Every registered real estate brokerage in Ontario holds money that is not its own. Deposits on pending transactions sit in a statutory trust account, and the Real Estate Council of Ontario expects that account to be reconciled, documented and separable from operating funds at any time, not assembled when somebody asks.
The three records that matter
Trust accounting reduces to a single question: does the money in the account equal the sum of what is owed to each party? Answering it needs three things kept current.
- A trust bank reconciliation, monthly, tying the statement to the ledger
- A trust liability listing, every deal, every deposit, every party, adding to the account balance
- A clean separation between trust and general funds, with no transfer that lacks a documented reason
Where commission accounting goes wrong
Commission is the other half of a brokerage's books, and the recurring error is recording it net. A deal closes, the agent's split and the brokerage's deductions come off, and the number that lands in the ledger is what remained. That understates revenue, hides the cost of the split entirely, and makes any per-agent profitability question unanswerable.
Record it gross, with each deduction as its own line. The bank movement is identical. The picture of the business is not.
What to check this month
- Pull the trust reconciliation for last month. Does it exist, and is it signed off?
- Add up the trust liability listing. Does it equal the reconciled bank balance to the cent?
- Pick one closed deal and trace it end to end, deposit in, disbursement out, commission recognised.
- Check whether any transfer moved between trust and general without a written reason.
If any of those takes more than a few minutes to answer, the issue is not the accounting standard. It is that the file was not built for a brokerage in the first place.