Ultimate guide to legal cashiering #4: Is outsourcing the answer?

The final instalment in our ‘Ultimate guide to legal cashiering’ blog series casts a lens on the best ways of managing your legal accounting function including some benefits of going down the outsourced cashiering route and how to pick the right supplier for your law firm. As legal cashiering is our bread and butter here at Quill, we offer reasons to choose our Pinpoint or Precision services using Bhayani Law as a case in point. Lastly, drawing our blog series to a close, we present the top takeaways from this and the earlier three blog posts to help you keep your cashiering on track.

 

Q: The best way to manage your legal cashiering?

A: Let somebody else do it for you.

While larger law firms may be able to afford employing their own cashier in-house, small-to-medium sized firms can get more bang for their buck by outsourcing their cashiering to a reliable bureau.

The job of an outsourced legal cashier is to manage all the time-intensive data entry, compliant-centric reconciliation and accounting tasks that keep your business running – without incurring additional headcount.

And by doing their job, outsourced cashiers help you to focus on your own job too.

 

The benefits of outsourcing your legal cashiering

• Reduce overheads by saving on recruitment, training, salary, IT equipment and office space costs
• Increase cost-efficiency by only paying for the support you need
• Get experienced support which is fully SRA and CLC compliant
• Mitigate the impact of staff absences and enjoy continuous support
• Receive regular reports for a complete overview of your law practice
• Enable solicitors to focus on fee-earning work

 

How to choose a provider

Outsourced cashiering isn’t without its hurdles. The inevitable issues of data security, change management and third-party costs will all need to be addressed in a timely fashion. But asking yourself the following questions at an early stage will help you choose the right outsourced provider for your law firm:

• Are you planning to use your existing accounting tools, or outsource it completely?
• Do their staff have the appropriate qualifications?
• Can they operate with utmost data security and GDPR compliance?
• Who exactly will be working on your account, and how?
• Can they offer continuous cover/support?
• How painless will the switchover to this new provider be?
• Are there any hidden costs?
• Does this provider have any trusted references?
• Do they offer any other outsourced services like payroll, typing and digital post?

Struggling to find the answers to all those questions? Not to worry. Quill can answer them for you…

 

Why choose Quill?

Quill has been providing dedicated and highly qualified outsourced legal cashiering services to UK law firms for over 40 years. Our tight-knit group of 50 legal cashiers has seen pretty much everything there is to see, but that doesn’t stop them from staying up to date with all the latest regulatory changes.

With a flexible, friendly and scalable solution, Quill takes the stress out of running your legal accounts, lowering your overhead spend while still remaining fully compliant.

As part of our outsourced service, we offer two distinct options.

 

Two different options. Same goal.

Pinpoint

Enter daily records of monies into and out of your accounts using our legal accounting software, and we will pick up from there.

Best for: law firms seeking a fully integrated solution that’s easy to use, efficient and SRA compliant.

Precision

Continue to use your existing accounts system but still benefit from having a dedicated legal cashier working for you as an extension of your practice.

Best for: law firms seeking the support of an experienced legal cashier.

Did you know?

Quill is the first outsourced legal cashiering service provider to be an affiliate partner of the Law Society.

Did you also know?

All of our legal cashiers at Quill are active members of the Institute of Legal Finance and Management (ILFM) and have regular access to continued professional development courses and events.

 

A case in point: Bhayani Law

When specialist employment law solicitors, Bhayani Law, needed to accommodate complicated retainer client payments on a GoCardless basis, Jay Bhayani turned to her long-term accounting software and outsourced cashiering service supplier, Quill.

The challenge

“It’s difficult to cater for unique requirements such as ours whilst still complying with the intricacies of accounts rules applicable to our sector. As part of a streamlining exercise, we reached out to Quill for help.”

The solution

“Our only onus is to distribute invoices to our clients. Our Quill cashier does everything else, including monitoring clients, producing invoices, managing and recording our purchase ledger invoices, performing bank reconciliations, producing monthly financial reports and processing e-chits for incoming and outgoing transactions.”

The result

“By collaborating with Quill, I found the ideal solution by simply tailoring outsourced cashiering support to the idiosyncrasies of our particular set up. Our former administration burden has been removed entirely.”

 

From top traps to top tips

We’ve discussed plenty of the traps of legal cashiering in the previous pages, but what about the top tips?

If you take anything away from this blog series, be sure it’s the following:

Tip #1

Identify and avoid any risky habits that can lead to fraud, cybercrime and money laundering, or any breaches of SRA Accounts Rules.

Tip #2

Always investigate opportunities to streamline and automate your legal cashiering processes, especially outsourcing.

Tip #3

Never underestimate the importance of a qualified legal cashier, and encourage them to pursue opportunities for continuous improvement.

Tip #4

Filter all those best practices throughout your law firm. Your legal cashiers aren’t alone in the never-ending journey of compliance.

 

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Want to read our earlier blogs in this series? Access ‘Ultimate guide to legal cashiering #3: Busting the myths & why experience counts‘, ‘Ultimate guide to legal cashiering #2: Tips and traps‘ and ‘Ultimate guide to legal cashiering #1: The basics‘.