Ask what outsourced trust accounting costs in Australia and you will not find a straight answer anywhere. Every provider in this market puts the number behind an enquiry form, ours included. There is a defensible reason for that — a quote for 80 properties on one platform tells you very little about 600 across three states and two trust accounts — but it is still unhelpful, because the principal asking the question usually is not shopping yet. They are trying to work out whether the conversation is worth having at all.
So here is the arithmetic with the working shown. Not a rate card — further down you will find an honest explanation of why a published rate would mislead more often than it helped — but the benchmark any quote should be measured against, which is the full cost of doing the job yourself.
The comparison almost every principal gets wrong
When an agency compares in-house trust accounting to an outsourced provider, the number in their head is a salary. The provider quotes a monthly fee, the principal divides it by twelve, compares it to what they pay their trust accountant, and forms a view in about four seconds.
That comparison is wrong, and not by a small margin. The salary is somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent of what the role actually costs, and it is the only part of that cost that appears on a single line anywhere in your accounts. Everything else is spread across superannuation, payroll tax, workers compensation, software licences, recruitment, and the weeks each year when the seat is empty and the work is not getting done.
What a trust accountant costs in 2026
Start with the market rate. Advertised salaries for real estate trust accountants sit at roughly $85,000 nationally, around $75,750 in Sydney, $92,500 in Melbourne and $90,000 in Western Australia, while trust accountant roles across all industries advertise closer to $90,000 to $100,000. Take $90,000 as a working base for someone experienced enough to run a portfolio without supervision.
Superannuation. The superannuation guarantee rate is 12 per cent for 2026-27 and stays there. On $90,000 that is $10,800, taking the package to $100,800. From 1 July 2026 the Payday Super rules also require super to be paid with every pay run rather than quarterly. That is a cash flow change rather than a cost increase, but it removes a quarterly float some agencies had quietly been relying on.
Payroll tax. If your Australian wages exceed your state’s threshold, every dollar of that package is taxed at the margin — 5.45 per cent in New South Wales above a $1.2 million threshold, 4.85 per cent in Victoria above $1 million, 4.75 per cent in Queensland above $1.3 million, 5.5 per cent in Western Australia above $1 million, and up to 4.95 per cent in South Australia above $1.5 million. On a $100,800 package in New South Wales, that is roughly another $5,500. If you operate across state lines, your threshold in each state is reduced to your share of wages paid there, so multi-state agencies reach payroll tax earlier than they expect.
Workers compensation, leave loading and the desk. Individually small, collectively not. Budget a few thousand dollars.
Software and training. A seat in your platform, plus the time to keep someone current when the software changes, which it does.
Cover. This is the line that never gets costed. Four weeks of annual leave plus a normal amount of personal leave means the seat is empty for roughly six weeks a year. Trust accounting does not pause for six weeks. Either you pay for temporary cover, which is expensive and hardest to find precisely when you need it most — at end of month, and in audit season — or the work banks up and somebody else absorbs it badly.
Replacement. Trust accounting has real turnover, because it is exacting work that is easy to under-support. When the person leaves you pay a recruitment fee, you pay for a handover that often does not happen properly, and you pay in errors while somebody new learns your ledgers.
Add it up honestly and a $90,000 base costs an agency somewhere between $115,000 and $125,000 a year, before a single day of disruption.
The number that actually matters
Convert that to the unit every principal already thinks in: cost per property, per month. At an all-in cost of $118,000 a year, in-house trust accounting costs roughly
- $98 per property per month at 100 properties
- $49 at 200 properties
- $33 at 300 properties
- $20 at 500 properties
- $12 at 800 properties
That curve is the whole argument, and it cuts both ways. A trust accountant costs the same whether they are reconciling 100 properties or 500, so in-house trust accounting is punishing at the bottom of that range and genuinely efficient at the top. Above roughly 500 properties, a well-run in-house function is hard to beat on cost alone. Below about 250, you are paying a full-time price for a part-time volume of work — and the usual response, handing trust accounting to a property manager or office administrator who already has another job, is exactly how agencies end up with the audit findings and staff turnover we have written about before.
Why nobody publishes a rate, including us
This is the point where you would reasonably expect a number, and it is worth being straight about why there isn’t one. It is not commercial coyness. It is that two agencies with identical portfolio sizes can generate genuinely different amounts of work, and the things that drive the difference are not the things principals expect.
Which bank you use. This one surprises people. How your trust account transactions arrive — the statement format, how the feed behaves, how much detail comes through on each line, how payments are batched — makes a real difference to how long reconciliation and receipting take. Two identical rent rolls at two different banks are not the same job.
How much of the job you want done. Daily receipting, invoice processing, bond reconciliations, disbursements, owner statements and end of month is a different engagement to end-of-month processing alone. Most agencies land somewhere between the two, and where they land is the single biggest variable in any quote.
Whether bill processing is included. Creditor invoices are a volume question rather than a portfolio question. An agency with a heavy maintenance load, water and council rates on-charged to owners, and a multi-step approval workflow generates far more processing than a portfolio of the same size with light bills.
How many trust accounts. A sales trust alongside property management is a second set of obligations, a second reconciliation and a second audit.
What state the file is in. A well-configured platform is cheaper to run than one that needs remediation first, and remediation is usually a one-off rather than an ongoing cost.
How many jurisdictions. Operating across state lines means more than one rule set, more than one bond authority and more than one audit deadline.
That is why every provider in this market quotes rather than lists, and why a published rate would be misleading more often than it was useful.
Getting an accurate number quickly
What you can do is come to the conversation with the information that makes a quote fast and accurate rather than hedged. Have these to hand:
- Number of properties under management, split between residential and commercial
- Whether there is a sales trust as well, and roughly how many transactions it carries
- Your software, and how confident you are in the state of the file
- Your trust account bank
- Approximate creditor invoice volume per month
- Which states you operate in
- Which parts of the job you want to hand over, and which you want to keep
Our cost estimator asks for the first few of these and takes about two minutes. The rest are the questions we would ask on a call.
Two costs that do not change either way
Your audit. You pay for a trust account audit whether the work is done in-house or outside it. Published fixed-fee quotes for real estate trust account audits currently start at around $550 to $900 plus GST per trust account. The variable is not who does your trust accounting, it is how clean the file is when the auditor opens it. A messy account costs more to audit, and a qualified report costs far more than the audit fee. Our guides to preparing for a trust account audit and the red flags that trigger an adverse finding cover what that looks like in practice.
Your software. Your platform subscription does not change because somebody else is driving it.
What the price does not tell you
Two providers quoting the same rate can be running very different services. Before you compare on price, get an answer to each of these:
- Is the account reconciled daily or monthly? That difference decides whether you hear about a problem this morning or in five weeks.
- Who carries professional indemnity cover, and for how much?
- Is the work done onshore or offshore, and who is accountable when something is missed?
- Do you get a named person who knows your portfolio, or a queue?
- What happens at audit time — is pre-audit work included, or billed separately?
- What is the exit? Notice period, and how quickly you get your data and your process back.
The honest summary
If you run 500 or more properties, have a genuinely capable trust accountant, and have solved the cover problem, in-house is cost-competitive and you should keep it. If you are under about 250 properties, or your trust accounting is currently being absorbed by someone whose actual job is something else, then the number on your books is not the real number — and the gap between the two is usually larger than the entire cost of outsourcing.
If you would like the figure for your own portfolio rather than the benchmark, tell us what you are running and we will work it out properly, against your bank, your software and the parts of the job you actually want done. No obligation attached to it.