@rockerjd
let me help with this part: "The problem is, I am an attorney and I have to have a segregated trust account for each of my clients"
You never needed this at all. You need one Liability account. Everything you do, you use a Customer Transaction for it, to flow the data in and out of that acccount.
Set up Trust Retainer Liability. Set up Trust Bank. Make a Service or other charge item linked to Trust Liability. Use that on a Sales Receipt for Client, when you get a retainer. Make more items, if you want other "reasons" for tracking and reporting purposes, such as Settlement Funds Received, Retainer Received, Retainer Returned, Retainer Applied, etc.
They all link to that One Liability account. They all get sent to the Trust Bank.
Now, when you invoice for Advanced Costs + fees income, you need to show it is Paid by Trust funds. So, we Write Check from the Trust Bank to the firm as Payee. On this check, list all the allocation of funds being removed from Trust Bank to pay client invoices. That means using the "liability" item(s) and the amounts on the lines in the items section and Job Tracking which client this belongs to; these are not Billable.
Now, treat that Trust Bank check as having Arrived from the Trust Department. Each line you put there is a Receive Payment against that client's open charges.
If you need to return funds, from Trust Bank, that is payee = client, and still listing one of your Retainer Liability item(s) here as the Detail for giving them funds from Trust Bank.
Every time you do this, Trust Bank and Trust Liability increase and decrease Together, meeting IOLTA requirements.
"I have strict standards to uphold with the state bar association in which I have to be able to show a detailed account list at any time."
And now you make some custom reports. Filter on the Liability account and set that to Total by Customer Name. You will see when a Client is at 0, and this report also helps you avoid Over-crediting.
Once a client is at 0, you will Reconcile that Liability account. You use only the Ending Balance of 0, because you are Only marking as cleared the activity for that name where you confirmed their activities end at 0. That means you have Two Custom reports: one is titled All Activity and one is titled Current Balances, filtered on Cleared Status = No.
"will I still be able to show the bar association an entire list"
Yes, with the help of one of my students, the Montanan Justice League, and one of the other All Stars here, LauraD, we developed these processes.
You never needed that micro-management.
I will provide some attachments, including where you see the Out of Balance Condition for $261 for "Amy's Bird Sanctuary" done as Credit Memo to be applied to the invoice, in error; that applies the liability but not Trust Bank.
Please see my attachments. Trust service item.
