Our trust accounting course is taught by leading industry professionals with more than 20 years of experience. It is designed to help an attorney or accounting professional in the legal field learn the best practices while implementing new procedures to become more efficient with trust accounting.

The trial balance will report the client’s name and the amount held in trust.

The total of the debit and credit columns at the end of the trial balance report should agree.

In most cases, you need review this report monthly to ensure nothing has been missed.

Yes! All (cleared and outstanding) checks is be reviewed because you will truly know transactions have posted to the trust account. 

Depending on the size of your firm or practice, ledgers should be requested weekly or monthly.

This is a verification and comparison of the register bank balance, the adjusted balance of the records, and the trial balance are all equal to ensure a full accounting of the trust.

If this is something utterly unknown to you or your firm, you need this trust accounting course!

The attorney or legal entity overseeing the funds should be the only one to open bank and credit statements. These individuals should review everything before passing it on to the accounting department, bookkeeper, or accounting professional.

As the attorney, you should always review the backup information in case it needs to be presented in court or during litigation. You want redundancies to prove all due diligence was followed to current standards.

A quick report is a file ledger for a particular client that list all the disbursements and incoming funds received.

The ledger must list the follow:

• the file number/client name and/or address
• All disbursements with payee, date, amount, and description
• Incoming funds with date, amount, and payor
• Balance/Total

All accounting records should be kept for a minimum of seven years.

It is recommended for filing purposes and record keeping. Please request check to be included with your monthly bank statements. 

It is a list or file with wire all confirmations received and sent. This log is used to assist with reconciling, verification and tracking purposes.

Payee, date, amount, reason for the check, and file/client matter number.

Other current liability

No, absolutely not! Again No. Every cent must be account for and refund to the client to who over paid.

Check register balance is the beginning balance, plus all deposit and minus all checks, withdrawals and disbursements

Adjusted balance is ending bank statement balance plus any outstanding deposits, minus outstanding checks.

Trial balance report is list clients and balance of clients’ fund held in trust.

1. The account in accounting program
2. Setup every file/client as other current liability 3. Post deposits, wire, checks, and disbursements to each file/client

In most account programs, the trial balance report must be customized for each account.