Trust Transactions

Trust transactions track money moving through your firm’s trust accounts. Every dollar in, every dollar out, with a clear record of who authorized what and when.

If you manage trust funds as part of your practice, this is one of the most important parts of Laminar to understand.

Two Types of Transactions

There are exactly two types of trust transactions:

Receipts are money coming in. A client deposits funds for closing costs, a lender wires mortgage proceeds, a buyer sends a retainer. The sender field records who the money came from.

Expenditures are money going out. You pay a land transfer tax, disburse funds to a vendor, or send proceeds to a seller. The payee field records who the money is going to.

Every transaction has an amount, a title, a description, and a link to the trust account it flows through. Transactions belong to matters, and they show up in a ledger view so you can see the running balance at any time.

The Trust Transaction Lifecycle

Trust transactions move through their own workflow, independent of the matter they belong to. The workflow has three stages:

Not Started is where transactions begin. The details are being prepared. Fields are editable, and the transaction hasn’t been submitted for processing yet.

Started means the transaction has been submitted for fulfillment. A designated team (typically your accounting or trust department) is processing it. The transaction details are locked at this point, because the processing team is working with those exact figures.

Completed means the transaction has been processed and finalized. It’s part of the permanent record.

This progression is one-directional for most users. You prepare a transaction, submit it, and the fulfillment team processes it. Administrators can move transactions backward if something needs to be corrected, but this is uncommon.

Approval: The Expenditure Safeguard

Receipts don’t require approval. Money coming in is generally straightforward.

Expenditures are different. Before an expenditure can be submitted for processing, it must be approved by the matter’s Responsible Lawyer (or one of their approval delegates). This is a financial control: the lawyer is signing off that this specific amount should go to this specific payee for this specific purpose.

Once approved, the transaction’s financial details are frozen immediately. The amount, payee, title, description, trust account, and associated matter cannot be changed. This is true even before the transaction is submitted for processing. The approval is a statement that “these exact values are correct,” and they stay that way until someone removes the approval.

For more on who can approve and how delegation works, see Assignment & Accountability.

When Fields Become Locked

This is the part that will affect your daily workflow, so it’s worth understanding clearly.

Trust transaction details become read-only under two independent conditions. If either one is true, you cannot edit the transaction’s financial details (amount, title, description, payee or sender, trust account, and associated matter).

Condition 1: The transaction is approved. This applies to expenditures only, since receipts don’t go through approval. Once a lawyer approves an expenditure, those values are locked. The lawyer reviewed and signed off on them. Changing them after the fact would undermine the approval.

Condition 2: The transaction has been submitted for processing. This applies to both receipts and expenditures. Once a transaction moves past the “Not Started” stage (meaning it’s been submitted to the fulfillment team), the details are locked. The processing team is working with those exact figures. Changing them mid-process would create inconsistencies.

These two conditions are independent. An approved expenditure that hasn’t been submitted yet is locked by Condition 1. A receipt that’s been submitted but was never approved (because receipts don’t need approval) is locked by Condition 2. An approved expenditure that has been submitted is locked by both, which is expected and correct.

The only state where all fields are fully editable is an unapproved transaction (or a receipt) that’s still in the “Not Started” stage.

Unlocking Fields

If you need to make changes to a locked transaction, the path depends on what locked it.

If locked by approval: Remove the approval first. The Responsible Lawyer, an approval delegate, or an administrator can unapprove the transaction. Once unapproved, the fields become editable again (assuming the transaction is still in “Not Started”). Make your changes, then get it re-approved.

If locked by workflow status: An administrator can move the transaction back to a “Not Started” status. Once it’s back in that stage, the workflow lock is released. Note that if the transaction is also approved, you’d need to remove the approval separately.

In practice, most corrections happen before submission. If you catch an error on an approved expenditure that hasn’t been submitted yet, you unapprove it, fix the error, and re-approve. Once a transaction has been submitted and is being processed, corrections are rare and typically involve your administrator.

The Trust Ledger

Every matter with trust transactions has a ledger view. The ledger shows all transactions for that matter in chronological order, with a running balance. Receipts add to the balance, expenditures subtract from it.

The ledger is a read-only view. You don’t edit transactions from the ledger; you edit them from the transaction detail view. The ledger is for oversight: at a glance, you can see how much trust money is associated with a matter, where it came from, and where it went.

How This Connects to Everything Else

Matters contain trust transactions. Each transaction belongs to exactly one matter. The matter detail view shows the trust ledger and lets you create new transactions.

Workflows govern how transactions progress. Trust transaction workflows are simpler than matter workflows (typically three stages), but they follow the same concept: a defined progression through lifecycle stages.

Assignment determines who’s responsible. Transactions can be assigned to a user or team. When submitted for fulfillment, the transaction is reassigned to the fulfillment team automatically.

Activity logs everything: creation, field changes, approval, submission, status changes. This is your audit trail for trust compliance.