Managing Trust Transactions

This guide walks through the day-to-day workflows for trust transactions: creating them, getting expenditures approved, submitting transactions for processing, and handling the situations where you need to make changes after the fact.

If you’re new to trust transactions in Laminar, read Trust Transactions first for the big picture. This page is the practical how-to.

Creating a Trust Receipt

A receipt records money coming into your firm’s trust account. Client deposits, lender wire transfers, retainer payments.

Open the matter, navigate to the Trust section, and click the button to create a new transaction. Select Receipt as the type.

Fill in:

• Title: A clear description of what this deposit is for. “Deposit from buyer for closing costs” is better than “Deposit.”
• Amount: The dollar amount in the transaction.
• Sender: Who the money is coming from.
• Trust Account: Which of your firm’s trust accounts this receipt goes into.

The receipt is created in the “Not Started” stage. All fields are editable at this point. You can come back and adjust the amount, fix a typo in the sender name, or change the trust account before the transaction is submitted for processing.

Receipts do not require approval. When you’re ready, you can submit them directly for processing.

Creating a Trust Expenditure

An expenditure records money going out of your firm’s trust account. Land transfer tax payments, vendor disbursements, payout to a seller.

The creation process is the same as a receipt, except you select Expenditure as the type and fill in the Payee field (who the money is going to) instead of a sender.

The key difference: expenditures must be approved before they can be submitted for processing. This is a financial control that protects your firm and your clients.

Getting an Expenditure Approved

Once you’ve filled in the expenditure details and you’re confident they’re correct, the next step is getting approval.

The matter’s Responsible Lawyer is the person who approves expenditures. If the Responsible Lawyer has set up approval delegates, those delegates can also approve (subject to any dollar limits configured for them).

The approval section on the transaction detail view shows:

• Whether the transaction requires approval (expenditures always do)
• Who can approve it (the Responsible Lawyer and any delegates)
• Whether it’s already been approved, and by whom

When the approver clicks approve, the transaction’s financial details are locked immediately. This is intentional. The approval is a statement that the amount, payee, title, and other details are correct as-is. Nobody can change them without first removing the approval.

Caution

Review the transaction details carefully before approving. Once approved, the amount, payee, title, description, trust account, and associated matter are all frozen. You’ll need to unapprove, make changes, and re-approve if something needs to be corrected.

Submitting for Processing

Once a transaction is ready (and approved, if it’s an expenditure), submit it for fulfillment. This sends the transaction to your firm’s designated processing team (typically accounting or trust administration).

Click the submit button on the transaction detail view. The transaction advances from “Not Started” to “Started” and is automatically reassigned to the fulfillment team.

At this point, all transaction details are locked for everyone, regardless of transaction type. The processing team is working with the exact figures that were submitted. This applies to receipts and expenditures equally.

The fulfillment team processes the transaction through their workflow and eventually marks it as completed.

What to Do When Fields Are Locked

You’ll encounter locked fields in two situations, and the fix depends on which one you’re in.

Situation 1: Approved but not yet submitted

You approved an expenditure, but then you notice the amount is wrong, or the payee name has a typo.

What to do:

1. Remove the approval. The Responsible Lawyer, a delegate, or an administrator can unapprove the transaction.
2. Edit the fields that need correcting.
3. Get the transaction re-approved with the corrected details.

This is the most common correction scenario. It happens before submission, so the processing team is never involved.

Situation 2: Already submitted for processing

The transaction has been submitted and the fulfillment team is working on it (or has completed it). All fields are locked by the workflow status.

What to do:

1. Contact your administrator. Only administrators can move a transaction back to the “Not Started” stage.
2. Once the transaction is back in “Not Started,” the workflow lock is released.
3. If the transaction was also approved, you’ll need to remove the approval separately to unlock those fields.
4. Make your corrections, re-approve if needed, and re-submit.

This situation is less common and typically indicates something unusual. In most cases, details should be finalized before submission.

Note

Non-financial fields like scheduling notes are not locked by either condition. You can always update scheduling information on a transaction regardless of its approval or workflow state.

Checking the Trust Ledger

Every matter with trust transactions has a ledger view accessible from the matter detail page. The ledger shows:

• All receipts and expenditures for that matter
• The amount and direction of each transaction
• A running balance

Use the ledger to verify that the trust position on a matter is correct before closing. The ledger is a read-only view. To make changes to a transaction, click through to the transaction’s own detail page.

Tips

Get amounts right before approving. The unapprove-edit-reapprove workflow is straightforward, but it’s faster to double-check before clicking approve.

Use clear titles. You’ll see transaction titles in the ledger, in activity logs, and in lists. “Land transfer tax, 123 Main St” is much more useful than “LTT payment” when you’re scanning a ledger with 30 transactions.

Submit when you’re ready, not before. There’s no rush to submit. A transaction can sit in “Not Started” as long as it needs to. Once submitted, changes become significantly harder to make.

Coordinate with your processing team. If you need to correct a submitted transaction, give your administrator context about what’s wrong and what needs to change. This helps them make the correction efficiently and ensures the activity log captures the reason for the reversal.