Does Clio handle your trust account reconciliation?
Clio carries the trust ledger and produces the reports. What it cannot do is be the second person who looks at them, and that is the part auditors ask about.
What the software does with trust money
Clio runs trust and IOLTA ledgers per client and matter, records receipts and disbursements, and produces reconciliation reporting. That is the bookkeeping half, done properly and in one place, which is more than a lot of small firms had before they adopted it.
The one thing software cannot be
Most trust rules are built on separation of duties: the person who prepares the reconciliation is not the person who reviews it, and there is a record of both. A report generated on the third of the month proves the ledger balanced that day. It does not prove a human being looked at it, understood it, and signed their name.
When a bar auditor or a malpractice carrier asks about trust controls, the question behind the question is who was responsible and how you would know if they stopped. That answer is a name, a date, and a signature. The software does not generate it unless your firm writes it down somewhere.
Four questions worth answering before you upgrade anything
- 1Is the reconciliation prepared and reviewed by two different people, every month, with no skipped months?
- 2Do you keep the bank statement, the client ledger, and the reconciliation together, dated?
- 3Can you name the person who owns this, and say what happens when they are on vacation?
- 4In a solo practice, is an outside bookkeeper or CPA acting as the second look, and is that written down?
If you can answer yes to all four, the software question is settled and you should buy the tool you like. If you cannot answer the first one with confidence, the gap is not in the software.
What a clean trust file looks like
- A monthly three-way reconciliation tying the trust ledger, the client matter balances, and the bank statement.
- Prepared by one person, reviewed and signed by another, with both dates on the page.
- Bank statements retained with the reconciliation rather than filed somewhere else.
- A short written note on what happens during vacation, illness, or staff turnover.
Where TrustLens fits
The free check does not audit your books and it does not replace your accountant. It asks how the control is run, who owns it, and whether anyone else looks, then scores the answer against the same four levels for every firm. Ten minutes gives you a score, your risk band, and the three gaps to close first, including trust accounting if that is where the weakness is.
See how your firm scores on this.
The free check scores trust accounting, confidentiality and AI use, conflicts, and deadlines in about ten minutes. No client data, no account required to see the result.