Receipting incorrect or unknown deposits in the Trust Account

Receipting incorrect or unknown deposits in the Trust Account

The Aro trust accounting module is designed to log all transactions in your sales trust account. There are times you may receive funds in error to the trust account or even an unknown deposit.

As you need to record any funds entering and leaving the trust account and reconcile the account each month, you may sometimes need to log these transactions before you have the full details of what they are relating to.

These kinds of transactions can be logged in Aro as Manual Adjustments.

This article will guide you in how to log these transactions and how to resolve them:


Warning
Warning: NEVER use a manual adjustment for a deposit or payment in relation to a contract or Listing. You must enter deposits and payments against that listing.

Creating a Manual Adjustment

A manual adjustment can be created from the main Reconciliations screen if there is no draft reconciliation, or within the current Bank Reconciliation screen if there is a draft.
  1. The main reconciliations screen:

Within the reconciliation

  1. After entering the Period Start and Period End and the Statement Balance at Period End and click Save
  2. Now you can see the Manual Adjustment button on the top right side of the screen (see screenshot below)
  1. Click on Manual Adjustment and then fill in the details on the pop-up screen
  2. Carefully select Deposit or Payment
  3. Enter the Transaction Date that appeared on your bank statement
  4. Enter the Amount
  5. Enter the Reference from your bank statement
  6. Enter any Notes that may help you identify this amount at a later date (See example below)
  1. That deposit or payment will now show in your bank reconciliation ready to be ticked off
  2. The adjustment will sit in the Unresolved Manual Adjustments section above the bank reconciliations until such time that you can identify which listing a deposit relates to or when the money is returned to the trust bank account if it was a bank fee (payment)

Resolving a Manual Adjustment
  1. Once the funds have been returned/replaced - you then need to record this second transaction in your reconciliation. You do this by resolving the manual adjustment
  2. A manual adjustment can be resolved in 2 ways
Alert
Alert: Do not create a new Manual Adjustment if you are resolving an existing item. You must instead resolve the initial adjustment as described below

Option 1 - The funds relate to a listing

  1. If the Deposit or Payment relates to a Listing/Contract (e.g., is a deposit for property purchase that you now have details for or Vendor Paid Advertising), navigate to that Listing > Trust Accounts tab
  2. In the account for the relevant party you will see the Resolve Adjustment button (see below screenshot)
  3. This will only show if there is an adjustment waiting to be resolved in that trust account
  1. Fill in the details on the screen making sure to enter the second date that showed on your bank statement of when the funds were resolved (paid back in or out). This amount will then log against that ledger

Option 2 - The funds are repaid to the trust and the money does not relate to a listing

  1. Click into Finances > Reconciliations
  2. Click on the wand (as indicated below) that relates to the adjustment you are resolving

  1. Enter the second date from your bank statement of when the funds were resolved (paid back in or out) and any further notes. (This will create the reverse transaction that will appear in your reconciliation to tick off).