Finance & FP&A

How to track ar aging and run collections as Small Law and Accounting Practices

Finance & FP&AFor Small Law and Accounting Practices2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

At a six-attorney firm or four-CPA practice, accounts receivable aging lives in a QuickBooks report that someone exports to Excel on the 15th of the month — if they remember. The paralegal or office manager manually cross-references which clients owe what, drafts follow-up emails one by one from memory, and tracks responses in a sticky note or a shared Google Sheet that's three weeks stale. Attorneys hate asking for money and often don't know a matter has a 90-day-past-due balance until the client calls about something else. For CPAs, tax season invoices pile up unpaid while partners are too busy filing returns to chase them. The result: six-figure AR aging that nobody has a clean view of.

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Finance & FP&AFor Small Law and Accounting Practices2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live AR aging dashboard pulling directly from QuickBooks — outstanding balances bucketed by 0–30, 31–60, 61–90, and 90+ days, updated on a schedule so you always have an accurate number before Monday morning huddle

An automated collections workflow that drafts overdue-balance emails for each client, personalizes them with the matter name and exact dollar amount, and queues them for one-click review in Outlook or Gmail

A weekly digest that surfaces your top 10 past-due balances, flags any client whose balance has aged a bucket since last week, and tells you which partners own those relationships so follow-up has a clear owner

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Investor Reporting

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule — invoices, payments, and vendor entities refresh automatically so the dashboard always reflects current aging without a manual export. Outlook is connected as a scheduled-sync provider for email drafting and delivery. For practices using Clio or MyCase, Starch automates those portals through your browser — no API required — to pull matter status and client contact details alongside the QuickBooks balances.

Prompts to copy

Build me an AR aging dashboard from QuickBooks that shows every client with an outstanding balance, bucketed by 0–30, 31–60, 61–90, and 90-plus days overdue. Include the partner responsible for the matter, the original invoice date, and the total billed YTD for each client. Flag any balance that's moved to a worse bucket since last week.

Every Monday at 7am, pull my QuickBooks AR aging report, find every client 30-plus days overdue, draft a personalized collection email for each one that references the matter name and exact balance owed, and queue those drafts in my Outlook inbox for review before I send.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect QuickBooks: Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule, pulling invoices, payments, and client records. This is the foundation for every aging calculation — no spreadsheet exports, no manual uploads.

2 Connect Outlook or Gmail: Starch connects directly to your Outlook (or Gmail) so drafted collection emails land in your actual sent-from address, not a generic noreply alias.

3 If your firm uses Clio or MyCase, point Starch at it through browser automation — Starch logs in, reads matter and client data, and pairs it with the QuickBooks invoice records so you know which matter each invoice belongs to.

4 Describe your AR aging dashboard in plain language: buckets, responsible partner, invoice date, YTD billed. Starch builds the view. No chart configuration, no SQL.

5 Set a threshold for what counts as 'needs follow-up' — for most practices, 30 days past due. Starch will filter the aging report to that threshold and surface only the accounts that need action.

6 Tell Starch to draft a collections email for each overdue client. The prompt should specify tone (firm but professional), what data to include (client name, matter, balance, invoice number, due date), and what you want them to do (pay via LawPay link, call the office, or reply to dispute).

7 Starch queues the drafted emails in your inbox as Outlook drafts. You review, edit any that need a personal touch, and send. You are not composing from scratch — you are approving.

8 Schedule the weekly AR digest: every Monday morning Starch pulls the latest QuickBooks aging, identifies any client who has moved from 30 to 60 days or 60 to 90 days since last week, and Slacks or emails you a ranked list with the responsible partner flagged.

9 For clients in the 90-plus bucket, describe a second automation: Starch drafts a more formal demand letter, flags the matter for a partner-level call, and logs the outreach in your CRM or shared Notion workspace.

10 Review the dashboard weekly during your Monday partners meeting. The data is already there — no one needs to export anything before the call.

11 Track collection rates by partner over time. Starch surfaces which attorney's matters are consistently slow-pay so you can address intake or retainer policy upstream.

12 Once a payment posts in QuickBooks, Starch automatically removes that client from the active collections queue on the next sync — so you're never chasing a balance that's already been paid.

