Accounting ▸ Cross-client transfers, consents & holds

This page documents the cross-client trust transfer consent flow and the hold (earmark) it places on the source matter’s trust. It applies to the Transfer to another matter action on the Matter detail Trust accounting sub-tab and to the firm-wide Trust Operations view.

Same-client vs cross-client transfers

A matter-to-matter transfer moves trust money between two matters on the same trust account. There are two paths:

Same client on both matters — posts immediately. No consent is needed: the money never changes beneficial owner.
Different clients (the two matters have different primary clients) — the funds change whose money they are, so both clients must sign a consent document first. Nothing posts to the ledger until the consent envelope completes.

When you attempt a transfer between matters with different primary clients, the portal explains the requirement and offers to send the consent envelope to both clients for electronic signature.

The hold (earmark) on the source matter

A consent can sit pending for days. From the moment the consent request is sent, the requested amount is held (earmarked) on the source matter’s trust:

Nothing can spend through a hold. Trust payments, disbursements, reversals and competing transfers are all checked against the available balance — the matter’s trust balance minus its active holds. The check is absolute: even an Owner/Admin using the negative-balance override cannot spend held funds. To free them, the consent must be voided (or the hold must release).
Under-funded requests are blocked up front. A consent request is refused at creation if the source matter doesn’t have the money (including money already earmarked by other pending consents) — a client is never asked to sign for funds that aren’t there.
Holds are never perpetual. Each hold auto-releases after the org-configurable hold period (Settings ▸ Accounting ▸ Trust ▸ Cross-client consent hold period, default 30 days, 1–365). On expiry the initiator and both matters’ staff are notified. The consent itself stays open — if the clients sign later, the funds are re-checked before anything posts. Changing the setting affects new requests only; in-flight holds keep the release date set when they were placed.

A pending consent can be voided from the matter’s Trust accounting tab (Void next to the pending consent). Voiding withdraws the signing request, cancels the envelope, releases the hold, and sends notice to both clients and the matters’ staff.

Who may void:

the initiator of the consent request — a void is a retraction, not an approval, so the usual trust self-approval bar deliberately does not apply;
an Owner or Admin;
a user with the Bookkeeping Management add-on;
the Matter Responsible of the source matter (the matter the funds come from).

The same authorization model applies to voiding a trust transfer requisition.

The four dates

Every consent records its dates discretely, and the ledger is dated by the money, not the paperwork:

Date	Meaning
Held	When the consent was requested and the funds were earmarked.
Signed	When the last client signed and the envelope completed.
Moved	When the paired ledger entries actually posted — this is the ledger transaction date.
Voided	When the consent was voided/declined/canceled (if it was).

The held and signed dates never date the ledger entry — only the moved date does.

How holds appear on reports

Held funds stay inside the matter’s balance on every report — they are never deducted from a summed column or total. Instead, reports that show the affected money carry a footnote:

the originating (source) matter’s rows carry a small superscript marker (¹ ² ³ …) beside the balance;
a footnote line under the section states the held amount, the matter, the held date, and the auto-release date.

The Trust Ledger (screen, PDF and the unified export) and the Trust Bank Journals carry the footnote today; other trust surfaces are being extended.

Sources & authorities

Ontario — LSO By-Law 9 (Financial Transactions and Records), s. 7(2): money may be paid out of a trust account for a client only where it is “money properly required for payment to a client or to a person on behalf of a client” — moving one client’s trust money to a different client’s matter therefore requires the clients’ authorization, which this flow captures as a signed consent from both clients before any funds move.
The never-negative re-check at posting time follows the same By-Law 9 standard described on the trust accounting standards page (reviewed by counsel 2026-07-12 — that review does not cover this page’s consent-flow description).