Your Trust Account Agent Reconciles IOLTA While You Serve Clients
What it takes off your plate
The AgentWorks Trust Account Agent keeps every client's trust balance current, posts the ledger entries and runs the monthly three-way reconciliation, so your managing partner and bookkeeper spend their time on clients and matters instead of on a spreadsheet at month end.
Here is how trust accounting works at many small and mid-sized firms. Client funds sit in one pooled trust account, but each client's balance has to be tracked on its own. Deposits come in from settlement checks and retainers, disbursements go out for filing fees and settlements, and each has to be posted to the right client ledger. Once a month, someone reconciles the bank statement, the trust account journal and every client ledger, by hand, and hopes they match. When they do not, finding out why can take days. A deposit posted to the wrong client, or firm funds left in trust after fees are earned, is the kind of error that bar regulators take seriously, and it lands on the managing partner's license.
The cost is time the partner should spend with clients and a steady worry nobody talks about.
What the Trust Account Agent does, step by step
The Trust Account Agent starts with the messages that keep trust activity clear, then does the ledger work.
- Confirms receipts with clients. When a retainer or settlement deposit clears, it sends the client a confirmation of the amount received into trust for their matter.
- Asks for missing details. When a deposit arrives without a clear matter, it asks the attorney or bookkeeper which client and matter it belongs to before posting it.
- Alerts the responsible attorney. When a disbursement request would take a client's balance below zero, or earned fees have sat in trust past your firm's policy, it notifies the attorney and the bookkeeper the same day.
- Posts daily ledger entries. It records every trust deposit and disbursement to the correct client ledger in your practice management and accounting software, such as Clio and QuickBooks.
- Tracks each client's balance. It keeps a running balance for every client within the pooled account.
- Runs the three-way reconciliation. Each month it reconciles the bank statement, the trust journal and the sum of client ledgers, and lists any difference with the transactions behind it.
- Prepares trust reports. It produces the client ledger reports and reconciliation records your firm keeps for a bar audit.
The Trust Account Agent does not move money or decide how a discrepancy is corrected. It follows your firm's trust accounting procedures under your state's rules as your firm applies them, and every disbursement and correction is approved by the responsible attorney.
Where the work is recorded
An agent that cannot record its results is a chatbot. Every trust transaction is posted to the client's ledger in your practice management software, and every confirmation, question and alert is logged on the client and matter record, so a person can pick up exactly where the agent left off.
The monthly reconciliation, with any differences and how each was resolved, is saved alongside the bank statement and the ledger reports, organized by month.
So the next morning your bookkeeper opens one list: deposits and disbursements posted yesterday, any deposit still waiting on a matter, balances that need attention and the status of this month's reconciliation.
Clear trust records also make client updates simpler, as in how the Case Status Reporting Agent updates clients while you try cases and how firms are capturing overnight client intakes and the retainers that follow.
What your people do instead
Your managing partner spends the end of the month with clients, not reconciling. Attorneys prepare for hearings and meet with clients knowing trust balances are current. Your bookkeeper reviews the flagged items that need judgment instead of rebuilding the reconciliation from scratch.
Clients notice too. They receive a confirmation when their money arrives and a clear accounting when it goes out.
The agent keeps the ledgers, the confirmations and the reconciliation moving. Your people keep the trust clients place in the firm, in every sense.
One next step
Not sure trust accounting is the first workflow to hand over? The free Legal Industry Assessment shows which workflow an agent should take first in your firm. To see the AgentWorks Trust Account Agent alongside the rest of the legal team, visit the Legal industry page.
See where the Trust Account Agent would start in your legal business.
I'm Victoria, the Legal ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
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