Billing a fixed-fee conveyancing matter: disbursements, trust withdrawals and which files make money

A fixed-fee conveyancing matter holds three separate pots of money: the firm's professional fee, disbursements paid on the client's behalf, and settlement funds the firm only holds. Each is billed and released differently, and trust money for costs cannot move until a bill referring to the withdrawal has issued. MatterFirst runs trust compliance review for NSW, VIC, QLD and WA.

Conveyancing is where Australian firms are most likely to quote a fixed fee, usually before anyone knows what the file will take. The quote is the easy part. Profitability is decided afterwards: which disbursements get recorded, when the invoice goes out, what the rules let you take from trust and when, and whether anyone measures the hours the fee actually bought.

The three pots of money on a property file

Most billing errors on a conveyance start with treating these as one pool. Each attaches to a different point in the conveyancing workflow.

A fixed fee is a statement about the first pot only. A quote of "$1,650 including GST plus disbursements" is not a quote of the client's total cost, and if the disbursement side is not tracked with the same discipline as the fee, the firm carries the difference.

Disbursements: record them when they are incurred, not when you invoice

The recoverable outlays on a property file are published, dated and revised annually, which makes them the easiest part of the matter to get exactly right and a common source of leakage. For New South Wales, from 1 July 2026, PEXA's published NSW schedule lists these transaction service fees, including GST:

Two things on that page matter for billing. PEXA states its fee is separate from the statutory lodgement fees set by each jurisdiction's land registry, so a file carries at least two lodgement-related outlays on different schedules, with the New South Wales registry fees published separately by NSW Land Registry Services. PEXA also states that its prices from 1 July 2026 were adjusted in line with the Model Operating Requirements set by ARNECC, based on the March 2026 Consumer Price Index, an annual increase of 4.1 per cent.

That indexation is the useful detail. If the fee is reviewed every two or three years while the disbursements inside it are indexed annually, an inclusive fee erodes. Re-run the arithmetic each July.

Three habits keep the disbursement side honest:

1. Make each outlay a step in the matter workflow, not a memory task. A search ordered as part of a checklist gets recorded. A search ordered from an inbox often does not.
2. Record the outlay against the matter on the day it is incurred, with supplier and amount, paid or not. Reconstructing this at invoice time is where recovery is lost.
3. Decide the treatment once, per disbursement type. Whether an outlay is incurred as agent for the client changes how it appears on the tax invoice and how GST is handled. That is a question for the firm's accountant and current ATO material, not one to decide file by file.

Withdrawing your costs from trust

This is where an otherwise well-run file goes wrong, because the rule is not "the work is done, so the money is ours".

In New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia, rule 42 of the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015 governs withdrawal of trust money for legal costs. Writing in the Law Society of NSW's Law Society Journal, the Society's Professional Standards Unit sets out the four available methods and notes that under rule 42(3) a practice may withdraw where it "has given the person a bill that relates to the money and refers to the proposed withdrawal", seven business days later, if the client has not objected. The article suggests bills carry a footer stating the firm intends to withdraw the billed amount from the trust ledger at the expiration of seven business days from the date of the bill unless an objection is received.

Queensland runs a different scheme. The Queensland Law Society's trust accounting FAQ explains that under section 58(2) of the Legal Profession Regulation 2017 a practice may withdraw for legal costs where it has given the person a bill and the person has not objected within seven days, or has objected but has not applied for a costs assessment within 60 days. Section 58(3) covers withdrawal under a compliant costs agreement or under instructions authorising it.

Two operational points follow. The wording of the bill does work, so a bill that does not refer to the proposed withdrawal does not start the clock: make it template text rather than something a person retypes. And the waiting period is a date to diarise, because a settlement on Friday does not put money in the office account on Monday.

A fixed fee is not a reason to stop recording time

Firms that move to fixed fees often switch off time recording, then cannot answer the question that decides the business: which matter types make money. Effective hourly rate is the fee received divided by the hours worked, so without hours a busy practice can grow revenue while margin falls, with no signal until year end. What to measure, by matter type rather than by individual file:

• Hours per matter, including unbilled ones. Chasing the other side, re-keying data between systems and answering "where are we up to" calls usually explain the gap between a profitable file and a break-even one.
• Disbursements incurred against disbursements recovered. If recovery is below 100 per cent, the gap is coming straight out of the fee.
• Days from settlement to cleared payment. A workflow number rather than a finance one, usually fixed by billing earlier rather than chasing harder.
• Write-offs and re-work. A consistent write-off pattern in one matter type is a scoping problem, not a client problem.

There are three ways to act on the answer: reprice the matter type, re-scope what the fee includes, or remove the hours through automation. The third is usually cheapest, because most time on a routine property file goes into producing documents and progress updates from data the firm already holds.

