Court Book Preparation: Indexing Financial Evidence

How to Prepare Financial Records for a Court Book

A court book collects hearing material for the judge and parties. The parties prepare it through their legal teams, with responsibility allocated by agreement or court order. The court, division and trial directions determine its contents and format.

Before assembling financial records, identify the governing practice note and the orders made in your proceeding. Record the responsible party, delivery method and deadline. Resolve objections and any redaction arrangements before producing the final version.

1. Agree the index with the other side. Identify the statements each party relies on and record objections against the relevant documents. Agreement about inclusion does not itself decide admissibility.
2. Order the statements. Follow the court’s required sequence, with account details in each index entry so a reader can identify the record.
3. Paginate the settled collection. Include covers and index pages where required. Make the visible page stamp and PDF page label agree.
4. Update the transaction schedule. Add the court book page beside the original PDF citation, preserving the original filename and page reference.
5. Check every link and reference. Open each schedule citation and index entry in the final files. The destination must show the intended transaction and its surrounding statement details.

If a citation opens the wrong transaction, compare the original statement page with the index’s start page. Recalculate after any inserted cover or supplementary document. If an account appears incomplete, compare statement periods before treating the gap as missing disclosure.

Court Rules and Practice Notes

Court book requirements differ between jurisdictions and lists. Use the directions for the particular hearing, including any order allocating preparation to one party.

Court or List	Preparation and Financial-Record Requirements
Federal Court	Parties confer about preparation responsibility and resources. GPN-eBOOKS allows a separate hyperlinked index with attachments or one bookmarked PDF, as chambers specifies. The latter needs a front index with tabs, titles, dates where applicable and page numbers. Sequential pagination must match PDF display numbers and any paper version.
Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (FCFCOA), family law	The Central Practice Direction’s trial orders require each applicant and respondent to prepare their own proposed tender bundle. Schedule B also requires documents, including court books, to be filed or provided electronically as applicable.
Supreme Court of Victoria, relevant civil virtual-hearing directions	The eCourt Book Guide requires chronological documents, a bookmark for each document and stamped numbers matching PDF display numbers. Its templates allocate contributions between parties. Supplementary material continues the numbering.
Supreme Court of NSW, Equity General List	SC Eq 1’s usual hearing order requires the parties to provide a book with separate sections. Documentary evidence is chronological so far as practicable and consecutively numbered. Affidavits cross-reference that section. Electronic books also engage SC Gen 7.
Supreme Court of WA, ordered eTrial	The eTrial protocol places delivery of the electronic bundle on the plaintiff. Use the court’s Bulk Upload Template and exhibit-number system, with searchable PDFs. This process differs from merging everything into one PDF.

The Federal Court eBooks Practice Note governs its electronic formats. The Victorian eCourt Book Guide, NSW Equity General List practice note and WA eTrial protocol describe different arrangements. A direction in one list does not create a national template.

For FCFCOA family proceedings, read the Family Law Rules alongside the Central Practice Direction and your trial orders. Appeal-book rules address a different stage of proceedings.

Ordering and Indexing Bank Statements

Within a permitted account-based section, group statements by account holder, then account, then statement period. Where the court orders one chronological documentary section, preserve that sequence and identify the account in each entry. The index can expose a missing period without changing the required order.

Give each statement its own description. Include the holder, bank, account identifier and statement period, followed by its page range. Avoid a single tab labelled “Bank statements” for hundreds of unrelated pages. Use the same account label in the index and transaction schedule.

A fictional entry could read “Tab 18: Morgan Lee, bank account ending 2468, statement period 1, pages 321–326”. Keep the actual statement’s period dates in your working index. Record an absent period in the working register so the team can distinguish unavailable records from excluded duplicates.

Redact irrelevant third-party account numbers and personal details in the filing copy where the applicable rules, agreement or order permit. Retain enough digits to distinguish the account, commonly a consistent suffix. Preserve relevant transfer identifiers when they are needed to follow the money.

