This document walks through how VRTrust records each transaction type under Operations Accounting (OPEX), at the journal-entry level.

It's written for accounting professionals supporting VRTrust clients. For a plain-language overview, see the companion article Operations Accounting OPEX) in VRTrust.

Two ledgers. Every journal-entry line carries a Ledger tag: Trust or Operating. The two ledgers are maintained as independent sets of books.

Balanced by ledger. A journal entry must balance debits to credits within each ledger, not just overall. This is the rule that drives everything that follows.

Party tag. Each line is also tagged to a Party: Owner or Manager (bank/cash lines carry no party). Party plus Listing determine which statement a revenue/expense line lands on.

Due to/From Trust. When a single transaction touches both ledgers, each ledger would be left out of balance on its own. VRTrust posts an offsetting pair to a balancing account — Due to/From Trust — one line in each ledger, tagged Party = Manager. This is the mechanism that keeps both books internally balanced.

When Due to/From Trust is used. A Due to/From Trust pair appears whenever cash in one ledger settles an obligation that lives in the other ledger. If a transaction sits entirely within one ledger, no balancing pair is posted.

The user only sets party on expense and deposit lines via the line's Bill To (Owner or Manager).

On a Payout, the settled line is always Owner; the user doesn't choose it. Bank/cash account lines — including both legs of a Bank Transfer — carry no party at all.

Account naming

Where a journal-entry line posts to an account chosen by a configurable assignment, it's shown below as Account name (Assignment), using the standard default chart of accounts. A client who has remapped the assignment may post to a different account.

The payment of an owner's balance, triggered by "Create payment" on a published statement.

This occurs entirely within the Trust ledger, so there is no Due to/From Trust pair. (The two A/P lines offset within the entry: the payable is relieved and re-stated as it is paid.)

Cash leaves the Operating ledger to settle an owner (Trust-ledger) obligation, so a Due to/From Trust pair balances each ledger.

Trust: Dr 1,600 / Cr 1,600. Operating: Dr 800 / Cr 800.

This transaction type represents movement of cash between two bank accounts. A Due to/From Trust pair is posted only when the transfer crosses between the Trust and Operating ledgers.

Same-ledger transfers (Trust→Trust, Operating→Operating) need no balancing pair.

Recorded when a reservation is booked. All lines are Trust ledger, Party = Owner. No change to ledger placement here — reservations remain fully in Trust.

The allocation of revenue between Owner and Manager. Placement depends on the revenue-side and expense-side party.

A fee has no bank/cash movement, so it does not post a Due to/From Trust pair.

When the revenue and expense parties differ, the entry reallocates value between Owner and Manager (surfacing as a Manager Payable balance); the balancing cash entry only occurs later, when the amount is actually settled (an Owner Payout or a Bank Transfer).

An expense has two independent switches: Bill To (Owner or Manager) and, at payment, the bank account used (Trust or Operating). Accounts Payable follows Bill To — Owner-billed A/P sits in the Trust ledger; Manager-billed A/P sits in the Operating ledger.

Bill To = Owner

Bill To = Owner, with markup

Bill To = Owner, with markup tax

Bill To = Manager

These examples settle both an Owner-billed payable (50, Trust ledger) and a Manager-billed payable (1,082, Operating ledger) in one payment.

Paid from a Trust account

Trust cash settles a Manager (Operating-ledger) payable, so a Due to/From Trust pair is posted for that portion. Trust: Dr 1,132 / Cr 1,132. Operating: Dr 1,082 / Cr 1,082.

Paid from an Operating account

Operating cash settles an Owner (Trust-ledger) payable, so the pair is posted for that portion. Operating: Dr 1,132 / Cr 1,132. Trust: Dr 50 / Cr 50.

Paid from a non-trust account (expense reimbursement, non-cash path)

This is the existing non-trust reimbursement path, used to record an owner expense not paid from any connected VRTrust bank/credit card account. It stays within the Trust ledger and is unchanged by OPEX.

Guest and non-reservation receipts. The deposit's bank account (Trust or Operating) drives ledger placement.

When a deposit is received into a Trust account, all lines are placed in the Trust ledger — including Manager-party lines — so the entry balances within Trust and no Due to/From Trust pair is required.

When a deposit is received into an Operating account, Owner-party lines stay in the Trust ledger while Manager-party lines move to the Operating ledger. A Due to/From Trust pair balances the owner amounts that landed in operating cash.

The 960 is the owner's net receipt that landed in the operating account (A/R 1,000 less owner-side Reserved Funds 30 and Co-Host Payouts 10). Trust: Dr 1,000 / Cr 1,000. Operating: Dr 1,460 / Cr 1,460.

