Invoice Automation for Law Firms
Law firm AP is small in volume and high in consequence. The bills themselves are ordinary: research subscriptions, expert witnesses, court reporters, process servers, filing fees, IT, insurance. What makes them awkward is that a large share are client disbursements that must be coded to a matter and eventually recovered.
Miss the matter code and the cost never gets billed on. That is not a bookkeeping inconvenience, it is revenue that quietly evaporates.
ZapBooks captures the invoices from the firm's accounts inbox, extracts the detail, applies your vendor coding rules and posts to QuickBooks Online or Xero for review before anything lands in the ledger.
What makes AP hard in law firms and professional services
The volume is one problem. The shape of the documents is usually the bigger one.
Unbilled disbursements
A court reporter invoice that posts to general expense instead of a matter is a cost the client will never be asked to pay.
Low volume, high scrutiny
Two hundred bills a year does not justify a full AP system, but every one needs a partner's eye before payment.
Trust accounting adjacency
Some payments come from operating, some relate to client funds, and getting that wrong has regulatory consequences.
Partner approval bottlenecks
Invoices sit in an inbox waiting for a signature from someone in court all week.
How it works
- 1
Connect the firm's accounts mailbox
Read-only OAuth to the address vendors already bill.
- 2
Invoices extracted with matter references preserved
Case numbers, matter references and client names in the invoice text are captured alongside the standard fields.
- 3
Coding rules per vendor
Recurring vendors code consistently, so research subscriptions and court reporters do not need a decision every month.
- 4
Approval gate before posting
On the Pro plan, invoices route for approval before they reach the ledger, so nothing posts without a partner seeing it.
- 5
Posted to QuickBooks or Xero
With the source document attached and your existing matter or class structure carrying the allocation.
Documents it handles
- Expert witness and consultant invoices
- Court reporter and transcription invoices
- Process server and courier invoices
- Filing fee and court cost receipts
- Legal research subscription invoices
- Office, IT and insurance invoices
What lands in your ledger
- ZapBooks posts bills to QuickBooks Online or Xero; matter-level allocation uses the classes, projects or tracking categories your firm already has.
- Matter and case references appearing in the invoice text are captured so the person reviewing does not have to open the PDF to find them.
- ZapBooks does not touch trust or IOLTA accounting. Client fund movements stay in your practice management or trust accounting system.
- The approval workflow on Pro is designed for the single-approver case common in small firms, not for multi-level policy routing.
Questions from law firms and professional services
Ready to stop typing invoices?
Connect your inbox and your accounting software. ZapBooks reads the invoices, extracts the data and posts coded bills to QuickBooks, Xero or Excel.
14-day free trial. No credit card required.