Trust accounting compliance by state: what Australian law firms lodge, and when

Trust accounting compliance is set by each state. NSW, Victoria and Western Australia run on the Legal Profession Uniform Law: a trust year ending 31 March, an external examiner's report due 31 May. Queensland counts 60 days from 31 March. South Australia runs a 30 June year. MatterFirst, an Australian practice management platform, covers NSW, VIC, QLD and WA.

That difference in years is the part most firms get wrong when they set up a new practice management system. They configure one trust workflow, then discover that the office in Adelaide is on a different financial year to the office in Sydney, and that the Queensland lodgement is counted in days rather than fixed to a calendar date.

This guide sets out what each of the five main trust jurisdictions requires, with the source for every date, and then what a practice management system has to produce so those lodgements are a half hour job rather than a fortnight of reconstruction.

The five frameworks at a glance

Sources: Law Society of NSW annual trust compliance checklist, VLSB+C on completing an external examination, Queensland Law Society external examiners, Legal Practice Board of Western Australia external examiners, and the Law Society of South Australia external examiner guidance notes. Dates were checked on 8 August 2026. Confirm against the regulator before you rely on any of them, because lodgement portals and dates move.

New South Wales: two lodgements, and a test that decides whether you need the second

The Law Society of NSW splits the annual obligation in two. Every law practice lodges a Confirmation of Trust Money, called Part A, by 30 April, under rule 54 of the Uniform Rules, and it does so whether or not it held any trust money at all. That last point catches new firms every year: no trust account is not the same as no lodgement.

Part B, the Statement of Trust Money, plus an external examiner's report, is only required if the practice held certain categories of trust money during the year. The checklist lists them: general trust money, controlled money, trust money subject to a specific power, and investment trust money. Transit money and written direction money on their own do not trigger a Part B. Part B and the examiner's report are both due by 31 May, the report being an obligation under section 155 of the Uniform Law.

To complete Part B, the Society asks the practice to upload the bank reconciliation statement as at 31 March, the trial balance as at 31 March, any overdrawn ledger accounts, and controlled money and investment money listings. If your system cannot produce those five documents on demand for a stated date, that is the gap to fix before May.

Victoria: the same year, a different portal

Victoria runs the same Uniform Law year, 1 April to 31 March. The Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner requires the practice to complete Parts A and B of the end of trust year report through LSB Online, and the external examiner then submits their own report through the same system by 31 May. The examination obligation sits in rule 68(4) of the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015. Where a practice ceases to operate, the examination report is due within 60 days after the end of the relevant period rather than on the annual cycle.

The practical difference between NSW and Victoria is not the accounting. It is that each regulator has its own portal, its own form structure, and its own timing for the practice's half of the work relative to the examiner's half. A firm practising in both needs the underlying records to be jurisdiction tagged, so the Victorian ledger balances are not quietly folded into a national total.

Queensland: counted in days, not fixed to a date

Queensland sits outside the Uniform Law, under the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld), with the trust obligations in sections 267 and 268 and the corresponding regulation sections. The examination period ends on 31 March, matching the Uniform Law states, but the deadline is expressed as a period rather than a date: the external examiner completes Form 5 and lodges it with the Queensland Law Society within 60 days from 31 March. In practice that lands on 30 May, one day earlier than the Uniform Law states, which is exactly the sort of difference that gets missed when a firm assumes the deadlines have converged.

Practices that held no trust account still lodge a Part A declaration, by 30 April.

Western Australia: on the Uniform Law since 1 July 2022

Western Australia joined the Uniform Law scheme on 1 July 2022, so examinations from the period ended 31 March 2023 onwards have been conducted under the Legal Profession Uniform Law (WA) and the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015. The external examiner's report, together with the Law Practice Confirmation and the Statement of Trust Money, is lodged with the Legal Practice Board. The Board's stated date is 31 May, moved to the next business day when 31 May falls on a weekend, which is why the current cycle shows 2 June 2026.

If your WA precedents, checklists or internal notes predate mid 2022 and still refer to the old state framework, they are out of date.

South Australia: a different year and a different vocabulary

South Australia is the outlier. It runs under the Legal Practitioners Act 1981 (SA) and the Legal Practitioners Regulations 2014, on the ordinary 30 June financial year rather than a 31 March trust year.

The sequence is: the practice completes the Statement Regarding the Receipt or Holding of Trust Money, known as Statement AB, and provides it with all required reports directly to the external examiner by 31 August following the financial year end. Failing to do so is a contravention of regulation 48, and the examiner may notify the Society. The examiner must then give a written report to the Society as soon as practicable after completing the examination, and, if reasonably practicable, on or before 31 October, under clause 39 of schedule 2 of the Act. Where a practice ceases to be authorised to receive trust money, the final report and Statement AB are lodged within 60 days after the end of the relevant period.

