How to run the End of Month Procedures

Legal firms are required to run and keep a detailed set of reports at the end of each month. Migration Manager allows you to run these reports with a few button clicks. The reports include:

  • Trust Account Audit Report
  • Trust Account Journal Report
  • Trust Account Payments Cashbook
  • Trust Account Receipts Cashbook
  • Trust Bank Reconciliation
  • Trust Overdrawn Report
  • Trust Trial Balance

1. Make Sure you have Completed the Bank Reconciliation before you run the End of Month Reports

If you haven't already done so, you will need to complete the bank reconciliation before you can run the End of Month reports.

2. Open the End of Month Procedure window

To open the End of Month Procedure window, from the Main Menu, select Accounts > End of Month Procedure.

3. Run the End of Month Procedures:

The Client/Trust End of Month window will now appear and will show a list of all end of month reports that have been run previously.

3.1. Audit Report

First you will need to run the Audit Report. This report will provide you with details of all of the changes/edits/additions that have been made to matters in Migration Manager. To generate a report for the last finished calendar month, click Run Audit Report for Month Ending ...

Note: You can't run an audit report for a month before the end of that calendar month.

The report will now appear in the list under View End of Month Reports - Trust Audit Reports. To view the contents of the report, click the magnification button.

Note - audit information is recorded by version 8.3.5 of Migration Manager onwards. Any information that was changed using Migration Manager 8.3.4 or earlier will not show in the audit reports.

The first time you run the client/trust end of month reports, the date shown in the Trust Audit Report section will be the end of the first month for which Migration Manager has recorded trust audit information. The date shown in the Bank Account Specific Reports section will be the end of the month of the first bank reconciliation completed in Migration Manager for the selected bank account. End of month reports must be run in order, month by month, so if you want to run a more recent report than the month that is shown, you will need to run the report for the month that is shown first, then keep running the report for each subsequent month until you reach the month you're interested in.

3.2. Run the End of Month Reports

Next, run the End of Month for each Trust bank account by selecting the appropriate bank account in the dropdown and clicking the Run EOM for Month Ending ..... button.

The generated reports will now appear in the section titled 'Bank Account Specific Reports'. To view the contents of the report, click the magnification button.

Migration Manager will record a copy of each report. However, it's important that these reports are printed each month and stored securely for ready access. To print a report, first open it (it will open in Adobe Reader) and then use the adobe print button.

Make sure that you check the regulations in your jurisdiction, as most regulators will require you to retain a printed copy of all End of Month Reports.

Most of the End of Month Reports print with continuous page numbering, i.e., page numbering continues from one month to the next. For example, in the first month the Audit Trail will have pages 1,2 and 3, and the following month the Audit Trail will have pages 4, 5, 6 and 7.