Client & trust accounting

Client money is money a firm holds for or on behalf of a client rather than money belonging to the firm. Efimis records that money separately from office money and associates it with the relevant cash account, matter ledger, payer, and transaction history.

Terminology varies by jurisdiction. The same broad capability is commonly called client accounting in the United Kingdom and Ireland and trust accounting in Australia and New Zealand. This page uses client/trust when the distinction is purely regional.

Compliance depends on jurisdiction

This page explains the Efimis domain model, not the legal requirements for handling client money. Firms remain responsible for configuring and operating Efimis in accordance with the rules that apply to them.

Separation from office money

Client/trust money and office money have different ownership and controls:

• Client/trust accounts hold money entrusted to the firm for a permitted purpose.
• Office accounts hold the firm’s own money, including amounts properly received for issued invoices.

A transfer between the two is therefore a controlled financial event, not an edit to a balance. It must identify its source, destination, matter allocation, posting date, reason, approvals, and resulting audit entries.

Cash accounts and matter ledgers

A client/trust cash account represents the real bank account or controlled-money account in which funds are held. A matter’s client/trust ledger records that matter’s share of activity in the account.

This distinction allows one cash receipt to be allocated across multiple matters while preserving both views:

• the cash-account view reconciles Efimis with the bank; and
• the matter-ledger view explains how much is held for a particular matter and why.

Ledger balances are calculated financial read models. Adjust a balance by posting the appropriate receipt, payment, transfer, or reversal—not by assigning a new balance directly.

Receipts and allocations

A client/trust receipt records funds received into a client/trust cash account. It identifies the payer, payment method, posting and original dates, reason, and optional memo.

The receipt is then allocated to one or more matters. A single payment can therefore fund several matters, and each matter allocation remains traceable to the original receipt.

When creating a receipt from a matter, Efimis preselects the matter context. When creating it from the cash account, the operator supplies one or more matter allocations. In either case, the allocation totals must agree with the receipt total before posting.

Jurisdiction-specific funds

Some tenants expose additional client/trust-money features required by their jurisdiction:

• Controlled money or investment money is held in an account controlled for a particular client or matter rather than in the firm’s general client/trust cash account.
• Statutory deposits record funds transferred to a regulator-associated deposit account where the applicable jurisdiction requires it.

These features are jurisdiction-specific and are not available in every Efimis environment.

Transfers and protected funds

Efimis distinguishes several movements of client/trust money:

• Matter-to-matter transfer — reallocates eligible funds between matter ledgers while retaining the client/trust cash-account context.
• Client/trust-to-office transfer — moves eligible money to office, commonly to pay an issued invoice.
• Statutory or controlled-money transfer — moves funds between the relevant regulated account types where those features are enabled.

Where supported for the tenant’s jurisdiction, protected funds reserve available client/trust money for a future purpose, such as paying an invoice after finalisation.

Protecting funds does not itself move cash or post the eventual transfer. The available balance is therefore the ledger balance less amounts already protected or otherwise unavailable.

Transfers can require approval, notice periods, sufficient available balance, and an eligible destination. Integrations must not assume that a positive ledger balance is immediately transferable.

Statements, reconciliation, and audit trail

Client/trust accounting must explain both the bank position and each client’s ledger position. Efimis supports transaction histories, matter statements, cash-account reconciliation, controlled-money reporting, and compliance-oriented reports.

Corrections should be made through a separately recorded reversal or correcting transaction. Preserving the original entry and its correction provides the chronological audit trail needed to explain what happened.

Automated statements can be configured for matters with balances or new activity. Recipients can include the client, billing contact, matter participants, or another approved address, subject to notification preferences and firm policy.

Relationship to matters and invoices

A matter links the client/trust ledger to the client and legal work. An invoice belongs to the office side: it is a debt owed to the firm after issue. Eligible client/trust funds can later be transferred to office and allocated to that invoice, but the invoice does not convert those funds automatically merely because it was created or approved.

See Matters & clients for the matter context and Invoicing & ledger for approval, finalisation, and invoice settlement.

In the REST API

The current public REST contract exposes matter-ledger and matter-summary reads, including office, trust, supplier, and other ledger types. It does not currently expose the complete operational client/trust workflow described in the application and support documentation.

Do not infer write endpoints for receipts, transfers, protected funds, reconciliation, or controlled money. Use only operations published in the REST API reference and contact Efimis when an integration requires a client/trust operation that is not present there.