For law firms
Trust reconciliation worksheet
A three-way reconciliation: the adjusted bank balance, the trust ledger, and the sum of every client ledger — checked against each other to the cent, with the differences named rather than left for you to find.
Free, no sign-up. It runs in your browser — nothing you type is sent to us or to anyone else.
1. The bank
Start from the trust account statement and adjust it for what has not cleared yet.
Adjusted bank balance
$0.00
2. The trust ledger
The balance your books say the trust account holds, for the same date.
Bank less ledger
$0.00
The bank and the ledger agree.
3. The client ledgers
Every client’s trust balance, added up. This is the one firms skip, and it is the one that finds a shortfall.
Ledger less clients
$0.00
The ledger and the client balances agree.
Fill in the three columns and the result appears here.
Adjusted bank balance
$0.00
Statement, plus deposits in transit, less outstanding cheques.
Out by
$0.00
The larger of the two differences.
The detail
How this is worked out
Why three ways and not two
Reconciling the bank to the trust ledger proves the books match the account. It does not prove the money in the account is attributed to the right clients. Adding the sum of the individual client ledgers is what catches a shortfall on one file being masked by a surplus on another — and it is the step firms skip when they are in a hurry.
What each difference usually means
Bank against ledger out: an unrecorded bank charge or interest, a deposit or cheque missed from the outstanding lists, or a figure entered twice. Ledger against clients out: a receipt or disbursement posted to the trust account but not to a client, or posted to the wrong one. A difference that divides evenly by nine is nearly always two digits transposed.
It compares in cents, not in floating point
Every figure is converted to whole cents before anything is compared, so a reconciliation that balances shows as balanced rather than as being out by a hundredth of a cent. On a trust account, 'close enough' is not a category.
This does not replace your own obligations
Your law society sets how often a trust reconciliation must be done, what has to be kept, for how long, and who has to sign it. This worksheet does the arithmetic and shows the three figures side by side. It is not a record, it does not save anything, and it is not advice about the rules you work under.
This is a calculator for your own working, not advice. It does not know the terms of your file or the rules you work under. Check anything that goes to a borrower, a client or a regulator against your own records first.
When one at a time stops being enough.
Law Office does this as part of the work rather than as a separate calculation — on every file, with the result kept against the record it belongs to.