See this running on Starch

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Worked example

March 2026 AR Collections Run — Hendricks & Patel LLP (6-attorney general practice)

Sample numbers from a real run

Fontaine Estate Matter — 91 days past due	18,400
Delgado Business Formation — 62 days past due	4,750
Nguyen Residential Closing — 47 days past due	3,200
Park Employment Dispute — 33 days past due	7,100
Okafor Contract Review — 31 days past due	1,850

On March 3rd, Starch syncs the QuickBooks invoice data overnight and builds the Monday morning AR aging dashboard before the 8am partners call. The dashboard surfaces $35,300 in balances past 30 days — including the Fontaine estate matter at $18,400 sitting at 91 days, which nobody had flagged because the responsible partner assumed the executor had been billed through the estate account. Starch drafts five collection emails: Fontaine gets a formal past-due notice referencing invoice #1047 and a link to pay via the firm's LawPay portal; Delgado and Park get a softer 60-day reminder with the matter name in the subject line. The office manager reviews all five drafts in her Outlook inbox, edits the Fontaine email to add a direct phone number, and sends all five in under 10 minutes. By March 7th, Delgado and Nguyen have paid — Starch removes them from the queue on the next QuickBooks sync. Fontaine responds requesting a payment plan. The 90-plus bucket drops from $18,400 to $0 by month-end after two follow-up emails drafted by Starch.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by matter and by partner — tracked monthly from QuickBooks invoice data

Percentage of AR balance in the 90-plus-day bucket — the number partners care about most because it signals write-off risk

Collection rate per billing cycle — invoices paid within 60 days divided by total invoices issued

Average time from invoice sent to payment received, broken down by client type (individual vs. business vs. estate)

Outreach-to-payment conversion rate — what percentage of collection emails result in payment or a payment plan within 14 days

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

QuickBooks Payments + manual AR aging export

QuickBooks shows you the aging numbers but doesn't draft the follow-up emails, assign partner ownership, or alert you when a balance moves buckets — you still do all of that manually.

Clio Manage billing module

Clio tracks matter billing well but its AR reporting is shallow, it doesn't cross-reference QuickBooks, and it won't draft or send collection emails from your actual Outlook address.

Karbon (for CPA practices)

Karbon handles workflow and client management for accounting practices but doesn't have a live AR aging surface or automated collections drafting tied to your QuickBooks invoice data.

Bill4Time or TimeSolv

Time and billing tools purpose-built for law firms, but they keep AR data siloed — no automated email drafting, no cross-partner visibility dashboard, no weekly digest without a manual report pull.

Spreadsheet + Outlook manual workflow

Free, but someone spends two to three hours every collection cycle building the aging report, writing each email from scratch, and tracking responses in a tab that's always out of date.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — investor reporting, founder inbox all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch actually sync with QuickBooks, or does it just read exports?

Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule — invoices, bills, payments, vendors, and journal entries refresh automatically and live in Starch's database. You don't export anything. The AR aging dashboard reads from that live sync, so the numbers are current without anyone touching QuickBooks on Monday morning.

We use Clio for matter management. Can Starch pull from Clio too?

Yes. Starch automates Clio through your browser — no Clio API contract required. It logs in, reads matter status and client contact data, and pairs that with your QuickBooks balances so each invoice maps back to the right matter and attorney. This is how Starch handles tools that don't have a formal integration: it navigates the site the same way a person would.

Will the collection emails come from my actual Outlook address or some generic sender?

From your actual address. Starch connects directly to Outlook (or Gmail) and creates drafts in your inbox. You review and send — or set up an approval step where the email goes out automatically after you've had a chance to flag anything you want to edit. Clients receive email from you, not from a noreply alias.

What happens when a client pays and their invoice is cleared in QuickBooks?

On the next scheduled QuickBooks sync, Starch updates the AR aging data and removes that client from the active collections queue. If you've scheduled a Monday morning digest, the paid balance won't appear. You don't need to manually mark anything resolved.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We handle client financial data.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. That's worth knowing if your firm has strict vendor security requirements. There's no on-premises or self-hosted option either. If SOC 2 Type II is a hard requirement for your practice, we'd rather you know that now than find out after setup.

We use QuickBooks but a partner also tracks some billing in a spreadsheet. Can Starch handle that?

Connect Google Sheets from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries it live when the dashboard runs. You can describe a surface that pulls QuickBooks invoices for most matters and overlays the partner's spreadsheet data for the exceptions. It's awkward to maintain two sources of truth, and Starch can help you see where they diverge, but it won't force you to consolidate before you're ready.

Can the AR dashboard show aging by partner, not just by client?

Yes — just include that in your prompt. Tell Starch: 'Show me AR aging grouped by responsible partner, with each partner's total outstanding balance and a breakdown by aging bucket.' Starch builds the view from your QuickBooks data. If QuickBooks records the responsible attorney on each invoice, that field comes through in the sync.