The Australian Property Manager's Trust Account Compliance Calendar 2026-27

There is no national trust account calendar. There are eight Australian jurisdictions running to their own audit years and their own lodgement dates, plus New Zealand on a system that does not resemble any of them, and the only thing they reliably have in common is that missing a date is your problem rather than your auditor’s.

This is the whole year on one page: what falls due when, which jurisdictions it applies to, and the obligations that run continuously rather than annually. Dates are current as at September 2026 — always confirm your own against your regulator, particularly in South Australia and Queensland, where the deadline depends on your licence rather than the calendar.

The one-page version

Three of those rows carry a difference worth knowing before you read any further. The ACT splits its oversight across two agencies — your licence and audit sit with Access Canberra, your bonds with the Rental Bonds Office at the ACT Revenue Office. The Northern Territory has no central bond authority at all, so deposits stay in your trust account for the life of the tenancy. And New Zealand is not audited once a year at all; REA requires three examinations against a 31 March balance date, so the books are never more than five months from being looked at.

July 2026

A new audit year begins on 1 July in New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT and the Northern Territory. It is the cleanest moment of the year to fix a process you have been tolerating, because everything you change now has twelve months to bed in before anyone audits it.

End of financial year owner statements go out this month, and with them the question of what income belongs to which year. The answer is not the date you paid the owner — it is when the money was received into your trust account, which is a distinction that catches out owners and, occasionally, their accountants.

In Tasmania, the Trust Account Report for the period ending 30 June is due to the Property Agents Board by 31 July, within one month of the period end. This is separate from, and in addition to, the annual audit due in September. A late fee applies, and agencies that have arrived from the mainland are routinely unaware the obligation exists.

This is also the month the AML/CTF regime started applying to real estate. New obligations for agencies commenced on 1 July 2026, and AUSTRAC enrolment for newly captured businesses closed on 29 July 2026. If you are reading this and have not enrolled, that is the first thing to deal with — our guide to the Tranche 2 reforms sets out what applies.

August 2026

Nothing falls due, which makes it the most valuable month on this calendar.

Confirm your auditor is engaged and has a date. Then run your own dry run before they do: every month reconciled and signed, no unpresented items sitting for longer than they should, dormant ledgers cleared, adjustments documented at the time rather than reconstructed from memory. Anything you find yourself and fix reads very differently in an audit file to the same thing found by the auditor.

Queensland agencies should note their year already closed on 31 May, so the four-month clock is two months in.

September 2026

The busiest date in the Australian trust accounting year. Falling due on 30 September:

• New South Wales — auditor’s report lodged with NSW Fair Trading.
• Victoria — audit completed within three months of 30 June, by an approved auditor, meaning a practising public accountant who is a member of CPA Australia, CA ANZ or the Institute of Public Accountants.
• Queensland — audit report or statutory declaration lodged, four months after the 31 May year end.
• Tasmania — Special Purpose Audit and Checklist lodged with the Property Agents Board.
• ACT — trust account records audited.
• Northern Territory — audited within three months of year end.

Six jurisdictions, one date. If you operate across state lines, this is the month your auditor is busiest and least able to absorb a late start.

October 2026

Remediation month. If your audit produced findings, fix the underlying process now rather than making a note to do it next year — an auditor who sees the same finding twice is looking at a pattern rather than an oversight.

In New Zealand, the second examination period ends 31 October.

November 2026

Quiet, and worth spending. Clear dormant balances, resolve unclaimed money, chase unpresented items, and tidy the ledgers you have been meaning to look at since audit. Every one of these takes ten minutes now and an afternoon in September.

December 2026

31 December is the Western Australian trust account audit year end. WA is the national outlier: real estate agents there audit on the calendar year, while settlement agents work to 30 June, which is a genuine trap for anyone holding both licences.

Everywhere else, the risk in December is the shutdown. Disbursement timing shifts around public holidays, arrears build over the break, and bond lodgement clocks keep running while your office is closed. Decide your January dates in December, not in January.

January 2027

Western Australian agencies should engage an auditor now rather than in March. Everywhere else, the first reconciliation of the calendar year is a good moment to check that nothing drifted over the break.

February 2027

New Zealand agencies begin preparing for the 31 March balance date.

In Western Australia, if you are going to need an extension, the request must be made and approved before 31 March. An auditor running late is not a defence, so the decision to ask has to be made this month, not next.

March 2027

Three separate deadlines land on 31 March:

• Western Australia — trust account audit report lodged with the Commissioner for the year ended 31 December.
• AUSTRAC — the first annual compliance report for newly captured real estate businesses, covering the period from 1 July 2026, is due.
• New Zealand — balance date for the REA reporting year.

April 2027

New Zealand’s final audit for the year is completed, and the signed report is due to REA within 10 working days.

May 2027

31 May closes the Queensland trust account audit year. Queensland also requires at least one unannounced examination in any audit period longer than six months, and the annual report must state, month by month, whether the trust cash book, trust bank account and trust ledgers were reconciled — so a year of tidy monthly reconciliations is not merely good practice there, it is reported on explicitly.

June 2027

30 June closes the audit year in New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT and the Northern Territory, and the cycle starts again.

South Australia sits outside all of this

South Australia does not put every agency on a shared year end. Your audit period runs from the end of your last one through to a date set against your own annual return cycle, or another date you nominate and the Commissioner approves. Two agencies on the same street can have entirely different deadlines. If you operate in South Australia, the 30 September rhythm in this article does not apply to you, and knowing your own date matters more there than anywhere else in the country.

The deadlines that are not annual

The dates above are the ones agencies diarise. The obligations below run continuously, and they are the ones that actually produce findings.

Monthly reconciliation. Your trust account must be reconciled to the bank at the end of every month, promptly, with the reconciliation reviewed and signed. A trail of on-time reconciliations is the single strongest signal that your controls work. A backlog is the single strongest invitation to look deeper.

Bond lodgement. Every jurisdiction runs its own clock, and New South Wales runs two — an agent has 10 working days from the end of the month in which the bond was received, while a private landlord has 10 working days from the day it was paid. That monthly cycle is more forgiving, but it means an unlodged bond can sit in your trust account for weeks without ever looking overdue. Make lodgement a deliberate month-end step.

Trust deficiency reporting. Victoria imposes an obligation most states do not: if you become aware of a deficiency in a trust account or trust ledger account, you must notify both Consumer Affairs Victoria and your auditor within three business days. Three days only works if your reconciliations are current enough to surface a shortfall within days rather than at month end — which is the real argument for reconciling daily rather than monthly.

Four weeks before your deadline

Confirm every month in the audit period is reconciled and signed. Clear unpresented items. Resolve dormant and unallocated balances. Check that ledgers sum to the bank. Assemble the documentation your auditor will sample — receipts, deposit records, disbursement authorities, management and tenancy agreements, bank statements — and nominate one person who can answer questions quickly. Audits stall on chasing, not on complexity. Our audit preparation guide covers the full run-through, and the red flags that trigger an adverse finding covers what your auditor is looking for.

Knowing the dates is the easy part

Every deadline on this page is straightforward in isolation. What makes trust account compliance hard is that they arrive on top of a portfolio that has to be receipted, reconciled and disbursed every single day in between, usually by someone who also has another job.

We run trust accounts for agencies across every Australian state and territory and in New Zealand, which means we run this calendar for a living. If yours is a scramble rather than a rhythm, get in touch and we will talk through what it would take to fix that.