Reconciling PEXA payments to Trust and Office bank account

[elynch]

As the accounts person who reconciles all transactions on the Trust and Office bank account for the law firm, is there any report I can run within PEXA to show me which matter/client the PEXA bank transactions relates?

Or is there any way to search the PEXA reference which appears on the bank statement?

[Ames]

Hi @elynch

You could ask the person creating the line item to use a description which will be recognisable. Alternatively, reports are available where your organisation has been a participant in the Workspace. Section 5 of the Service Charter says:

"5. Reports

PEXA will, and will continue to, provide Subscribers with the capability to create the following user reports to assist Subscribers with day to day operational management:

• settlement payments - ESA report;
• settlement payments - financial operations report (source and destination);
• settlement payments - mortgage operations report (source and destination);
• failed settlement reports; and
• settlement payments source account and  trust account reports.

Subscribers can create view and save reports (e.g. csv or pdf) with a maximum duration between the report start and end date of 60 days.

Subscribers can access reports 24 hours per day, 7 days per week (excluding periods of Scheduled Maintenance) as required in order to retrieve real time data for both historical Electronic Workspaces and Electronic Workspaces pending settlement."

Hope this helps.

Ames.

[elynch]

Hi Ames,

Your response does not assist with my enquiry, nor provide a method to resolve such, whether it be via a report or a search function within PEXA to locate the relevant matter/client in which we received funds into our bank account.

Lets take a step back from PEXA. I am looking at the law firms actual Office and Trust bank accounts. There has been a deposit of funds into these accounts today from PEXA. Next step, I need to ascertain what these monies are for - our costs or client Trust monies. However I do not know which client or matter. So I access PEXA and need to identify which matter/client these monies relate to. How does one identify such when there is no report to do so, nor a search function to use the PEXA reference displayed on the Office or Trust bank account to locate which matter/client/workspace these funds relate to.

[Ames]

Hi @elynch

I’ll try to provide some more assistance. 

First, like with any EFT payment you receive, there should be a payment reference showing in your bank statement in relation to the funds received. The reference is often entered by the person creating the payment, to assist with reconciliation, such as SMITH FEES or SmithSale. So I suggest in the first instance, if the payments you are receiving are coming from Workspaces involving your own staff, you could agree on a preferred description/format, to aid reconciliation.

A second option, where no bespoke reference is used, is to check if the reference follows a format such as PEXA12345678D01. If so, the payment is a destination payment from Workspace 12345678. In the search field in PEXA you can search for Workspaces by Workspace ID.

In relation to funds being paid from trust, you should be accessing the Trust Account Authorisation Record from the source funds section of all Workspaces, to assist with trust reporting.

All settled Workspaces also contain a Settlement Completion Record, accessible after settlement from the settlements tab of the Workspace, which shows the sum of sources and destination payments in the Workspace.

Finally, if you don’t want to be searching on a Workspace by Workspace basis, there are the reports I mentioned earlier, which you can generate for a range of days in CSV format. These contain different information but you could access a sample via the Administrator section of your profile, if you have access to that section (or else your firm’s Subscriber Manager may need to do that).

[Ames]

This page contains more information about trust records including a link to help material.

[elynch]

The second option provided was very helpful as it breaks down the PEXA payment reference such as PEXA12345678D01, which allows you to locate the relevant workspace on search function.

As for search or reporting on any PEXA monies received into Trust. The Settlement Completion Record is only useful if you know what matter/client/workspace the monies relate to. The Reports available are not useful as due to the limit search criteria. You can select a date range for the report, however you need to specify a settlement time before being able to run a report. You don't know the settlement time, so you really want the report to run for a date range and include all settlement times. How do we submit feedback to have the report criteria improved?

You refer to accessing the Trust Account Authorisation Record from the Source Funds section of all Workspaces. I view all Workspaces, but do not see this section.