The trust transfer (transaction number prefix TT) is used to transfer funds from a trust bank account to a general bank account for the purpose of paying bills. It can be thought of as a combination of a trust payment and a debtor receipt and does, in fact, post a separate transaction in both the trust and general accounting systems.

 

 

Constraints on the activity are stringent; funds can only be used to pay the outstanding debtor balance on one (or more) files. Funds must be properly allocated; overpayments are not permitted and no more than the processed, cleared trust balance can be transferred.

 

The trust suspense file can be used as a source for funds when recording erroneous transactions. In accordance with legal profession regulations, the particulars of a trust transfer cannot be edited once they have been authorised.

The Legal Profession Act 2008 requires that the client is given notice (7 days) whenever a trust transfer is about to occur. ContactsLaw supports this requirement through a practice-level setting which prevents (via a warning) TT transactions from being processed before the notice period has passed. Upon authorising a trust transfer, the member is obliged to issue notice to the client (via the Print button on the trust transfer activity, or at some earlier point such as when a bill is issued). If transaction aggregation is in use for trust transfers, the aggregation activity will exclude transactions whose notice period is still in effect.