LEAP + MYOB integration
LEAP and MYOB integration that finally reconciles trust.
If you run LEAP alongside MYOB and hand-key trust transfers between matter management and the general ledger every month, here is how we would approach it. Melbourne law firms do exactly that, and a partner notices three months later that two of those transfers never landed in MYOB. The database-first move would close the gap by reconciling LEAP, the bank feed and MYOB on a nightly schedule, so a missing transfer surfaces the next morning rather than at the audit.
Where LEAP and MYOB break the join
LEAP holds the matter spine: matter records, trust accounting at matter level, time entries, conflict checks and the partner-facing WIP view. MYOB holds the firm-side ledger: the chart of accounts, payables, payroll, BAS, end-of-month reporting. The join points are specific, and each one has a recognisable failure mode at production volume.
Trust receipts
The day-one entry never lands
Trust transfers
Transfer-from-trust as the silent gap
Time entry to invoice
The reshape between systems
End-of-month GL reconciliation
Where the practice manager loses Sunday
How we would approach LEAP-MYOB integration
Discovery before anything else
We would map where each piece of trust and ledger data lives today, who edits it, and what "right" actually means. Which LEAP fields drive the MYOB journal, which staff member is the silent reconciler, where the workaround spreadsheet sits that the official systems never caught. That conversation is where the real data model comes from, not from reading the LEAP or MYOB API docs in isolation.
Model the matter-to-ledger join, not the API
The database-first move. Before building anything, we would write down the contract between a matter, a trust receipt, a trust transfer, a bank entry and a general ledger posting. Integration then becomes a question of reading from LEAP and MYOB, not negotiating between them after the fact. Reconcile at rest, in one place, not in the air between two APIs at three in the morning.
Reconciliation as a contract
Three-way reconciliation would run on a nightly schedule. The LEAP trust ledger gets compared to the bank feed and to MYOB's general ledger. Any discrepancy surfaces to the practice manager the same morning, with the matter, the transfer, the date and the variance. Retries, idempotency and dead-letter handling get written down before the first line of integration code. If a record disappears, somebody finds out on day one, not at the next quarterly audit.
Middleware that handles vendor failures
LEAP and MYOB each misbehave in specific ways. Rate limits, auth-token refresh quirks, silent payload changes, bank-feed lag of a day or two. We would build the integration on real infrastructure with queues, monitoring and alerts, so a throttled API or an expired token raises a hand rather than quietly dropping a transfer. A failed transfer would surface on the morning queue the night it happens, with the matter and the amount attached, so the practice manager fixes it before the client ever notices it went missing.
AI-ready as a side-effect
The reconciliation layer described above is also the substrate an AI agent would need to act on the firm safely later. One canonical record per matter, audit trail by default, permissions modelled in the database, the agent reading from the source of truth rather than reconciling LEAP and MYOB each time it acts. We would not bolt agents on in an integration engagement, but the work would leave the firm with the substrate ready when the AI question lands.
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What this would typically look like in practice
Picture a Melbourne law firm running LEAP for matter management and MYOB for the general ledger, with trust transfers between the two systems hand-keyed each month. The reconciliation against the bank feed lags by weeks because the practice manager has no time to chase the small variances during BAS season. The pattern that usually triggers the call is a partner noticing at the annual audit that two transfers from a quarter earlier were recorded in LEAP but never posted to MYOB. The reconciliation belongs to one practice manager who has run out of hours for it, and the small variances are the ones that fall through.
A database-first approach would put a middleware layer in the middle of that. Each night it would compare the LEAP trust ledger, the bank feed and the MYOB general ledger against each other. Where the three disagree on a transfer, the practice manager would get the matter, the transfer and the amount on screen the next morning instead of finding it at the audit. The layer would sit alongside LEAP and MYOB rather than replacing either. The aim is to move trust reconciliation from end-of-month firefighting towards a nightly check.
The aim of a database-first approach: trust reconciliation moves from end-of-month firefighting towards a nightly check, and the practice manager stops working Sundays.
From the Illustrative LEAP-MYOB reconciliation case study
Illustrative pattern, not a specific client engagement. The database-first approach above is how we would take it on.
Common questions about LEAP and MYOB integration
Why not use the native LEAP-MYOB connector if there is one?
Use it if it covers your work. For a firm with a clean chart of accounts, standard billing schedules and no bespoke GL coding rules, the native connector or the off-the-shelf option is the cheapest correct answer. Middleware earns its place when the native option misses fields, loses transfers under load, cannot model custom trust handling, or does not honour the disbursement and write-off rules a partner committee actually agreed to. The diagnostic looks at what LEAP and MYOB already ship together before anyone quotes anything new.
How would trust reconciliation work if you built it?
Three-way. The LEAP trust ledger holds the matter-level record. The bank feed shows what cleared the trust account. The MYOB general ledger shows what was posted on the firm side. The middleware we would propose compares all three on a nightly schedule and surfaces any discrepancy to the practice manager the same morning. A trust receipt that landed in LEAP but never made it to MYOB would be flagged on day one, not at the audit three months later. The Legal Profession Uniform Law audit sign-off stays the partner's responsibility; the database is meant to remove the evidence-hunt that used to eat the week before it.
What if our firm is moving from MYOB to Xero?
The integration shape would be the same. Trust ledger reconciles to bank feed reconciles to the general ledger, regardless of which accounting system holds the GL. A database-first shape keeps the vendor-specific code in one layer, so a migration becomes a question of rewriting that layer rather than rebuilding the whole integration. If you are mid-migration, the sensible approach is to run both feeds in parallel for a month so the audit trail does not lose a record on the cutover. The honest first step is a discovery call to map what you run today before we say anything about shape or scope.
How long would a LEAP-MYOB integration build take?
A realistic range is four to twelve weeks, with the six to eight week middle the common case. Where you sit inside it depends almost entirely on how much hand-keyed trust history has to be reconciled before the nightly job can run cleanly. A firm with sensible accounts and conventional join points lands near four. A firm that has been hand-keying trust transfers for years lands near twelve, because the back-history is the real work. The diagnostic puts a real number on the table before you commit to anything bigger. We do not quote a build before we have mapped your actual data.
What about Legal Profession Uniform Law audit obligations?
The LPUL trust handling rules and Victorian Legal Services Board audit requirements stay the partner's responsibility. The database underneath would be built to make the evidence trail straightforward: every trust receipt, transfer and write-off carrying a timestamped record, the user who made it, and the reconciliation result against both the bank feed and MYOB. When the external auditor arrives, the answer to "show me the supporting record for this transfer" would be one query, not a week of paper. We do not sign off on compliance; the aim is to make the compliance week stop being a write-off.
Does this set us up for AI agents on top later?
Yes, in principle, and increasingly that is why firms ask before the AI conversation rather than after. A database-first integration would be the foundation: a database the firm controls, one canonical record per matter, audit trail by default, permissions modelled in the data layer. Without that substrate, an agent has nothing to act on except whatever LEAP and MYOB each expose that week, and no record of what it did. We would not build the agents in an integration engagement, but the work would leave you with the data shape that makes adding them later a scoping question, not a foundation question.
Not sure if your firm needs middleware or a sharper LEAP rollout?
Start with a conversation. We will look at how LEAP and MYOB talk today and tell you honestly which fix earns its keep: nightly three-way reconciliation if the trust transfers are draining the practice manager's week, a sharper LEAP rollout if the matter-level data is where the partner committee keeps re-litigating the same write-offs, or something smaller again.