Legal billing software: from timesheet to reconciled cash, without re-entry

Law firms don't lose money in court. They lose it between the timesheet and the bank — hours never captured, WIP never billed, invoices never chased, payments never matched. Justiora closes that pipeline because every step is a journal entry, not an export.

Where the leakage actually happens

Most "billing problems" are hand-off problems. The timesheet lives in one tool, the invoice in another, the accounting in a third — and value evaporates at each transfer:

• Capture: time recorded days later is time under-recorded. Justiora's timesheet posts straight to WIP on the ledger (Dr 1300 WIP / Cr 4300 Movement in WIP), so unbilled work is a visible asset, not a spreadsheet estimate.
• Billing: WIP sitting unbilled is invisible in tools without a balance sheet. Here it ages on the ledger where a partner — and the P&L per matter — can see it.
• Cash: an issued invoice that nobody reconciles is just a hopeful PDF. Justiora matches bank lines (CODA, CAMT.053) on structured references and posts the receipt automatically.

Issue once: PDF, Peppol and the accounting entry

Turning WIP into an invoice is one action with three simultaneous results: the human-readable PDF, the structured Peppol BIS 3.0 document required in Belgium from 2026, and the balanced journal entry — fee income, recovered disbursements, VAT payable. There is no month-end migration of numbers into accounting software, because the accounting already happened.

Payments that post themselves

Every invoice carries a pay-online link — Bancontact, card, iDEAL via Mollie — plus a structured payment reference for bank transfers. When the client pays online, the webhook reconciles the payment and marks the invoice paid:

Bank-transfer payments arrive through statement imports and match on the structured reference. What doesn't match lands in an exception queue instead of disappearing.

Retainers, corrections and collections — still accounting

Recurring retainers

Monthly retainers draft themselves on schedule. Each issued draft is a compliant structured invoice and a posted entry — recurring revenue without recurring admin.

Corrections with an audit trail

A posted timesheet can be corrected — narrative, hours, rate, date, even the matter — but never silently. Each change records a revision with a mandatory reason and posts an adjustment journal that reverses and reposts. Billed time stays locked until a credit note exists.

Collections that escalate on rails

Unpaid invoices enter a reminder queue with escalation steps, exceptions, payment plans, EU late-payment interest and controlled write-offs. Every step posts its correct entry, so the aged-debtors report and the ledger can never disagree.

Frequently asked questions