End of Financial Year Trust Statements
At the end of the financial year, many jurisdictions require that practitioners give a trust account statement to each person for who or on whose behalf trust money is held or controlled by the practice.
This article covers how to generate and send Trust Statements using the Trust Statement Report.
1. Complete End of Month Procedures
Before you commence generating End of Financial Year Trust Statements, you should complete your end of month procedures for the final month of the financial year. For instructions on how to perform the End of Month Procedures, see: How to run the End of Month Procedures. You may also wish to customise the default email and portal message templates for your trust statements, see Templates for Trust Statement Report Emails/Messages.
2. Go to the Accounts Reports
Click on Accounts and then click Reports.
3. Select Client/Trust Statements
Once the Accounts Reports window opens, scroll down the list of reports to find the Client/Trust Statements report
The following process is identical for sending Client/Trust Controlled Money Statements. Instead of selecting Client/Trust Statement at step 3 above, select Controlled Money Accounts Statements.
4. Set the Relevant Filters
Set the filters for the time period, Trust Account (if you have multiple) and which clients you want included in the report. Then click Build Report. The Statements Screen then will open.
5. Sending Statements
Once you have prepared the Report, you then have the ability generate and send the statements either in bulk (by using the Client Portal) or individually (by using the Portal or Email)
Trust Statements can be sent to clients individually or in bulk by ticking the Select box to the left of the individual matter, or by using the selection options to select groups of clients.
Once you have selected the relevant clients click Send Selected to Portal.
If any of the clients you have selected do not have an active secure client portal, you will receive a prompt asking if you would like to activate the portal for these clients.
By selecting yes you will be taken through the process of activating the portal for the relevant clients.
Once you have activated the portal for the remaining clients, Migration Manager will then merge the trust statement for each client, save the trust statement to each client's documents tab and send the trust statements to the Secure Client Portal for all selected clients. A confirmation message will appear on your screen once this process complete.
If you chose No or Cancel when the system asked if you would like to activate the client portal, the send to portal process will stop. You can then deselect those clients who do not have a portal activated and again click Send Selected to Portal which will then send statements to those clients with active portals.
Once sent, Migration Manager will update the Last Merge to Date and Date Last Sent columns for your reference.
Trust Statements can be sent individually to clients by ticking the Select box to the left of the individual matter and clicking the yellow Email envelope on the far right hand side of the screen.
Migration Manager will then merge the statement, save it to the client's document tab and open the Email To screen.
Select the contact or contacts that you wish to send the email too by clicking + Add then click Create Email to send.
Migration Manager will then open the drafted email in Outlook for you to send.
Once sent, Migration Manager will update the Last Merge to Date and Date Last Sent columns for your reference.
Note: It is not possible to send bulk trust statements to clients via email.