QuickBooks for Law Firms: Trust Reports

Trust Client Balance Summary

A Trust Client Balance Summary shows the amount each client has in the IOLTA account:

1. Select Reports / Custom Reports / Summary.
2. On the Display tab change the Dates to All.
3. If you are using the Trust A/P account set the report basis to Accrual.
4. Change Display Columns by to Account List.
5. Change Display Rows by to Customers.
6. Click the Advanced button and set Display Rows to select Non-Zero.
7. On the Filters tab select the Account filter and select all of the Trust Liability accounts.
8. On the Header/Footer tab change the Report Title. We recommend “Client Trust Balances Summary”.
9. It is recommended that you memorize this report. For maximum benefit, create a Report Group for “Billing-Trust Reports” and save the report in this group. You may also want to add this report to the icon bar of the person who will be responsible for printing this report, as well as to the icon bar of the Managing Partner(s).

Trust Client Balance Detail

Please use the following steps to prepare a report showing the details of the amount each client has in the IOLTA account:

1. Select Reports / Custom Reports / Transaction Detail.
2. On the Display tab change the Dates to All.
3. In the Columns section select Type, Date, Num, Name, Source Name, Account (if you have multiple Trust accounts), Debit and Credit. Source Name is included to show the Payee. Memo may be included if you use this field.
4. If you are using the Trust A/P account set the report basis to Accrual.
5. On the Filters tab, select the Account filter and choose all the Trust Liability accounts. If you prefer you may create a separate report for each Trust Liability account.
6. On the Header/Footer tab change the Report Title. We recommend “Client Trust Activity”.
7. Click OK and set the Total by to Customer
8. It is recommended that you memorize this report. For maximum benefit, create a Report Group for “Billing-Trust Reports” and save the report in this group. You may also want to add this report to the icon bar of the person who will be responsible for printing this report, as well as to the icon bar of the Managing Partner(s).
9. You may want to create a second version of this report filtered for Cleared = No. If you regularly reconcile the Trust Liability account to zero, and clear any client that has a zero balance in the Trust account, these clients will come off the list. This makes for a more manageable report over time.

Proofing the Client Trust Account

You should make sure that the amount shown on the Client Trust Activity and Client Trust Balances Summary reports match for each Trust/IOLTA account. There should be no items on either report listed as “No Name”.

Additionally, the amount in the Client Trust Liability account should be equal to the amount in the Client Trust Bank account plus the amount in Trust A/P account.

You can create a Custom Summary report and memorize it for this purpose.

1. Select Reports / Custom Reports / Summary
2. On the Display tab change the Dates to All.
3. Set Display columns by to Total Only.
4. Set Display Rows by to Account List
5. On the Filters tab select the Account filter and set it to filter for just the Trust Bank accounts, Trust A/P accounts and Trust Client Liability accounts.
6. On the Header/Footer tab change the Report Title. We recommend “Trust Proofing Report”.

If the Total is $0, the accounts tie. If the balance is not zero, you can use a Transaction Detail by Account report, filtered for the same accounts, to find the difference. Just look for transactions where the Split column does not show one of the filtered columns.