About Linked System Accounts in Trust Accounting Administration

Modified on Thu, 17 Apr at 2:48 PM

When reviewing your Trust Administration setup, you will see a section called Linked System Accounts.

These are accounts that Actionstep uses to process trust transactions. Each that is available should be mapped to accounts on your Accounts List.

Your Actionstep system should include default accounts set up to map to each of these already. If they have been removed, you will need to create new ones. See Adding a General Ledger Account for instructions on how to add new accounts to your Accounts List.

These accounts apply to all your trust accounts. If you have multiple trust bank accounts, you will not need multiple system accounts. Depending on your trust jurisdiction, some of these options may not be available in your system:

Trust Liability: This is the account that Actionstep will use to offset any trust transactions. Because Actionstep uses double-entry accounting, every debit and credit (deposit and payment) must be offset with another entry. Actionstep uses the Trust Liability Account for this.
Trust Transfers: Like the Trust Liability account, this account is used for the "other side" of some transactions. The Trust Transfers system account is used as the other side of the transaction for trust transactions that are between bank accounts or between matters.
Trust Statutory Deposits: This account is for those systems that are required to deposit a proportion of their trust funds into a government statutory deposit account. Actionstep uses this system account to calculate how much funds are held in the statutory deposit account. If you have more than one trust current account, you may need more than one Statutory Deposit account. Actionstep will still just need one system account to calculate the values for each of your accounts.
Trust Advances: This is a system account for New Zealand jurisdictions only. It helps with any transaction that uses the Firm's Interest in Trust.
Client to Disbursement Transfers: This is a system account used in the UK to track funds that have already recovered from the client account but that haven’t yet been billed.