Trust accounting with a three-way reconciliation you can sign off
Proserus Legal keeps a client ledger for every matter and a double-entry journal for every trust bank account, written together in one step. Each month it compares three balances: the bank statement (adjusted for items in transit), the journal, and the total of the client ledgers. You can sign off only when all three agree. Sign-off freezes a snapshot and locks the period, so nobody can quietly change a reconciled month later.
The three balances
- Adjusted bank balance: the statement’s ending balance, plus deposits in transit, minus disbursements that haven’t cleared, plus any reconciling items you record.
- Book balance: the trust cash account in the firm’s double-entry journal, as of the period end.
- Client ledger total: the sum of every matter’s trust balance, as of the period end.
If the bank and the book differ, the page shows the difference. If the book and the client ledgers differ, something bypassed the normal entry path (an import or a repair), and the journal report for that account shows where.
What sign-off does
- It saves a snapshot of the whole reconciliation: balances, cleared items, matter balances and reconciling items. The page and its PDF come from that snapshot from then on.
- It locks the period for that account. No trust entry dated inside it can be added, and the cleared entries can’t be changed.
- It writes an entry to the audit log.
Months are reconciled in order. To correct a signed-off month, a billing admin reopens it with a written reason, which is also logged. Reopening withdraws the sign-off until the month is reconciled again.
Reconciling items can’t become plugs
A reconciling item is a bank-side fact your ledger can’t show yet, such as a bank posting that lands next month or a bank error awaiting correction. Each item needs a description, an amount and an expected resolution date within 60 days. If a later month still carries an item past its date, that month can’t be signed off. Bank fees and interest are recorded as trust transactions, not as reconciling items.
Money already in the account at go-live
Money in the trust account on day one belongs to clients. You record it as opening deposits on the matters it belongs to. Until that’s done, the page shows the amount as unallocated and blocks sign-off.
Where the data lives
Trust records, like other practice records, are stored in Proserus Legal’s US-hosted database. Documents, email and calendar stay in your firm’s Microsoft 365 tenant. The Security and Subprocessors pages have the details.