Help centre · Trust accounts
Trust accounts & IOLTA.
Record client funds, run three-way reconciliation, and keep an audit-ready trail for every cent.
IOLTA compliance at a glance.
Marco Reid handles the ledger, the reconciliation, and the audit trail. Your bank and your bar handle the account itself.
What Marco Reid handles
- Segregated ledger for every matter and client
- Three-way reconciliation engine with automated flagging
- Immutable, cryptographically signed audit trail
- Reporting packs formatted for bar examiners
- Alerts for commingling, negative balances, and stale funds
What you handle at the bank
- Opening the IOLTA or pooled trust account itself
- Registering the account with your state bar
- Ensuring interest remits to the correct legal aid foundation
- Signing cheques and authorising wires within bank rules
- Responding to any audit or disciplinary enquiry
Creating a trust account.
Open Settings → Trust accounts and click “Add account.” Choose the account type (IOLTA pooled or non-IOLTA individual), enter the bank name, the last four digits of the account number, and the statement day of month. Upload a voided cheque or bank letter to confirm the account.
Connect a bank feed if your institution supports it — we partner with Plaid and Akoya for US coverage, BankFeeds for Australia and New Zealand, and Open Banking for the UK. If no feed is available, statements can be uploaded monthly in CSV or OFX format.
The first reconciliation establishes the opening balance. After that, every transaction must flow through Marco Reid to keep the ledger complete.
Recording deposits and withdrawals.
Every trust transaction is tied to a matter and a client. From the matter, click “Record trust activity” and choose deposit, withdrawal, or transfer. Marco enforces the client’s available balance before the transaction is saved — you cannot disburse more than the client has on deposit.
Transfers between a trust account and the firm’s operating account require an invoice reference. Marco links the invoice, the time entries, and the disbursement together so that earned-fee transfers are documented from matter to bank.
Cheques printed from Marco Reid include a traceable reference number that reappears on the bank statement and closes the loop during reconciliation.
Three-way reconciliation.
Three balances must agree at every reconciliation date. If any two disagree, something is wrong.
Source 1
Bank statement
The ending balance reported by the bank on the statement date.
Source 2
Trust ledger
The sum of every transaction recorded in Marco Reid through the same date.
Source 3
Client ledgers
The sum of every individual client’s sub-ledger on the same date.
Marco runs reconciliation automatically on your statement date and presents the three numbers side by side. If they match, you sign off and the reconciliation is sealed into the audit trail. If they don’t, Marco lists every candidate discrepancy — missing deposits, unmatched cheques, amount mismatches — with suggested fixes. You resolve each one and re-run until all three numbers agree.
State-specific rules.
Every state bar sets its own IOLTA rules: some require monthly reconciliation, some quarterly; some mandate a specific chart of accounts; some prohibit certain types of earned-fee transfers. Marco Reid encodes the rules we have verified with a legal-tech attorney for each state and applies them automatically when you choose that jurisdiction for a matter.
The material on these pages is general guidance, not legal advice. For authoritative rules, consult your state bar and, where necessary, retain independent ethics counsel. Links to current state-bar trust accounting guidance are published in the app under Settings → Trust accounts → Jurisdiction rules.
Audit trail and reporting.
Every action on a trust account — create, edit, reconcile, sign off — is written to an immutable, cryptographically signed audit log. The log captures the user, the timestamp, the IP address, and the device. Nothing can be deleted. Corrections are recorded as new entries with a reference to what they correct.
Standard reports include: monthly three-way reconciliation, client ledger statement, matter ledger statement, disbursement history, interest allocation (for non-pooled accounts), and a full audit-trail export in PDF or CSV. Reports are formatted to the conventions bar examiners expect and can be shared with a read-only link that expires.
Frequently asked.
Does Marco Reid connect to my trust bank account directly?
Yes, via read-only bank feeds where your bank supports them. We never initiate transfers. Where feeds aren’t available you can upload statements in CSV or OFX format and Marco reconciles from the file.
What happens if reconciliation fails?
Marco flags the specific discrepancy — a missing deposit, a cheque that cleared at a different amount, a duplicate entry — and holds the reconciliation open until you resolve it. Nothing is ever auto-corrected in the trust ledger.
Can I have more than one trust account?
Yes. Firms commonly run a pooled IOLTA for small client balances and one or more individual non-IOLTA trust accounts for larger balances that earn interest for the client. Marco Reid supports both, with separate reconciliation for each.
How long are trust records retained?
Indefinitely by default, because most state bars require retention for five to seven years after matter closure and many firms keep them longer. You can configure a retention policy per jurisdiction, but Marco will never let you purge records that violate the applicable rule.
Is the audit trail really tamper-evident?
Yes. Every entry is cryptographically signed and chained to the prior entry. If any record is modified outside the normal application flow — by a database administrator or a compromised system — the chain breaks and Marco flags it. Integrity is mathematically provable, not just policy-based.
What if my state has unusual rules?
Trust accounting rules vary significantly by jurisdiction. Marco Reid encodes the rules we have verified with a legal-tech attorney for each state; where a rule is unclear, Marco presents the conservative interpretation and links to the state bar’s guidance. For jurisdictions we haven’t finalised, see the state-specific rules section above.
Can I give my bookkeeper access to trust accounts only?
Yes. Seat roles are granular. A bookkeeper can be scoped to trust accounts, billing, and reconciliation without access to matter substance, client communications, or research.
What if I discover a historical error?
You cannot alter a historical entry — that would defeat the audit trail. Instead you record a correcting entry with a note explaining the correction. Marco produces a corrected reconciliation and preserves the original in the audit log. This is the behaviour bar examiners expect.
Not legal advice.
This page is general guidance about how Marco Reid works. It is not legal or ethics advice. For authoritative trust-accounting rules in your jurisdiction, consult your state bar or independent counsel. Questions about the platform itself? support@marcoreid.com or the help centre.