Three-Way Reconciliation for Law Firms
Your bank, ledger, and cash book must agree to the penny. We find the variance, fix the root cause, and document the proof for your COFA and the SRA. Discrepancies typically stem from unallocated client funds, stale-dated cheques, manual ledger backlogs, and timing differences between your bank and your practice management system.
Without Regular Reconciliation
When three-way reconciliations are delayed or neglected, your practice operates under a cloud of compounding financial and regulatory risk.
With Three-way reconciliation
We implement rigorous, systematic matching protocols to guarantee absolute precision and ironclad compliance for your client accounts.
Unresolved variances between bank balances and book records, clouding your true financial position.
We isolate and resolve the root causes of ledger mismatches, eliminating manual month-end investigations.
Unallocated client items, stale-dated cheques, and hidden timing differences go completely undetected.
We maintain a flawless, permanently updated digital paper trail that satisfies SRA auditors at a glance.
Hours of fee-earner time wasted during month-end scrambling to locate historic entry errors.
We streamline the tracking of uncleared items and unallocated funds to protect your operational workflow.
Lack of robust, historical documentation, leaving your practice vulnerable to SRA audit failures.
We align your bank statements, client ledgers, and cash books to build a permanent single source of truth.
How We Deliver Three-Way Reconciliation for Law Firms
We work directly within your existing systems — no migration, no downtime — extracting your bank statements, client ledgers, and cash books to identify variances, correct errors, and establish a documented routine that satisfies SRA Rule 8.3.
Data Extraction & Variance Identification
We begin by extracting your three core financial data streams: live bank statements, practice management client ledgers, and main accounting cash books. We isolate specific logging errors, locate legacy setup flaws, and identify exactly where your records first diverge.
Error Correction & Realignment
We match every transaction across all three channels, systematically correcting duplicate postings, clearing systemic ledger errors, and aligning unallocated funds. We bring your bank, ledger, and cash book back into precise agreement — not approximate balance, but penny-level accuracy.
Documented Routine & Audit Trail
We implement clear workflow controls and establish a regularised, documented reconciliation routine. This creates a permanent digital paper trail that satisfies SRA auditors at a glance and protects your COFA from regulatory challenge.
FAQs
Clear answers to common queries regarding three-way reconciliation for law firms.
A three-way reconciliation cross-references three distinct financial records: your client bank account statement (the actual cash held at the bank), your client ledger balances within your practice management system (the individual matter balances for each client), and your cash book (the central accounting log of all client money in and out). Absolute compliance is achieved only when all three figures agree precisely. Any difference, regardless of size, must be identified, documented, and corrected before the reconciliation can be signed off.
Yes. We routinely take on engagements where the reconciliation has not been properly maintained for an extended period. We dive into your historical financial data to trace unmatched transactions, untangle messy ledger entries, correct misallocated client funds, and rebuild your books until a clean, fully documented baseline is established and verified. We do not delete or overwrite existing records — we create documented correction journals that provide a clear audit trail showing exactly what changed and why.
Book a reconciliation review
Ensure SRA compliance with regular, documented three-way reconciliations. We align your bank, cash book, and client ledgers to keep you audit-ready.
Are you a law firm based in London?
AM Strategic Operates across central London. From boutique practices in Mayfair and Gray’s Inn to commercial firms in the City and Clerkenwell.
51 Brambledown Road
Wallington
England
SM6 0TF
adam@amstrategic.co.uk
0208 153 3877
Monday to Friday – 8am to 6pm
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Adam Bent is licensed and regulated by AAT under licence number 1005891.
Company Registration Number 13371770
VAT number GB393346278
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