Open the account within one business day
Trust money is the client's money, and Georgia gives a broker almost no time to get it somewhere safe.
O.C.G.A. 43-40-20(a) excuses a broker who accepts no trust funds from maintaining a trust account at all. But on receiving trust funds, the broker must open the designated trust account within one business day.
Georgia rule: one business day, not three, not a week. The three-business-day figure comes from the citation schedule, which fines a deposit made more than three business days after receipt — a different duty entirely.
Holding the check in the transaction file until closing is a failure to deposit trust funds into a separate federally insured account under 43-40-25(b)(5). Running funds through the firm's general operating account is commingling under 43-40-25(b)(4), one of the most serious trust violations in the chapter. The account must also be designated by the institution as a trust or escrow account.
Monthly reconciliation
Rule 520-1-.08(6) requires a written reconciliation at least monthly comparing the broker's total trust liability with the reconciled bank balance. Under 520-1-.08(6)(a), the broker must review the statement, and copies are kept three years.
Comparing the checkbook balance to the bank statement misses the point, because trust liability is the whole exercise. The quarterly figure applies only to a salesperson, associate broker or community association manager reporting on a licensee-owned trust account to the broker who approved it. An annual reconciliation at renewal confuses the broker's duty with the Commission's duty to examine each broker's trust account during each renewal period.
Worked reconciliation
A rental trust account holds security deposits of $1,200, $950 and $1,500, plus $2,000 of undisbursed rents, plus $400 of the broker's own funds identified as the bank-required minimum balance and service charge reserve.
- Deposits: $1,200 + $950 + $1,500 = $3,650
- Trust liability: $3,650 + $2,000 = $5,650
- Reconciled bank balance: $5,650 + $400 = $6,050
Rule 520-1-.08(1)(e) permits that $400, provided it is clearly identified as the broker's.