Process and Pricing

A fiduciary's accountings are a crucial part of any estate, trust, or conservatorship administration. Whether the accounting is for the court or the beneficiary/heir, they rely on well-organized, meticulously detailed, and clearly formatted accountings to ensure that assets are not being misused or squandered. However, these accountings can be time-consuming and confusing to compile. That is where Storz Court Accounting Services comes in. We style the accountings in the format prescribed by the California Probate Code, that ensures uniformity of the information and ease of its review.

 

When you hire us to prepare your accounting, the first step is to assemble any financial documents that are available. This includes bank, investment, and annuity statements, appraisals of real property and valuable personal property, and receipts from purchases/sales of assets. If the accounting is the first one for a court-assigned administration, an Inventory and Appraisal will be needed as well. The more information, the better. We do not need the physical hard-copies of the documents. If you have PDFs that are easily readable, we will accept those also, if you prefer.

 

The second step is to sort all the documents you have given to us and determine what, if anything, is missing. If we discover that something is missing, we will reach out to you to locate it. This will usually take us about a week. In that time, we will also create an inventory sheet of every document you gave us, for your records.

 

After we have all the documents we need for the accounting, we will begin the data entry process. This is the most time-consuming part of creating an accounting. Each transaction needs to be explained. The accounting needs to show the date the transaction took place, where the monies came from or went, what the funds were used for, and how much. If the documents provided to us do not show this information clearly, we will reach out to you at this time to clarify any transactions we have questions about.

 

Lastly, once we have all the information we need, the data is entered into the proper accounting format. We will organize the data by date and type of transaction and calculate any gains or losses for the period. Then we will enter the data on the proper schedules on the accounting, check to ensure the accounting sheets balance with each other and the whole document, and format for PDF. After review by at least three team members, we will forward the accounting to you for review and approval. The last two steps will usually take three weeks to complete.

     

Once we send the accounting to you for approval, you have three days to get back to us with any changes required. If you do not see anything that needs changed, we will send our invoice out to you at this time.

 

Our rates are very competitive for the industry. We charge $135 per hour if you need the accounting to be completed in approximately four to six weeks. If you need it done in less than four weeks, however, we do charge $150 per hour to move your accounting to the front of the line. We also have a 5 hour minimum for any accounting project.

 

Please call us at 916-220-3474 or email us at info@storzcourtaccounting.com to reserve your accounting.