When it comes to your trust accounting, there’s one requirement that affects lawyers and other legal professionals-and doesn’t exist in most other professions. It’s called the 3-way reconciliation report.

As the name suggests, 3-way reconciliation balances three things. It balances your internal books against your trust account bank statement. Then, it reconciles individual balances of all of your matters with internal book and bank balances.

Contrast this with an ordinary reconciliation in which you simply balance your books against your bank statements. The per-matter balancing act adds a crucial step-and if you don’t have the right software, it’s a time-consuming one, too.

So: why does the most state bar trust bookkeeping guidelines make this a mandatory requirement?

As with any ethical rule, the policy is intended to guard your clients against negligence-and worse. If you simply balance your books, there’s no way to know if there’s been any misappropriation of funds among any of your matters. The procedure is also intended to eliminate opportunities for masking fraud under the auspices of another client’s matter.

A 3-way reconciliation for your trust or escrow account is truly the only way to know what is happening in your trust accounts . Because all of your balances are being broken down by matter, then you-and any auditors who might come sniffing around-can spot any discrepancies immediately.

Luckily, our trust fund accounting software makes things super easy. It does what all good technology should. It takes out any heavy duty lifting, and the laborious mechanical work. And it simply automates everything.

Enter the numbers once into Easy Soft’s Easy Trust software, and the software generates all the numbers for you. You don’t have to think about it, or figure out how to do it. You don’t have to play accountant at all. With the click of your mouse, it’s there! You simply have to remember to do it.

Easy, right? We know.

To learn more about our trust accounting software, call us at 800 905 7638.

Business bank account recordkeeping is simple. You make deposits and withdrawals. You can keep more detailed records for your taxes, financial statements, and other reasons—but you don’t have to. No one is looking over your shoulder.

Trust accounting is different. The state bar requires you to allocate each and every deposit (or credit) and withdrawal (or debit) to a given matter. The failure to do so is grounds for disciplinary action.

This sounds easy enough. One matter per deposit or withdrawal, right?

Not so fast.

Let’s say you deposit retainers from 100 clients in your law firm trust account. At the end of the month, you debit those retainers against work performed on each client matter.

You’re shifting money from one account into another. But you’d prefer not to issue 100 different checks to your law firm’s operating account. You’d rather make a single withdrawal from the trust account-and allocate that withdrawal to your various client matters.

To do this in Easy Trust our trust accounting software is-as our name promises-easy.

First, you create a new “transfer” matter, and give it a name. We’ll call ours the “Internal Funds Transfer.”

If you’re crediting a single deposit to multiple matters, then you select the new transfer matter on the left, add the new deposit transaction, fill in Payor and Payee, and then select the Credit (Deposit) Allocation function.

If you’re debiting a single withdrawal to multiple matters, then you follow the same steps, with a new withdrawal transaction, and the Debit (Withdrawal) Allocation function.

Select the matters to be credited or debited, and fill in the entire amount. The amounts will be now allocated among the multiple matters—and your final transfer matter balance will be 0.

Easy, right? That’s why we call it Easy Soft.

If you’d like to learn more about Easy Soft and any of our escrow account software, call us at 800-905-7638.

Every law firm tries to keep its trust books clean and accurate. But it either fails, or it spends significant time and resources on a standard process that should be simple, streamlined, and utterly straightforward.

Take the retainer check. Retainers are the lifeblood of your business. They infuse your firm with much-needed cash flow- and signify a client’s trust and commitment in you.

But as you well know, client retainers require special treatment. For one matter, you might need to make an initial deposit to a trust account , and transfer balances as fees are earned. This alone will complicate your back office operation significantly if your billing system isn’t capable of taking care of it.

Another trip-up point is this: you’ve got to show a client’s remaining retainer balance on his or her invoice.

If your system provides integrated billing and trust bookkeeping, you’ve won the battle against trust fund tracking. This can work to prevent common trust errors (e.g. ledger card overdraft), and provide a bank reconciliation tool and three-way reconciliation reports.

Easy Soft’s Easy Trust software does just this. And it does it in conjunction with Easy TimeBill—our ethically compliant legal billing software. This makes the trust accounting process seamless and effortless- once you set everything up.

As you consider your trust accounting obligations, know that we’re rooting for you to win. And so is our software: specifically designed to make your operations compliant, efficient, and pain-free.

To learn more about our state bar-compliant escrow software, call Easy Soft at 800 905 7638.