The accounting is the deliverable, not a stack of statements
If you are a professional fiduciary, you already know the court, the beneficiaries, or the attorney will ask for an accounting. A folder of bank statements is not that accounting. Neither is a spreadsheet someone typed from memory.
What you should expect is a set of books rebuilt from the statements, then an accounting prepared in the format the matter actually needs. Estate and trust accounting is that work: records first, then the accounting, with a licensed CPA reviewing the file before it reaches you.
You should also expect a plain list of what the records do not support. A gap that is named is usable. A gap that is filled with a guess is not.
What arrives, and what you still own
You should be able to trace the money. Receipts, disbursements, and what is still on hand should tie to the bank and brokerage statements for the period. If a number cannot be tied, it should be on an exceptions list, not smoothed into the total.
You should get a written reason behind the decisions that are not obvious. A transfer between accounts, a payment that looks personal, a deposit with no description: those are the items someone will ask about. The reasoning should be in the file, not in a phone call you have to remember later.
You still own the fiduciary judgment. We do not replace your counsel, and we do not tell the court what the statutes require in your matter. We prepare the books and the accounting from the records. Your attorney, and the court if one is involved, decide whether the form and the disclosures are the ones that matter has to use. Confirm that with them. Do not take a blog post as the local rule.
The diagnostic is the first thing you can read
Partial records are normal. A prior bookkeeper left, the decedent kept papers in a drawer, or the brokerage statements start halfway through the year. You should not have to guess whether the file can be rebuilt.
The first written piece is a diagnostic. It says what the records support, what is missing, and what it would take to close the gaps. That diagnostic is $499, and it credits in full against the reconstruction if you move forward. You approve the scope and the price in writing before reconstruction starts. There is no hourly meter running in the background.
If you want to see how a rebuild treats holes in the record, missing records and gap reports is the same idea on a business file: unsupported months stay unsupported.
Format is part of the job, and it is local
"The accounting" means different schedules in different courts. We publish sample formats for several states, with fictitious figures, so you can see the shape of a finished sample before you send a real file. Start with the California sample, the Florida sample, and the Wisconsin sample, which includes a sample estate account prepared to Form PR-1814 and a sample trustee report. Those pages label the figures as fictitious. They are samples, not a filed accounting from a real estate.
Use them to see structure. Then confirm the current form, the required schedules, and any local rule with your attorney or the court. A sample that matches last year's statute is not a substitute for the form your judge expects this year.
What you should refuse
Refuse an accounting that does not tie to statements. Refuse one that estimates income because a statement is missing. Refuse one that hides the open items in a footnote nobody can follow.
Refuse a price that changes after the work has started. The quote you approve is the quote you pay.
And refuse anyone who wants to talk to the beneficiaries, the court, or the IRS on your behalf. That is your role, or your counsel's. The books are the part that can be handed off.
If the underlying activity is a business the decedent ran, the same standard applies: rebuild from the bank activity, not from recollection. Reconstructing books from bank statements walks through that standard. The estate page is where the accounting itself is scoped: estate and trust accounting.