A black rectangle over text can leave the underlying number searchable. Apply a true redaction, remove concealed content and test copying and searching for the removed detail. Keep the unredacted original separately. If redaction would conceal relevant evidence, resolve its treatment through agreement or a court direction before filing.

Cross-Referencing Schedules to Pages

Convert source-document citations only after the book’s sequence and pagination are settled. Keep a cross-reference register with the original filename, source page convention, book start page and final court book page.

In a fictional example, a statement’s first page is court book page 321. The transaction appears on the fifth source page. Its destination is page 325: 321 + 5 - 1. If an extraction system uses zero-based indexes, source index 4 means the fifth physical page. Establish that convention before applying the calculation.

Original Source	Physical Source Page	Book Start Page	Final Citation
Account-2468-period-1.pdf	5	321	Court book p 325
Account-1357-period-2.pdf	2	327	Court book p 328
Account-8642-period-3.pdf	7	340	Court book p 346

Use an explicit mapping when pages have been omitted or rearranged. One offset no longer works for that document. For split volumes, retain the volume identifier and the continuous page number required by the court.

FinTrace saves hours of monotonous statement review by producing source-backed analysis with direct PDF filename and page references. Those references make conversion to settled court book pages mechanical once the page convention and mapping are established. Lawyers and forensic accountants can move from the findings to the supporting statement without searching the whole bundle again.

Preserve both citations in the working schedule. The source reference remains useful when the book changes, while the final book reference supports the hearing. The separate guide to bank statements as evidence covers admissibility and summaries.

Electronic Court Books

An electronic court book needs usable navigation as well as legible pages. Add descriptive bookmarks to each statement and link each index row to its destination. Keep landscape pages readable without manual rotation. Use optical character recognition (OCR) on scans so names and transaction descriptions can be searched.

The FCFCOA’s eFiling guidance sets a 30 MB limit for Commonwealth Courts Portal documents. The Federal Court’s lodgment guidance also states a 30 MB restriction. Delivery to chambers and electronic filing are separate steps. Follow the ordered delivery method for a large book.

Victoria’s guide specifies sequential volumes of no more than 10,000 pages. Page count alone does not predict file size: scanned images can occupy much more space than digitally generated text. Compress a copy and inspect small transaction descriptions afterwards. If the file still exceeds the permitted size, use the authorised volume or large-file arrangement.

For a separate index and attachments, use relative links and retain the folder structure when sending the files. An index that opens only from the preparer’s computer has an incorrect path. For a combined PDF, internal links must survive the final export.

Open the delivered copy from a fresh folder. Test each bookmark and hyperlink, search for a known transaction description and compare the PDF page label with the stamped page. If OCR misses a description, inspect that scan and rerun recognition on the affected pages. Keep the originals unchanged while producing the hearing copy.

For the division of work between analysis and document assembly, read the comparison of FinTrace and eBrief Ready. A prosecution brief follows the separate brief of evidence process.

Tender Bundles in Family Law

A tender bundle is the set of documents a party intends to tender at a family law hearing. It contains proposed evidence for that party. A court book is the broader organised hearing collection specified by the court.

Select the financial statements relied on, remove duplicates already annexed to affidavits and arrange the documents chronologically. Index and paginate the bundle. Prepare matching copies for the court, the other party and the witness who will be taken to the document.

The FCFCOA Central Practice Direction, Schedule B order 11, requires preparation and service by 4 pm seven days before trial. It describes documents “proposed to be tendered at the hearing, subject to objections”. Schedule B order 7 requires electronic filing or provision as applicable. Order 11 sets a service deadline, not a separate blanket filing deadline.

In the Family Court of Western Australia, the readiness hearing’s procedural orders govern trial preparation. Apply those orders to exchange and delivery. The court’s subpoena guidance requires copies for the witness, other parties and judicial officer when subpoenaed documents will be tendered.

Before delivery, open a schedule citation in the exact bundle being served. The court, other party and witness must reach the same statement page from that reference.