How do I balance court collections?

Court Management

Follow these steps to balance the collections received in Court Management with the receipts for Court Management that have been created in Cash Receipting with the entries for Court Management that have been posted in the General Ledger.

Step 1: Balance court payments and cash bail receipts

Print a Cash Receipting Payment Register (Cash Receipting > Reports > Payment Register). Then, print a Cash Receipting Receipt Register (Cash Receipting > Reports > Receipt Register). The total court payments should balance with the cash bail receipts.

Step 2: Update payments

Update payments received in Cash Receipting to the Court Management application. Run Cash Receipting > Payments > Update Payments. Set aside the Update Payments report to use in Step 3.

Step 3: Balance updated payments to Court Management payments

Print a Court Management Payment Register (Court Management > Reports > Payment Register). The total on the Court Management Payment Register should balance with the total from the Cash Receipting Update Payments report from Step 3.

Step 4: Set up new trusts for payments receipted to the Cash Bail category

Complete this step to add a category for New Trusts in Cash Receipting.

Step 5: Print the Trust Activity report for New Cash Bail

In Court Management, print the Trust Activity report. Set up the report options to print the report items receipted in the category for new cash bail.

GL clerk (recommended)

Each day send the GL clerk a copy of the Cash Receipting Receipt Register. Use the register to balance the total payments receipted to the Court Payment category and to the Cash Bail category in order to make the appropriate journal entries into the appropriate GL accounts in the CR journal.

If Court Management and General Ledger balance to the Cash Receipting reports each day, then amounts at the end of the month should also balance. The final totals reflected on the Court Collections Summary report and Trust Activity report will balance to the GL entries.

Set up a cash bail (trust account) receipt

Step 1: Set up a separate category and distribution in Cash Receipting for Cash Bail, also known as a trust account. Set the Application Type to Other to stop the receipts from updating to Court Management as payments.

Step 2: Set up Cash Bail payments in Court Management as a trust to be held until the case is disposed, then enter a trust disposition to distribute the payment as applied, refunded, or forfeited.

Import court payments

Use Import Court Payments to import payments from a non-Caselle application, such as CORIS. See the help topic titled How do I import court payments?

Troubleshooting

What do I do if the case is closed but the case status is Active?

Usually, this means a closing date exists in the case record even though a closing transaction has not been entered. Begin by looking up the case in Court Management, then delete the date that is stored in the Close Date field.