Robert Ambrogi Blog
The bank feed is matched against transactions recorded in CosmoLex.
In lieu of flowers or candy, CosmoLex is giving its customers something different for Valentine’s Day — automatic, direct bank data feeds.
CosmoLex says it is the first law practice management product to provide this capability. As far as I can determine, it is correct about that.
General business accounting programs such as QuickBooks and Xero already offer access to bank data feeds, and several practice management platforms integrate with one or both of those programs.
But Rick Kabra, CEO of CosmoLex, has long believed that general business accounting programs are not well tailored to the specific needs of law firms. That is why, two years ago, CosmoLex added its own, fully integrated law firm accounting system.
With today’s launch, CosmoLex users will be able to automatically import bank account information, including credit card accounts, from more than 2,000 financial institutions. Once the user sets up the connection, CosmoLex will automatically fetch transaction data from the bank and match it with transactions in CosmoLex.
The bank feed can be used to perform a reconciliation.
The benefit to law firms is that they will be able to keep better track of their bank activities and will also be able to perform daily reconciliations. Automatic imports of bank data should greatly reduce accounting errors and time spent on reconciliations, Kabra says.
“If I find something in the bank data that’s not matching what I’ve entered in my system, that’s where the unique value is,” Kabra says.
Setting it up takes just a few moments. The set-up process asks for your bank username and password to validate the connection, but CosmoLex does not store that information, Kabra says. Once a bank account is connected to the feed, a bank icon is displayed next to the account name.
If you see something in the feed that was not entered in the system but should have been, you can simply select it and enter it. Perhaps you paid a client fee at the courthouse but did not enter it. You can highlight it from the bank data and select “Post As Client Expense” and it will be entered.
CosmoLex subscribers will be allowed to add one bank data feed at no cost. Additional feeds will cost $2.50 per month per login.