Smokeball Bookkeeping Services & IOLTA Trust Accounting

Smokeball describes the division of labor better than any other platform in legal: Smokeball keeps the trust and client ledgers, QuickBooks Online keeps the general ledger. What most firms miss is how narrow the bridge between them is. Smokeball sends only money movement — invoices are never pushed to QuickBooks as unpaid income. If you think your QuickBooks profit and loss is accrual, it is not.

The Sync Sends Cash, Not Revenue

Smokeball documents the QuickBooks Online integration as a one-way sync carrying payments applied to invoices, trust deposits, operating retainer deposits, trust and operating payments and checks, operating checks for advanced costs, and reversals. It explicitly does not carry time or fee entries, expense entries, the invoices themselves, or internal transfers between matters.

Smokeball’s own wording is the clearest statement of the consequence: invoices are not pushed to QuickBooks Online as unpaid income, only movement is sent. Your QuickBooks file therefore behaves as a cash-basis record no matter what basis you think you are on. There is no accounts receivable. A firm with six figures of unbilled or unpaid work in progress sees none of it on the balance sheet, which matters a great deal when a bank, a partner buy-in or a tax projection is involved.

Matter-to-matter trust transfers never reach QuickBooks either. That means the total trust liability in QuickBooks can be exactly right while the composition — which client is owed what — is wrong. Only the client subsidiary ledgers in Smokeball hold the truth, which is precisely why the three-way reconciliation has to be done properly.

Two Traps at Setup

The migration double-count. Smokeball’s own instruction is to wait to turn on the sync until all pre-existing trust and operating retainer funds have been entered into Smokeball Billing. Firms that switch the sync on early duplicate their opening trust balances — a mistake that looks like extra money and takes real work to unwind.

The plan-level gap. Smokeball’s integration documentation indicates that Bill plan members have access to general ledger integration but not trust account integration. A firm on that plan assuming trust activity is flowing into QuickBooks has an unrecorded trust liability sitting on its balance sheet. Smokeball’s own pages are not perfectly consistent on this point, so we confirm the current behavior on your specific plan rather than assuming either way.

One more thing worth flagging: Smokeball’s marketplace page presents the QuickBooks integration in a way that reads as bidirectional, while the support documentation says one-way. We work from the support documentation.

Core Smokeball Bookkeeping Functions We Manage

1. Monthly Three-Way Trust Reconciliation

A three-way reconciliation compares three balances that must agree every month: the trust bank statement balance adjusted for outstanding items, the trust account journal or control ledger, and the sum of every individual client subsidiary ledger. State bar guidance — the California State Bar’s client trust accounting handbook is a widely used example — directs attorneys to perform it monthly, for each trust account, and to keep a written record proving it was done. The governing principle is simple: what comes in for each client must equal what goes out for that client, no more and no less.

Smokeball derives client ledgers from the transactions themselves and supports keying the closing statement balance to complete the match. We run it, investigate the differences, and keep the written record.

2. Restoring Accrual Reporting the Sync Removes

Because invoices never reach QuickBooks, we build the accounts receivable and revenue picture separately — unbilled work in progress, billed-and-unpaid receivables, and the accrual adjustments your CPA and your bank need. This is the single biggest value we add on Smokeball.

3. Inter-Matter Transfers and Client Ledger Integrity

Transfers between matters never sync, so we track them in Smokeball and prove the composition of the trust liability, not just its total. Protect Trust Funds locking used where appropriate.

4. Retainer Replenishment and Trust Discipline

Minimum balances monitored, replenishment requests sent before a matter goes negative, earned fees transferred out only when actually earned, and processing fees kept off the trust account.

5. Firm Financials, Payroll and Year End

Operating books, financial reporting, payroll, partner distributions and 1099s.

The Smokeball Rescue: Rebuilding the Numbers the Sync Never Sent

Most Smokeball cleanups are not about errors at all — they are about absence. The firm needs accrual financials, a lender wants receivables, or a partner wants to know what the practice is actually worth, and QuickBooks contains only cash movement.

We reconstruct accounts receivable and revenue from Smokeball billing data, produce accrual-basis statements alongside the cash-basis QuickBooks file, and reconcile the trust liability’s composition against the client subsidiary ledgers matter by matter. Where a migration duplicated opening trust balances, we identify and unwind it.

Behind on more than reporting? Start with catch-up bookkeeping.

Why Outsource Your Smokeball Bookkeeping to Maxim Liberty?

Knowing what a platform does not send is worth more than knowing what it does. We work in Smokeball regularly, we have kept US books since 2005, and we build the accrual picture that the integration by design leaves out.

Plans start at $75/month; dedicated bookkeepers are $15/hour for businesses and $10/hour for CPA firms who white-label our team. Your first deposit carries a 100% money-back guarantee, so you can test the work with little to no risk. See pricing.