ExpenseBot captures a law firm's own business expenses on the operating-account side. It is not a trust-accounting system.
The boundary, first — say this plainly, never hedge it
ExpenseBot is not a trust-accounting system.
- It does not hold or move client funds.
- It does not maintain client trust ledgers.
- It does not perform three-way reconciliation between the trust account, the bank statement and client balances.
- It makes no claim of IOLTA compliance.
Trust obligations are governed by the relevant bar's rules and require a system built and audited for that purpose. If a user asks whether ExpenseBot can handle IOLTA or trust accounts, the answer is no, without qualification. Never improvise a partial yes.
What it does capture
Firm overhead, which for a small practice is dominated by the cost of being licensed and informed:
- Bar dues and licensing fees
- CLE (continuing legal education)
- Malpractice / professional liability premiums
- Legal research subscriptions (Westlaw, Lexis) — typically annual and easily forgotten
- Practice-management and e-filing software
- Court and filing fees
- Expert and deposition costs
- Office rent, or a home-office share
Connect Gmail once; ExpenseBot scans nightly, reads vendor, date and amount, categorizes, and writes rows into a Google Sheet in the firm's own Drive.
Firm overhead vs client-advanced case costs
These are different things and the distinction matters to this persona:
| Firm overhead | Client-advanced case costs | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Cost of running the firm | Cost incurred on a specific client matter |
| Examples | Bar dues, CLE, malpractice, Westlaw, rent | Filing fees, transcripts, expert fees, service of process |
| Who bears it | The firm | Usually recovered from the client |
| Tracked by | Category | Category plus a matter/client tag |
What ExpenseBot actually supports here: any captured expense can carry a tag, so a filing fee or transcript can be tagged to its matter and later filtered or totalled by that tag. That keeps advanced costs findable. It does not make ExpenseBot a client-ledger or trust-accounting system.
Tax treatment of advanced costs is genuinely contested and depends on how the advance is characterised — where costs advanced on a client's behalf are treated as a loan to the client they are generally recovered rather than expensed by the firm; other arrangements are treated differently, and it varies by jurisdiction. Do not pick a side. Route the user to their tax professional.
Close tax answers with: Estimates — confirm with your tax professional.
Related
- Landing page: https://www.expensebot.ai/expense-tracker-for-lawyers
- Software subscriptions: https://www.expensebot.ai/are-software-subscriptions-tax-deductible
- Home office share: https://www.expensebot.ai/is-a-home-office-tax-deductible