How trust accounting works
Caseo keeps a trust ledger and a business ledger for every matter, and refuses the entries that most often go wrong: a matter in debit, an over-transfer, a deleted trust entry.
The Transactions page
One ledger with six tabs: All, Trust, Business, Expenses, Payroll and Invoices. Across the top: what you hold in trust (and for how many clients), the business balance after expenses and salaries, this month's expenses and payroll, and unpaid invoices.
- Columns: date, client and matter, description, account or type, money in, money out, a running balance (on the Trust and Business tabs) and who captured it.
- Group by client, matter or month.
- Trust and business totals are always shown separately. Caseo never adds trust money to business money.
- Invoices appear on the Invoices tab as amounts billed; they are never counted as money received.
- Filter with chips or plain words, for example "deposits this month over R10k" or "unpaid invoices last month". See Search and filters.
Click a row to open the client's statement beside the ledger: in trust now, fees taken and business costs, every trust and business movement with a running balance, and buttons to print a statement or receipt, reverse, deposit, transfer or invoice.
Recording money
Click New (or press N) for the New transaction window. Pick one of six types at the top:
| Type | Use it for | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Receive money | Money in, to trust or business | Receipts |
| Transfer fees | Moving earned fees and disbursements from trust to business | Transfers to business |
| Pay from trust | Paying the client, or a third party on the client's behalf | Payments from trust |
| Expense | Office costs, or a cost on a matter | Business account, expenses and payroll |
| Invoice | Billing fees and disbursements | Invoicing and VAT |
| Payroll | Marking salaries paid | Business account, expenses and payroll |
Amounts and dates can be typed the quick way: 4.5k, R 12 500,50, today, yesterday, +30 (thirty days from now), 22 sep or 20/9/2026. After saving, Caseo offers to print a receipt or statement, add a reminder, open the entry in the ledger, or capture another.
The guards Caseo enforces
These are checked every time, whoever is capturing and however the entry is made:
| Guard | What Caseo does |
|---|---|
| No matter in debit | Refuses any trust payment, transfer, reversal or allocation that would take a matter's trust balance below zero on any day from its date onward. That includes back-dated entries that would have caused a debit in the past. |
| No over-transfer | Won't let a transfer from trust to business exceed the fees and disbursements outstanding on the matter, or the trust balance. |
| Money into trust is a deposit | Money only enters trust as a deposit, and every trust deposit must say who paid it in. |
| Trust entries are never deleted | A mistaken trust entry is reversed, with a reason. The original and the reversal both stay on the record. See Reversals. |
| Signed-off months are locked | Once a month's reconciliation is signed off, nothing dated in that month can be added, reversed or deleted. See Month-end sign-off. |
| Finalising with money in trust | A matter can't be finalised while it holds trust money or is in debit. See Closing a matter. |
Money that isn't on a matter yet
When money arrives and you don't know whose it is, record it as Unallocated (allocate later). A banner on the Dashboard and the Transactions page shows how much trust money isn't on a matter yet, with an Allocate button. See Receipts and allocations.
On the matter
Every matter has its own money view in the matter panel: its transactions, the client account (trust and business side by side), receipts, invoices and a summary. That is where you issue a statement of account. See Statements of account.
Something unclear or out of date? Email hello@caseo.co.za.