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What is the best way to enter anticipated payments that are paid out of the trust account?

Jessica Walters (Customer) asked a question.

2 June 2021 at 11:24 AM
What is the best way to enter anticipated payments that are paid out of the trust account?

There does not seem to be a way to do this directly in LEAP and the solutions that we have found all involve a lot of double handling. I am confused as to why there is no direct way to do this? I was wondering if other people have encountered this problem and any solutions they may have found. Thanks 

  • 6 answers
  • 787 views
Amanda Sommerville likes this.

  • Carolyn Goodley (Customer)

    Hi We always have this problem. This is what I do -

    1. leave the AP in so it comes up on the client invoice
    2. for disbursements on the invoice which are paid out of Trust do an adjustment to the original invoice
    3. raise the payments out of trust
    4. Do trust to office transfer to pay your invoice for the new balance\
    5. Go into AP's and set to not payable - have to go into each one

    hope this helps

     

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  • Seng Kao (LEAP Dev)

    Hi @Jessica Walters (Customer)​,

     

    Thank you for posting on LEAP Community Discussions.

     

    Unfortunately there isn't a direct way to this, the closest method to do this would be to create a Payment Requests. To do this, please follow the below:

     

    1. From LEAP Matter List, go to Menu > Accounting > under Trust Accounting, select Payment Requests
    2. Select "New Payment Request"
    3. Fill out the required information
    4. Save & Close

     

    Let us know if you require further assistance.

     

    Best regards,

     

    Seng

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  • Jessica Walters (Customer)

    Hi Seng,

     

    Thank you for your response.

     

    We are currently using payment requests to get around the issue but this does not allow us to add these payments to invoices or to have all of our disbursements listed in one place.

     

    That it can't be done seems like an oversight and it is going to make our processes far less efficient than they were in our old system, are there any plans to introduce this as a feature in future?

     

    Thanks

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    • Seng Kao (LEAP Dev)

      Hi @Jessica Walters (Customer)​,

       

      If you are billing your clients for these anticipated payments, these should be treated as expenses/disbursements on your Office ledger rather than the Trust ledger.

       

      When you set these invoices to Final - Print/Sent statuses, you may proceed to perform a Trust to Office Transfer.

       

      If the above is not correct, I would suggest posting this feedback to our Ideas Hub for greater discussion and consideration amongst other members of the community as well as our Product team.

       

      Find information about our Ideas Hub here.

       

      Let us know if you require further assistance.

       

      Best regards,

       

      Seng

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  • Jessica Walters (Customer)

    Hi @Seng Kao (LEAP Dev)​,

     

    Thank you for your response, however the suggested process would not be applicable to all situations/clients. 

     

    I have checked the feedback and ideas section and found that there are 2 posts regarding this issue already, which suggest a function to pay anticipated disbursements directly from trust. There were no responses posted on these however, so I wanted to try asking here to see if people had any suggestions.

     

    Thanks for your help.

     

     

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  • Carolyn Goodley (Customer)

    Hi We always have this problem. This is what I do -

    1. leave the AP in so it comes up on the client invoice
    2. for disbursements on the invoice which are paid out of Trust do an adjustment to the original invoice
    3. raise the payments out of trust
    4. Do trust to office transfer to pay your invoice for the new balance\
    5. Go into AP's and set to not payable - have to go into each one

    hope this helps

     

    Expand Post
    Selected as Best

    • Jessica Walters (Customer)

      Hi Carolyn,

       

      Thanks for replying, it's really helpful to know how other people approach this problem.

       

      Unfortunately it seems like whichever way we do it we won't be able to avoid extra steps like entering the payments twice and then having to go back and adjust the office accounting. I imagine this is an issue that many people encounter so hopefully it's something that LEAP will consider adding as a feature.

       

      Thanks again :)

      Expand Post

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What is the best way to enter anticipated payments that are paid out of the trust account?