Professional Services
Lawyers, CPAs and independent consultants live in time and they bill in time, but the gap between billable hour and collected dollar is where the firm makes or loses money. 4b2b runs the operational layer between time-tracking, trust-aware accounting and the client invoice — so partners can finally answer "what is realization on this matter?" without exporting four reports and aligning them in Excel.
Where the pain shows up
Pain point
Partners track utilization but not realization. The difference between billable hours and collected hours is hidden in WIP write-downs at month end.
How 4b2b helps
Per-matter realization (billable rate × hours → invoiced amount → collected amount), refreshed nightly. Write-downs are an explicit decision, not an after-the-fact discovery.
Pain point
Trust/IOLTA accounting demands that client funds never commingle with operating cash. Most small firms juggle this in two separate QuickBooks files.
How 4b2b helps
Trust-aware patterns: separate trust ledger per matter, retainer drawn-down explicitly, three-way reconciliation (trust bank, trust ledger, sum of client balances). Designed to support a state-bar trust audit; not a substitute for your jurisdiction's specific compliance review.
Pain point
Expense receipts get photographed, emailed, lost. Partner reimbursement lags by weeks.
How 4b2b helps
Mobile expense capture with OCR, per-matter tagging, approval workflow, direct posting to client invoice or partner reimbursement.
Pain point
Originator vs. working attorney compensation splits get re-litigated every quarter. Excel spreadsheet of doom.
How 4b2b helps
Compensation policy stored per attorney (origination credit %, working credit %, supervising credit %). Each invoice payment auto-allocates to the right buckets.
Recommended modules for professional services
4invoices.net — invoicing, subscriptions & Stripe
Time and expense to invoice, retainer + trust-aware patterns, realization reporting, 1099 contractor tracking.
4notify.net — transactional SMS & email
Invoice reminders, retainer-replenishment requests, court-date reminders to clients.
4marketingonline.net — marketing automation
Intake forms, conflict-check workflow integration, client-onboarding email flows.
Questions we hear most
Is this trust-account-compliant for law firms?
We provide trust-aware patterns: a separate trust ledger per matter, three-way reconciliation, and an audit-friendly transaction log. State-bar trust accounting rules vary, so we recommend pairing 4b2b with a state-bar-approved compliance review for your jurisdiction. We are not a substitute for that review.
Do you replace Clio or PracticePanther?
For many small firms, yes — the matter management, time tracking, billing and trust ledger overlap. For litigation-heavy firms that depend on Clio's court-rules calendaring, you keep Clio and let 4b2b handle the financial side via their API.
Can CPAs use this for fixed-fee engagements?
Yes. The engagement model supports time-and-expense, fixed-fee, value-priced and subscription billing. Realization on fixed-fee work compares billed amount against actual time logged so you know if your pricing is right.
How do you handle originator + working attorney comp splits?
Each invoice payment is allocated per the comp policy stored on the matter. Originator gets X%, working attorney gets Y%, supervising attorney gets Z%. Partner P&L is the sum of their allocations across all matters.
Run your practice on realization, not utilization.
We migrate your matters, set up your trust ledger, and configure your comp policies — usually within two weeks.
Talk to us
