Fiduciary accounting for family successor trustees. Free, private, runs entirely in your browser.
Live app: https://android-tipster.github.io/trustledger/
Ask anyone just named successor trustee of a family trust how they are tracking the money, and the honest answer is a downloaded Excel template or a QuickBooks file that was never built for fiduciary accounting. The dedicated software that exists (TrustBooks, Estateably, GuardianFAS, and similar) is priced and built for law firms running dozens of files at once: $49-$249/month, or $99-$198 per file. A family member handling one trust for a year or two does not need practice-management software. They need the principal-versus-income math done correctly and a clean report at the end.
TrustLedger does that:
- Principal vs income, by default correctly. Every receipt and disbursement category pre-fills its allocation using the default Uniform Principal and Income Act (UPIA) rules adopted in most states (interest and dividends default to income; sale proceeds, capital gains, and estate taxes default to principal). Every default is visible and overridable, since a trust document can say otherwise.
- Reconciliation that must tie to the penny. Opening balance plus receipts minus disbursements minus distributions equals a computed closing balance for each pool, cross-footed against your entered Schedule G asset totals so a typo cannot hide.
- Chronological overdraft detection. Catches a pool that dips negative mid-year even when the period nets out fine overall.
- Multi-year continuity. Closing balances and the asset register carry forward automatically into the next accounting period.
- Beneficiary allocation. Per-period and cumulative-across-periods distribution totals per beneficiary, the exact numbers siblings ask for.
- CSV bank import (Pro). Column auto-mapping for whatever shape your bank exports in, plus a keyword categorizer that pre-fills known categories and flags everything else "needs review" rather than guessing.
- A printable Schedule A-G report. Assets at start, principal receipts, income receipts, principal disbursements, income disbursements, distributions, assets at end, and a summary reconciliation, ready to hand a court or a beneficiary.
No account, no server, no telemetry. Trust name, transactions, and beneficiary details live in your browser's local storage and never leave your machine. The page works offline once loaded.
Free: one trust, one accounting period, up to 40 transactions, full principal/income reconciliation, beneficiary tracking, and the printable report.
Pro (one-time key, no subscription): unlimited transactions, unlimited multi-year periods, CSV bank import, CSV ledger export, vault backup and restore.
Zero dependencies. Pure ES modules shared between Node and the browser.
node test/test.mjs # 143-assertion test suite
node build.mjs # bundles src/ into one self-contained docs/index.html
TrustLedger implements the default UPIA allocation rules used in most US states. It is a bookkeeping and reconciliation tool, not legal advice, and does not model every state's variation or every unusual trust provision (mineral royalties with depletion schedules, generation-skipping tax, etc). Always follow the specific trust document and confirm with an attorney or CPA before filing an accounting with a court.