So a firm with offices in Adelaide and Sydney is running two trust years, two sets of forms and four deadlines. That is a records problem before it is a compliance problem.

What your software actually has to produce

Strip away the portals and the forms, and every one of these regimes asks for the same underlying artefacts, on a stated date, per jurisdiction:

1. A trust bank reconciliation as at the year end date, reconciling the bank statement to the trust ledger.
2. A trial balance of all trust ledger accounts as at the same date.
3. A list of any overdrawn ledger accounts, with the explanation.
4. Listings of controlled money and investment money where held.
5. Receipts and payments cash books, and the transfer journal, for the whole period.
6. Evidence that reconciliations were performed through the year, not reconstructed in April.

A system that stores documents well but cannot produce items 1 to 5 for a named date, for one jurisdiction at a time, will cost you the difference in examiner's fees.

One more independent check worth doing before you sign anything: the Law Society of NSW publishes a list of trust accounting software packages it has certified as compliant with the Uniform Law and Uniform General Rules 2015. As at 8 August 2026 that list includes Actionstep, Clio, FilePro, LawMaster, LEAP and Smokeball, among others. If certification matters to your practice, check the current list yourself rather than taking any vendor's word for it, including ours: MatterFirst does not appear on it.

How MatterFirst handles this

MatterFirst is a legal practice management platform for Australian law firms, built by North Cape Technology in Melbourne. Trust accounting is built for Australian jurisdictions, and the compliance review workflow covers four states: NSW, VIC, QLD and WA. It does not cover SA, TAS, ACT or NT, so a South Australian practice would run its Statement AB cycle outside the platform. Matters themselves can be recorded in all eight Australian jurisdictions, so the file lives in one place even where the trust review does not reach.

Around the trust ledger, the finance and reporting module carries time tracking, invoicing, payment collection and real time financial dashboards, and Xero is one of four integrations connectable today, alongside Stripe, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Clients approve invoices through the branded client portal rather than by email thread, which shortens the gap between a bill going out and money arriving.

Key dates matter here too. MatterFirst calculates limitation and key dates from rules that cite the governing statute, for example the Limitation Act 1969 (NSW) s 14(1), and syncs them to the calendar. The same automations engine that drives matter workflows can carry the annual trust cycle as trigger, condition and action rules.

On residency, data sits in the AWS region the firm chooses, with Sydney the default for Australian firms, and matter questions and document extraction are processed in that same region. The detail, including the one exception for document reading, is set out on the security page.

Pricing is per workspace, not per user: from $199 per month with users included, and every paid plan includes the client portal, automations and a monthly AI balance in Australian dollars that metered AI work draws down. Deterministic work, such as generating a document with no AI sections, draws down nothing. See pricing and how the AI balance is metered.

Comparison

Facts below were checked against each vendor's own public pages on 8 August 2026.

Where a cell says "not verified this session", the vendor's page did not return a readable response when checked, not that the information does not exist. Check it yourself before you rely on it.

Who this suits, and who it does not

MatterFirst suits Australian firms of roughly two to twenty fee earners that want onshore hosting, matters across multiple jurisdictions, and a trust compliance review workflow covering NSW, VIC, QLD or WA.

It is not the right fit today if your trust practice sits in South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT or the Northern Territory and you need the compliance review workflow to cover it, or if certification on a particular law society's software list is a precondition of your purchase. Both are answerable questions, and you should put them to every vendor you evaluate. The evaluation checklist sets out the rest.

FAQ

Does MatterFirst handle Victorian trust accounting? Yes. The trust compliance review workflow covers Victoria, along with NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. It does not cover South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT or the Northern Territory.

When is my external examiner's report due in NSW? By 31 May, along with the Part B Statement of Trust Money. The Part A Confirmation of Trust Money is due earlier, by 30 April, and it is lodged whether or not you held trust money.

Is South Australia on the same trust deadlines as NSW? No. South Australia runs on the 30 June financial year. Statement AB goes to the external examiner by 31 August and the examiner's report goes to the Law Society of South Australia by 31 October, where reasonably practicable.

Do I have to use certified trust accounting software in NSW? The Law Society of NSW publishes a list of packages it has certified as compliant with the Uniform Law and Uniform General Rules 2015. Whether certification is required for your circumstances is a question for the Society or your external examiner, not for a software vendor.

Where is MatterFirst data stored? In the AWS region the firm chooses, with Sydney the default for Australian firms. Matter questions and document extraction run in the same region as the documents.

What does MatterFirst cost for a four person firm? Pricing is per workspace. The Practice plan is $649 per month or $6,490 per year and includes four users, with additional users from $139 per user per month, and an included monthly AI balance in Australian dollars.

The short version

The deadlines are public and the artefacts they demand are the same handful of reports. Choose a system that can produce a reconciliation, a trial balance and an overdrawn ledger listing as at a stated date, per jurisdiction, without a rebuild in April, and the annual examination stops being an event.