NOTE: Statutory deposits may be be called something different based on your trust plugin. For example, the Uniform Law (New South Wales/Victoria) plug-in refers to it as a statutory deposit account, while the Queensland plug-in calls it a prescribed account. This article refers to it as a statutory deposit account, but you may see a different name used in your own system.
In Australia, it is a trust regulation requirement that a portion of the funds you hold in trust be transferred to a regulatory bank account. Actionstep enables this option based on the jurisdictional plug-in that your system is set to. (See About Trust Jurisdictions to learn more.)
Before you begin:
- Set up a statutory deposit account. See Setting Up a Statutory Deposit Account (AUS) for more information.
To process a statutory deposit transaction:
- In Actionstep, go to Trust > Statutory Deposit and choose Adjust Statutory Deposit. (Based on your trust plug-in, this may be called something different.)
The Statutory Deposits page appears. - Click the Trust account drop-down list and choose the trust account the funds are to be withdrawn from or deposited to. In most cases, this will be your trust current account.
- Click the Direction drop-down list and choose one of the following options:
- Pay funds from Trust Account to Prescribed account Account, which creates a withdrawal from your trust account.
- Receipt funds back into Trust account from Prescribed account Account, which moves funds back into your trust account.
- Enter the amount you are transferring in the Amount Paid / Amount Received field.
- Enter the date the transaction occurred in the Payment Date / Deposit Date field. Because the transaction will appear on your bank statement and need to be reconciled, make sure the date is correct.
- Click the Reason for payment drop-down list and choose or enter the reason for the transaction. You can choose an existing reason, enter a new reason (by selecting Other and adding the reason in the field that appears). You can also save the reason you enter as a template so it will be available to use in the future.
- In the Paid To / Received From field, select or enter the law society or other details of the entity the funds are being exchanged with.
- Click the Payment method drop-down list and choose the method that applies. Then complete any additional fields that appear based on your selection.
- Click Save to save your changes.
NOTE: You can view a list of all statutory deposit transactions by going to Trust > Statutory Deposit > Statutory Deposit Transactions List. From here, you can Filter the view to show specific transactions. You can also click More and Export or Print the list for your records.
Updated