Softilo Counsel

Client money kept apart, and provably so.

Practice and client-money accounting: client and office ledgers on every matter, time and fee notes, three-way reconciliation with COFA sign-off, and the firm’s own books in one system.

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For UK law firms regulated by the SRA

Three-way reconciliation of the bank statement, cash book and client ledgers, with the history of sign-offs.

The problem

The SRA Accounts Rules leave no room for error on client money, yet many small firms still reconcile across a practice system, a spreadsheet and separate office accounts.

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Softilo Counsel on screen

Softilo Counsel · WalkthroughScreen recording · demo data · no sound

What it does

6 things Softilo Counsel does properly

Matters and clients

Clients with due-diligence status, fee earners with hourly rates, and a client and office ledger on every matter.

Client money

Client bank kept apart from office. A payment that would overdraw a matter’s client ledger, on its date or any later date, is refused.

Time and fee notes

Time in six-minute units, with VAT handled for fees, recharges and agent’s disbursements.

Client-to-office transfers

Against a fee note only: never before the bill, and never more than is billed or held.

Three-way reconciliation

Bank statement, client cash book and client ledgers, signed off once, with the next five-week due date.

Interest and residual balances

Interest on client money under the firm’s policy, and a report of residual and dormant balances.

Quality bars

Rules it doesn’t break.

The books always balance: An unbalanced journal is refused by the database at commit, and money is never held as a floating-point number.
History can’t be rewritten: Journals and the audit log are append-only. A correction is a new entry.
Each business sees only its own: Postgres row-level security keeps companies apart, even if application code has a bug.
No overdrawn client ledgers: Checked in the API and again by a database trigger (SRA Accounts Rules 2019, rule 5.3).

Specification

Under the bonnet

Demo firm: Hartley & Webb LLP, a fictional four-fee-earner firm
Rules: SRA Accounts Rules 2019 · HMRC VAT on disbursements
Reports: Aged debtors, fee-earner time recorded, billed and unbilled
Stack: Next.js · Fastify · PostgreSQL

Straight answers

What it doesn’t do (yet)

Submitting returns to HMRC (MTD)
Open Banking feeds
Multi-factor sign-in
A payment approval workflow
Scotland and Northern Ireland

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