Lone Wolf Back Office Bookkeeping
Brokerage back office in Lone Wolf Back Office, still widely called brokerWOLF: trades posted properly, splits and deductions that agree with the agent's statement, and trust that reconciles on its own.
Still widely called brokerWOLF.
This is the page that exists because of a search. A brokerage found this firm by typing the product name on its own screen, at a time when the site said only the vendor's name, and that is the whole reason every system here is named the way a user reads it. Lone Wolf Back Office is not a general ledger with real estate wording on it. It is a trade processing system that produces accounting, and almost everything that goes wrong in a brokerage's books goes wrong in the gap between those two things.
What the work looks like in Lone Wolf Back Office
The trade is the unit, and the ledger is downstream of it
Nothing in Lone Wolf Back Office starts as a journal entry. A trade record carries the sale, the commission earned, the splits, the referral, the deductions and the trust deposit, and the accounting falls out of it. That means a trade entered wrongly does not produce a wrong invoice to correct later, it produces a wrong ledger. Checking the trade against the deal sheet is bookkeeping in this system rather than administration before it.
Commission plans reset on the agent's anniversary, not on the year end
Caps and plateaus run from when each agent joined, so a brokerage with fifty agents has fifty reset dates scattered through the year. Commission expense then moves month to month for reasons the calendar does not explain, and somebody reading the profit and loss without knowing that concludes the business changed when only the plan did. Knowing which agents rolled over in a month is usually the whole answer.
Trust is a separate ledger and has to reconcile to itself
Deposits held on a trade are money that is not the brokerage's, and Lone Wolf Back Office holds the trust bank and the matching liability separately from operating. Those two reconcile to each other and to the statement, every month, and a difference is not a timing quirk to carry forward. Held to the requirements of the Real Estate Council of Ontario, and to the equivalent council or state regulator elsewhere.
Agent billing and payables clear, or they sit there looking settled
Desk fees, franchise fees and chargebacks post against the agent's account, and payments run out through the system. A run that was part processed leaves balances that look like real receivables and are not, and they accumulate quietly because each one is small. The agent's own statement and the general ledger have to say the same thing, which is the test that catches it.
The subledger can be ahead of the general ledger
Posting to the general ledger is a step somebody takes in brokerWOLF, not something that happens because a trade closed. So the back office can be complete and correct while the ledger is behind it, and a month end run off the unposted side reports a business that has not happened yet. Confirming what is posted before anything is reported is the habit this system rewards.
Questions about Lone Wolf Back Office
We call it brokerWOLF. Is that the same thing?
Yes. brokerWOLF is what the back office product has been called for years, and a great many brokerages still call it that and still have people on staff who do. Both names are used here on purpose, because both are what somebody types.
Do you set up commission plans or configure the system?
No. We work in it: entering and checking trades, posting, reconciling operating and trust, clearing agent balances and closing the month. Configuration, plan design, conversions and version upgrades belong with the people who do that work, and we will say so rather than take it on.
Do you take over from our existing conveyancer or deal administrator?
Usually not, and it is worth being clear about it. They handle the deal; we handle what it produces. Most of the friction between the two is a handover problem rather than a competence one, and it is cheaper to fix in the ledger than to argue about at year end. Nobody is being replaced.
Is this available to US brokerages?
Yes, in Canada and the United States both. What changes across the border is the regulator's name and the trust rules it sets, not the accounting underneath. US federal and state tax filing is coordinated with a licensed CPA in your state, who prepares and files it from books we keep.
More questions answered on the FAQ page.
Where this fits
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