Opening-balance entries follow the same dual-ledger model (each item offset against an Opening Balance account, balanced by ledger).

Applies to all teams. These controls are not Operating (OPEX) Accounting–specific - they apply to every team, whether there is an operating bank account in VRTrust or not.

Alongside the dual-ledger mechanics, there are controls that govern which accounts a transaction can post to, so the trust balance sheet stays an honest measure of what's owed.

The governing principle. On the Trust ledger, Owners party, the balance sheet is deliberately limited to six buckets:

Any remaining asset, liability, revenue, or expense falls to the Trust ledger, Manager party as Manager Payable.

The reasoning:

VRTrust restricts the accounts that can be hit at every point where an account is chosen (manual coding, reservation line-type mappings, fee/commission mappings, and assignment mappings). A/P and A/R can never be selected manually anywhere.

When Bill To = Owner, only these accounts are selectable, and everything else is greyed out: the Deferred Revenue assignment, category Taxes Payable – Lodging & Occupancy, category Security Deposits Payable, and any revenue or expense account. The same whitelist applies on both expenses and non-reservation deposit lines.

Reservation line types always post with party = Owners, so their restriction is about classification rather than party. They may be mapped only to revenue accounts, expense accounts, category Taxes Payable – Lodging & Occupancy, and category Security Deposits Payable. They cannot be mapped to A/P or A/R (those assignments accept asset/liability accounts only). Deferred Revenue is not an available mapping target for reservation line types.

The revenue and expense accounts configured on a fee cannot be mapped to A/P, A/R, or the Deferred Revenue assignment.

Wherever an assignment's line hits party = Owners, the account it maps to is constrained:

Each deposit assignment posts to a fixed party, and that mapping is identical whether the line lands on the Reservation or the Non-Reservation tab:

When a fetched deposit can't be payment-matched, its A/R and Co-Host Payout lines land on the Non-Reservation tab tagged party = Owners with no listing/reservation, treated as Unapplied Cash (below) rather than forced onto the manager.

Because every journal-entry line carries a Ledger tag (Trust or Operating), the reporting layer gains this dimension.

The Ledger dimension (Trust / Operating) is available across the core financial reports. By default these reports open showing both ledgers combined, so the top-line figures reflect the whole business unless you narrow the view.

The dimension is exposed differently depending on the report: as a filter on the detailed reports, and as tabbed views on the financial statements (below).

The operational reports — Guest Balances, Reservation Lodging & Occupancy Tax, and Owner Statement Summaries — all run on the Trust ledger only; operating activity never appears in them.

All of the ledger-related controls above (the Book filter, By Ledger view, and the Trust/Company tabs) stay hidden until an operating account is connected. Until then, every report runs Trust-only.

Applies to all teams. The PM Statement receives the same treatment for every team, regardless of whether or not an operating bank account is connected to VRTrust.

Previously the statement showed only revenue and expense accounts (the manager's P&L). It now also includes asset- and liability-classified accounts, so it reflects what the manager is owed and owes as well as what was earned.

The statement is scoped in the background to the Trust ledger, Party = Manager — it presents the manager's position within the trust books. Because that scope is fixed, users can't adjust the Ledger filtering.

This section collects the manager's asset- and liability-classified balances, adjusting for earnings that aren't yet available in cash due to timing differences, like payment processor reserves.

The Assets and Liabilities section is presented on a balance-sheet (as-of) basis — cumulative balances as of the statement date — rather than period-only activity, so timing items (processor reserves, amounts due to/from trust) carry their running balance.

Within the statement template, the Transfers section identifies any movement of money from the trust account to the operating account or vice versa. (This was formerly labeled "Payouts")

The Detail tab now surfaces lines with no account assigned (account = null) and returns that unassigned-account detail, so nothing is silently dropped.

The PM Statement now exposes a dedicated summary roll-up, giving a consistent header-level view of the statement.

Each section of the statement is built from a defined set of accounts:

Note how the Due to/from Trust assignment splits across two sections by transaction type: bank-transfer activity lands in Transfers, everything else in Adjustments.

The summary reconciles the manager's position from the start of the period to the amount available to draw:

Balance end carries forward as the next period's Balance start. The period sections (Net Revenue, Expenses, Adjustments, Transfers) are period activity; Assets and Liabilities is an as-of balance, which is why it sits below Balance end and feeds Available Balance rather than Balance end.

Balance start 3,489 + Net earnings 7,000 (10,000 − 3,000) + Adjustments 300 + Transfers (−4,000) = Balance end 6,789. Available Balance = 6,789 + Assets and Liabilities (−500) = 6,289.