How MatterFirst handles this

MatterFirst is a legal practice management platform for Australian law firms, built by North Cape Technology, a Melbourne software company.

Trust accounting is built for Australian jurisdictions, with a compliance review workflow covering NSW, VIC, QLD and WA. That is four jurisdictions, not all eight. Matters can be recorded in all eight, but a firm whose trust obligations sit in SA, TAS, ACT or NT should confirm the position before switching.

Finance and reporting covers time tracking, invoicing, payment collection and real-time financial dashboards, so the effective rate calculation above is available per matter type rather than assembled from a spreadsheet at year end. Xero and Stripe are two of the four integrations connectable today, alongside Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Everything else in the integration catalogue is listed as coming soon, including PEXA and InfoTrack, so those steps stay in the provider's own portal.

The disbursement discipline above is a workflow question. Automations are trigger, condition and action rules, and generating a document can be a step in a workflow, so a settlement milestone can raise the tasks, produce the documents that follow and set the diarised date for the trust withdrawal window. Clients track progress, upload documents and approve invoices through the client portal.

Document generation is deterministic by default: sections are built from merge fields, matter data projections, clause library entries and signature blocks, with AI used only where a section calls for synthesis, so a costs agreement that uses no AI sections draws down no AI balance.

Pricing is per workspace rather than per user, from $199 per month per workspace with users included. The pricing page sets out each plan, and the AI pricing page explains how the included monthly AI balance, a dollar amount in Australian dollars, is drawn down by metered work.

How the products compare on the billing side

The facts below come from each vendor's own public pages.

Clio's Australian pricing page could not be retrieved when this table was compiled, so it is left out rather than represented by figures from a third-party listing site. Treat any comparison table, including this one, as a prompt to verify rather than a source.

The first column matters most for a two or three person practice. Per user pricing scales with headcount, which suits a firm that adds fee earners in step with revenue. Per workspace pricing is flatter, which suits a firm where support staff and a bookkeeper also need access to the same matters.

Who this suits, and who it does not

MatterFirst suits Australian firms of roughly two to twenty fee earners that want onshore hosting, state-based trust accounting and one system carrying both the property workflow and the billing that follows it. Data and AI processing are hosted in the AWS region the firm chooses, Sydney by default for Australian firms.

It does not suit a firm that needs an in-product connection to PEXA or InfoTrack today, since both are listed as coming soon. A firm that wants time captured automatically in the background should look at Smokeball's AutoTime, published as an inclusion on Prosper+ and an add-on on Grow. A firm whose general ledger is not Xero should check the integration list first: Xero, Stripe, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are the four connections available now, with a documented REST API and webhooks for anything else.

Frequently asked questions

Can I transfer my fixed fee out of trust as soon as settlement happens? Not on settlement alone. In NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, rule 42 of the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015 requires a bill that relates to the money and refers to the proposed withdrawal, after which the practice may withdraw seven business days later if the client has not objected. In Queensland, section 58 of the Legal Profession Regulation 2017 sets a seven day objection period, with a 60 day costs assessment window. Diarise the withdrawal date rather than treating settlement as the trigger.

Should we still record time if all our conveyancing is fixed fee? Yes, if you want to know which matter types are profitable. Fee divided by hours gives an effective hourly rate, and without recorded hours that number does not exist. Review it at matter-type level each quarter rather than policing individual files.

How should the PEXA fee appear on the invoice? As a disbursement, separate from the professional fee and separate again from the statutory lodgement fee, which PEXA states is set by each jurisdiction's land registry. Whether it is incurred as agent for the client affects the tax invoice, so settle that treatment with your accountant once and apply it consistently.

Does MatterFirst handle Queensland trust accounting? Queensland is one of the four jurisdictions covered by the trust compliance review workflow, along with NSW, Victoria and Western Australia. Matters themselves can be recorded in all eight Australian jurisdictions.

What would MatterFirst cost a two person conveyancing practice? Pricing is per workspace. Solo is $199 per month and includes one user, with additional users from $139 per user per month. Practice is $649 per month and includes four users, which suits a practice expecting to add a paralegal or a bookkeeper. Every paid plan includes the client portal, automations and a monthly AI balance in Australian dollars. Check the pricing page for current figures.

The short version

Treat the fee, the disbursements and the client's settlement funds as three pots with three different rules. Record every outlay on the day it is incurred, as a workflow step rather than a memory task. Write the trust withdrawal wording into the bill template so the clock actually starts, and diarise the withdrawal date rather than the settlement date. Keep recording time on fixed fees, because the effective hourly rate by matter type is the number that tells you whether the fee still works. Then re-check the published disbursement schedules each July, because they move every year and the fee usually does not.