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For administrators, HQ, and authorized accounting staff. Paralegals entering costs can start with their first expense. If a required account or control is missing, send your administrator the office, case, and task; do not create a replacement account to continue. Complete this setup before staff begin processing batches. Have the accounting owner confirm which bank accounts are current and which staff should manage them.

Give staff the access their work requires

Follow Manage roles and permissions to assign Accounting to staff who manage financial records. Accounting is a financial role; it does not make someone an HQ administrator. Keep any existing HQ role when the person still needs HQ responsibilities. To add Accounting without removing another role, open Settings → Organization → Members, find the person, and use the + role control to add Accounting. Confirm their existing roles remain. If Accounting is absent, an administrator must create/configure it using the role guide first; a role name alone does not enable permissions. Permissions and case scope both matter. For an accounting staff member, verify that they can:
  • Find a case they are not individually assigned to within their authorized office scope.
  • View and edit expenses, invoices, resolutions, and checks required for their work.
  • Open Approvals and review a pending financial item assigned to them or their role.
  • Manage bank accounts and process payments when those responsibilities are intended.
  • Search cases from bulk entry and open the appropriate office’s reports.
For HQ staff, repeat the check with one case in each relevant child office. A role name alone does not grant access to every organization or restricted case. If access is missing, have an administrator inspect both role permissions and case/office visibility.

Standardize bank accounts

Open Settings → Bank accounts in the office that owns the accounts. This list manages saved Presolve bank accounts; use QuickBooks mappings for external account routing. First, search the existing accounts. Compare the account ID and any masked number shown, not just a repeated label such as “WA IOLTA.” If the details do not identify the account, stop and ask the accounting owner to confirm it. Choose one task: To clean up repeated WA IOLTA entries, have the accounting owner identify the entry to keep, rename it clearly, then retire only the confirmed obsolete entries. “Remove” here means retire; it does not permanently delete past accounting records. Retiring an account does not merge its records into another account. Before retiring duplicate labels, identify the account staff should use going forward and review linked historical records with accounting. Do not assume that similarly named accounts are the same bank account. If another person changed an account while you were editing, reload the latest value before saving again.

Choose the initial resolution status

In Settings → Bank accounts → New resolutions, an administrator can choose Active or Draft and select Save default. The choice applies to single-resolution entry for that office’s cases. Accounting staff can change it before saving; Active requires a deposit account. Legal staff without payment permissions and bulk entry still create Drafts for Accounting to activate. This setting does not approve reviews or change existing resolutions.

Keep office names and account names separate

HQ can edit child-firm names in the HQ directory or the Suboffice QuickBooks accounts section. Choose names staff recognize. Renaming a firm does not rename a bank account or create a QuickBooks account. For each child office, save its cost/expense account, payment/check account, optional credit-card account, and allowed resolution deposit accounts. An empty deposit-account selection exposes no inherited HQ QuickBooks deposit accounts for that child. Locally managed bank accounts are a separate list.

Connect setup to daily payments

In Settings → Integrations → QuickBooks, use the shortcuts for Company accounts, Office accounts, and Vendor matches. Choose accounts from the connected company; new choices save account IDs, so renaming an account in QuickBooks keeps the link. A child’s assigned expense account takes priority over company category overrides. Staff see the office, company ID, resolved payment account, and routing source before confirming payment. They can open Account setup in another tab and Recheck setup without restarting the payment form. Read QuickBooks setup and payment verification for the full flow.

Verify setup with a small sample

Start with one authorized case and one record in a designated test workspace. Check the account choice, reviewer eligibility, saved IDs, and resulting status. Confirm one successful workflow before staff process a large batch. Next, add the standard approval workflows for this organization.