Blog

Guides

• Legal Bookkeeping Services: Scope and Supervision

  Choosing legal bookkeeping services? Compare scope, client-money authority and review records before delegating your law firm’s accounting work.

• Bank Cheques: Clearing, Cancellation and Evidence

  Understand how a bank cheque works, when funds clear and how cancellation or stale cheques affect the payment records in an estate or commercial matter.

• Trial Balance: Meaning, Checks and Reconciliation

  Equal debit and credit totals do not prove a trial balance is correct, because omitted entries and misclassifications can survive a balanced extract.

• General Ledger: Read and Reconstruct the Records

  Does the general ledger show the full account history? Complete exports, opening balances and source records reveal gaps and unsupported postings.

• Rectification as a Legal Remedy: Proving the Error

  Rectification corrects a written instrument that misrecords an agreement or intention, with drafts and payment records testing the alleged error.

• Rescission: Unwinding a Transaction

  Can your client unwind the transaction? Assess rescission through the alleged ground, later conduct and the money or property each side can restore.

• Subrogation: Payments, Rights and Recovery

  Paid a liability owed by someone else? Examine subrogation through the discharged debt, original creditor rights and evidence of the payment.

• Quantum Meruit: Work, Value and Payment

  What can you claim for work without an agreed payment? A quantum meruit assessment connects the contract, accepted work, reasonable value and payments.

• Promissory Estoppel: Assurances and Reliance

  When a payment assurance changes your client’s conduct, test promissory estoppel against the correspondence, reliance and financial detriment.

• Integrated Client Account: Reconcile the ATO Record

  Does the ATO balance match the company’s records? Reconcile an integrated client account, bank payments, credits and adjustments before relying on it.

• Audit Trail: Trace Financial Findings to Their Sources

  An audit trail connects a financial finding to its source and changes. Follow the records to reproduce a result and locate an unsupported adjustment.

• Journal Entries: Test Adjustments and Reversals

  Trace journal entries through their debit and credit effects, source records, authority and reversals, keeping accounting changes distinct from cash flows.

• Centrelink Debt: Evidence and Review Preparation

  Challenge a Centrelink debt calculation with a period-by-period reconciliation of the decision, payment history and income evidence for review.

• How Capitalised Interest Changes a Loan Balance

  Capitalised interest adds accrued interest to a loan balance without a cash advance, making terms, postings and repayments essential to reconstruction.

• Debt Forgiveness: Verify a Claimed Loan Release

  Has a related-party loan actually ended? Test debt forgiveness against the release terms, authority and later payments with tax treatment kept separate.

• Mortgage Discharge in an Estate Property Sale

  Before distributing estate sale proceeds, verify mortgage discharge through the payout, settlement deductions, security release and final loan account.

• Suspense Account: Investigate and Clear Entries

  Trace each suspense account entry to its source, retain the approved allocation and test the remaining gross items before treating the account as cleared.

• Working Papers for Forensic Accounting Matters

  Make financial working papers reproducible. Link instructions, source records, calculations, judgement and review while keeping the final report distinct.

• Fraudulent Misrepresentation: Proof and Loss

  Prove more than a failed deal: map fraudulent misrepresentation to the statement, alleged dishonesty, reliance and your client’s financial loss.

• Missing Beneficiary: Tracing and Distribution

  Before distributing an estate with a missing beneficiary, verify identity, document the search and assess the available protection routes.

• Intercompany Reconciliation: Resolve Group Balances

  Unequal group-company balances need more than a transfer match. Use intercompany reconciliation to test both ledgers, non-cash entries and adjustments.

• Director Duties: Decisions, Evidence and Breach

  As a company director, assess your duties through financial oversight, conflicts and distribution decisions, with a record of the evidence and approvals.

• Adverse Inference: Missing Witnesses and Records

  Can missing evidence support an adverse inference? Its value rests on the proof already available, the expected records and explanations for their absence.

• How Project Bank Accounts Protect Construction Funds

  Which construction funds must stay protected? Map project bank accounts to the applicable regime, trustee duties, records and unresolved withdrawals.