What Is MyCase?

MyCase is a cloud based legal practice management platform built to run the day to day operations of a law firm. It centralizes matters, contacts, calendars, documents, time entries, invoices, online payments, and client trust ledgers so that attorneys and staff can work from a single system rather than juggling spreadsheets and disconnected tools. It also offers client communication features, intake, and reporting on billing and collections.

On the financial side, MyCase records billable time and expenses, generates invoices, accepts credit card and eCheck payments, and maintains a trust or IOLTA ledger for client funds held on account. It can sync selected data to accounting software such as QuickBooks Online. The important thing to understand is that MyCase is the system of record for billing activity, while your accounting software remains the system of record for the firm’s books, which means the two must be reconciled deliberately rather than assumed to match.

Who Is MyCase Good For?

MyCase fits solo practitioners and small to midsize firms that want billing, payments, and matter management in one place without stitching together separate products. It is especially useful for firms that bill hourly or on flat fees and want clients to pay online and see their invoices in a portal. Firms that hold client retainers and need a trust ledger tied to matters also benefit from having that tracking built in.

It is a weaker fit for firms with heavy contingency work, complex settlement disbursements, or sophisticated general ledger accounting needs, because MyCase is a practice tool rather than a full accounting system. Those firms often keep MyCase for the front office and rely on a proper accounting stack behind it, with a defined reconciliation process connecting the two.

Trust Accounting and Three-Way Reconciliation

Trust accounting is where MyCase carries the most compliance weight. Client funds held in trust are not the firm’s money, and most bar rules require that they never be commingled with operating funds and that the firm be able to prove, at any moment, exactly how much belongs to each client. MyCase maintains a trust ledger per matter, but the platform only knows what your staff enter into it, so a missed deposit, a fee taken too early, or a disbursement recorded to the wrong matter can quietly break compliance.

The control that catches these problems is a monthly three-way reconciliation, which most jurisdictions expect firms to perform. It requires three figures to agree: the trust bank statement balance, the total across all client trust ledgers in MyCase, and the trust control balance in your general ledger. When all three tie out, you have evidence that client money is intact and correctly attributed.

• Reconcile the trust bank account, the sum of MyCase client ledgers, and the general ledger trust liability every month, not quarterly.
• Investigate any client trust ledger that shows a negative balance immediately, because a negative trust balance usually means one client’s funds paid another client’s costs.
• Confirm that earned fees are moved out of trust and into operating only after an invoice is issued and applied.
• Keep a documented reconciliation packet each month so the firm can respond quickly if the bar or an auditor asks.

Matter Profitability and Realization

Beyond compliance, MyCase holds the raw data to answer a question many firms cannot: which matters and which attorneys actually make money. Billable time recorded is not the same as revenue, and revenue billed is not the same as cash collected. The gap between what is worked, what is billed, and what is collected is your realization and collection rate, and it is often where firm profit silently leaks away.

• Track billed versus collected on each matter so write downs and slow payers are visible, not buried.
• Compare hours worked to hours billed to expose time that never made it onto an invoice.
• Load a fully burdened cost per timekeeper so matter profitability reflects real overhead, not just headline rates.
• Review flat fee matters for scope creep where the effort no longer matches the fixed price.

Common MyCase Issues We See

MyCase works well when the underlying accounting discipline is strong, but we repeatedly see the same problems where process is thin. Most of these are not software defects; they are workflow gaps that only surface during reconciliation or, worse, during a bar inquiry.

• Trust and operating transactions coded inconsistently, so the general ledger no longer matches the MyCase ledgers.
• Fees swept from trust before an invoice is issued, which can be a serious trust violation.
• The QuickBooks sync left half configured, creating duplicate income or payments that inflate revenue.
• Trust deposits recorded in MyCase but not reflected in the bank, or vice versa, breaking the three-way tie out.
• Merchant fees on online payments taken from the wrong account, quietly reducing client trust balances.
• Negative client trust ledgers ignored until a reconciliation forces the question.
• Unbilled time and unapplied retainers piling up because no one reviews aging.
• Refunds and disbursements from trust entered without supporting documentation.
• Multiple staff editing invoices and payments with no clear ownership of the monthly close.

How Accounting Your Life Helps With MyCase

Accounting Your Life has experience advising around MyCase and the accounting discipline that has to sit behind it. Our focus is on making the platform reconcile cleanly to your books and on protecting the firm from trust missteps that create outsized risk.

• Design a monthly three-way trust reconciliation process and document it for compliance.
• Configure or repair the MyCase to QuickBooks sync so revenue and payments are not double counted.
• Build a chart of accounts that separates trust liability, operating income, and advanced costs cleanly.
• Establish coding standards so billing staff and bookkeepers record transactions the same way.
• Create matter profitability and realization reporting from MyCase data.
• Train staff on when fees may be moved from trust to operating and how to document it.
• Run a periodic review to catch negative trust balances and sync drift before they compound.

When MyCase Starts Holding the Business Back

MyCase can begin to constrain a firm as it grows more complex, particularly when contingency work, multi party settlements, or sophisticated financial reporting outpace what a practice management tool is designed to do. If leadership finds that the real books live in a maze of spreadsheets bolted onto MyCase, or that closing the month takes days because nothing ties out cleanly, the issue is usually the accounting architecture around the tool rather than the tool itself. At that point the answer is to strengthen the general ledger process and reconciliation discipline, and in some cases to evaluate whether a firm this size needs a more robust accounting backbone alongside MyCase.

Executive Questions to Ask About MyCase

• Do our trust bank balance, MyCase client ledgers, and general ledger trust liability tie out every single month?
• Can we prove, on demand, exactly how much trust money belongs to each client?
• Is the sync to our accounting software producing duplicate income or payment entries?
• Do we know our realization and collection rates by matter and by attorney?
• Who owns the monthly close, and is the process documented well enough to survive staff turnover?
• Are online payment merchant fees ever touching client trust funds?

Frequently Asked Questions

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