk discrepancies. |
| Trace unmatched items. | For each flagged item, we trace the source: was it a deposit, a transfer, or a check? Was it misposted or reversed? | Allows root-cause remediation. |
| Reclassify or correct entries. | We reassign deposits or receipts to correct clients or matters, reverse duplicates, or mark items appropriately. | Brings the ledger closer to correctness. |
| Handle closed or inactive matters. | We move residual balances in closed matters either to active client accounts, refund to the client, or reconcile them away per client direction. | Prevents “ghost balances” in unused accounts. |
| Run “transfers” correctly. | If a deposit was incorrectly applied (or needs to move), we use PC Law’s Trust to General, General to Trust, or Matter to Matter transfers to fix the entries. | Keeps the integrity of the transfer logic. |
| Reconcile with the bank. | Once the cleanup is done, we redo the trust bank reconciliation and ensure all outstanding discrepancies are resolved. | Confirms that the cleaned ledger now matches bank records. |
| Validate with client listing & variance report. | We generate an updated client trust listing, compare it with the prior version, and highlight differences. | Gives your law firm a clear before/after picture. |
| Document and maintain audit trails. | Every adjustment is documented, with explanation, date, and user note. | Supports transparency and regulatory review. |
| Set up preventive controls. | We instill monthly reconciliation reviews, stale-item alerts, and accounting controls to prevent new discrepancies from accruing. | Ensures accuracy and transparency going forward. |
While PC Law can help perform these tasks, it’s not an automated trust ledger review and clean-up tool. You still need an experienced accountant to flag inconsistencies, interpret, and correct any discrepancies. This is where Zen Tax comes in. We provide professional analysis of trust ledgers, identify any discrepancies, fix them, and ensure ongoing compliance. Contact us today and schedule a free consultation.
HST Review & Compliance Support
If your law firm’s revenue exceeds a certain amount, you must register with the CRA and remit HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) on your fees, disbursements, and other relevant financial transactions. From our experience, you need more than PC Law or QuickBooks to accurately track and remit your legal fees and disbursements. Any errors in your tax codes or invoice setup can trigger CRA audits or reassessments.
At Zen Tax, we review every billing and expense category in your PC Law system to ensure correct HST treatment. Our team aligns your coding with CRA rules and provides documentation for audit defense. Let our accountants ensure your HST practices align with all LSO financial record-keeping requirements to avoid unnecessary auditing.
We Help Optimize Your PC Law Account
From our experience, PC Law is an excellent tool for lawyers and law firms seeking legal bookkeeping services in Toronto. While you may have gotten comfortable with your PC Law account structure, it may not be optimized from your firm’s finances or tax perspective.
At Zen Tax, our skilled accountants will review every aspect of your PC Law account and recommend various changes for efficiency. Remember, we usually take a consultative approach to proactively provide integrity of every transaction and insightful information. Indeed, we offer the PC Law support services you need to manage the financial matters of your law firm and its trust accounts.
Ongoing PC Law Accounting Services
Once your PC Law account is optimized for efficient accounting and correct record-keeping practices, Zen Tax will continue to provide accounting support either weekly or monthly, depending on your preferences. All our PC Law accounting services are tailored to your law firm’s needs.
Our accountants have deep experience in bookkeeping and tax services. Therefore, you can count on us to prevent potentially non-compliant accounting issues related to your legal accounting software. This will free up enough time to focus on your case management and practicing law.
Schedule a free consultation and discuss your PC Law accounting needs with a highly experienced legal bookkeeper & accountant.
How Zen Tax Works with PC Law Software
PC Law has become popular among lawyers and law firms in Toronto. It offers a suite of tools to make it easy for law firms to manage payroll, track client payments, manage documents, and other aspects of legal accounting. PC Law is also helpful in managing trust accounts and tracking your firm’s finances efficiently.
At Zen Tax, we work with you to ensure all the accounts tracked using PC Law are correctly configured and you have a solid foundation for legal accounting. Beyond the initial setup or review, we provide ongoing support to ensure all accounts are correctly reconciled. Remember, our primary goal is to ensure your legal accounting is correctly done.
Enjoy Hassle-Free PC Law Accounting
At Zen Tax, we take pride in delivering High-quality PC Law accounting services that help law firms and sole practitioners streamline their financial matters. With our expertise, commitment to client satisfaction, and attention to detail, you can trust our skilled accountants in Toronto to meet your PC Law accounting needs efficiently.
Contact us today and schedule a free consultation about your PC Law accounting needs.
Disclaimer: The information on this page is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional or legal advice. Zen Tax is not affiliated with LexisNexis or PC Law. Results may vary depending on individual circumstances. Please consult a qualified accounting professional before making decisions related to your firm’s accounting or tax matters.
FAQ / Resources
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PC Law is an all-in-one software that lets lawyers and law firms gain control over client management, track billable time, perform trust accounting, and ensure better case management. It also makes it easy to manage billing and track your firm’s financial matters. Note that PC Law is server-based, which means you can run it from your firm’s on-premise server or private cloud.
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By-Law 9 requires that the reconciliation of the firm’s trust account be completed monthly within 25 days of the end of the specific period that the financial institution’s monthly statement covers. For instance, trust account reconciliation for March (from March 1st to March 31st) should be prepared by April 25th. The reconciliation should be done even if there was no trust activity for that month.
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PC law does not automatically match all Law Society regulations. That means lawyers and law firms must ensure the software is properly set up, configured, and used appropriately to ensure compliance in trust accounting and other aspects of legal accounting and bookkeeping.
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Yes. Attorneys and law firms in Toronto need certified accountants even when using PC Law. The software helps record, track, and organize your firm’s trust accounts, finances, and more. However, you need an experienced accountant to audit, interpret data from PC Law, identify inconsistencies, and reconcile your accounts to stay compliant.
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Yes. At Zen Tax, we perform your PC Law account to ensure proper tax coding and proper documentation for CRA spot audits. We can also help in filing your HST returns and represent your law practice in any correspondence with CRA.
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Yes. At Zen Tax, we perform timely and accurate trust account reconciliations, ledger reviews, and other PC law accounting tasks in line with LSO By-Law 9. Therefore, we can streamline your legal bookkeeping and accounting to ensure your law practice stays LSO compliant.
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