Australia
All Jurisdictions Except Queensland - Reporting by entry date
This was the ultimate reason for the redesign of the Trust Accounting system, we were not able to use our entry date as the report driver in the old system.
This is a large change for users as it means that all reporting and calculations are driven by the date the entry was made by the user rather than the transaction date. So in a scenario where a firm receives funds to Trust on the 31st of March and has not physically processed the transaction until the 1st of April, the transaction is - to all reporting and calculations - a 1st of April transaction. By law users are only required to carry out a Trust bank reconciliation once per month and they have a 14 day window following end of month to complete it.
If a firm reconciles daily this will result in a lot of balancing items on the bank rec. This also means that you will not be able to backdate correcting entries. Advice for this would be to make sure that all transactions were entered by the last day of the month and wait until the following month to complete a bank reconciliation.
Invoice Holds (NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia)
Some states require that invoices are not able to be paid till 7 days has past to allow the client time to dispute the charges. These will be applied automatically to your system. See Invoice holds and cost agreements for more details.
Uniform Rules (NSW & Victoria)
As above and many more... mostly forced fields where there were none before. But also the new Electronic Funds Transfer Process
New Zealand
Allowed to use Firms Interest in Trust function where when paying an invoice the funds can be kept in the trust bank account and advanced to clients to meet costs.
Full List of Jurisdiction Specifics
Below identifies the Trust nuances that are specific to certain jurisdictions.
NZ Law Society
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Receipts |
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Payments |
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Au Uniform
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General/Other |
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Receipts |
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Payments |
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Au QLD
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General/Other |
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Payments |
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Au SA
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General/Other |
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Payments |
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Au NT
Aliases |
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General/Other |
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Au WA
Aliases |
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General/Other |
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Receipts |
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Payments |
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Au ACT
Aliases |
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Receipts |
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Au TAS
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General/Other |
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UK
Aliases |
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US Surplus
General/Other |
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Ca Surplus
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