Inmate trust accounting, commissary ordering, checking-account management, and inter-agency billing form a single money surface. Every dollar in or out of the facility — deposits, purchases, fees, transports — passes through this module with a ledger trail.
What it does
- Tracks each inmate’s trust balance with full transaction history (deposit, purchase, refund, fee).
- Drives commissary ordering — catalog, weekly window, order review, fulfillment — debiting the trust balance on confirm.
- Manages the facility’s own checking account (settings, balance, reconciliation) so commissary funds and operating funds stay properly separated.
- Handles inter-agency billing for holding inmates on behalf of other jurisdictions, with per-jurisdiction rates and monthly invoicing.
How it works
Trust account is the authoritative ledger; commissary, phone, and video bill into it. The Checking Account pages (CheckingAccount, CheckingBalance, CheckingSettings) provide the operating-account side and reconcile against the trust ledger. Inter-Agency Billing produces invoices per holding agreement.
Data captured
- Trust transactions per inmate with type, amount, source, timestamp (UTC)
- Commissary orders with line items and fulfillment status
- Checking account transactions and reconciliation flags
- Inter-agency billing records with rate, days held, invoice
Compliance & retention
Financial records follow the facility’s accounting retention (typically seven years). Inter-agency invoices are retained for the full audit period. The ledger is append-only — corrections are recorded as offsetting transactions, not edits.
We switched to a unified trust and commissary system about two years ago and the reconciliation headaches alone made it worth every penny. My question is whether inter-agency billing handles situations where an inmate is being housed for a federal contract — we’ve had some messy invoicing issues there. Would love to know if that’s built in or needs a workaround.
We switched to a unified trust and commissary module about two years ago and the time savings on end-of-month reconciliation alone were worth it. My question is how does the inter-agency billing piece handle split billing when an inmate is being held for multiple agencies simultaneously — that was always a nightmare for us manually. Curious if the system can auto-allocate daily rate charges across multiple holds.
We used to juggle three separate spreadsheets just for commissary reconciliation and inter-agency billing — the amount of time we wasted at month-end was embarrassing. Having trust accounting and billing on one platform sounds like exactly what our finance sergeant has been asking for. Does your system handle holds on inmate funds for court-ordered restitution, or is that a separate module?
We switched to a unified trust and commissary setup about two years ago and the reconciliation headaches basically disappeared overnight. The inter-agency billing piece is what I’m most curious about here — do you handle situations where a holding agency disputes a per-diem charge mid-billing cycle? That’s still our biggest pain point.
We switched to a consolidated system about two years ago and the difference in end-of-month reconciliation time alone was worth it — used to take my clerk the better part of three days. Quick question though: does your inter-agency billing handle split billing when an inmate is housed for multiple agencies simultaneously, or does that still require a manual workaround?
We switched to a unified trust and commissary system about two years ago and the difference in end-of-month reconciliation time is night and day. My biggest question is how inter-agency billing handles partial-month transfers — we constantly deal with inmates moving between county and state mid-billing cycle and that’s always been a headache. Would love to see a demo focused specifically on that scenario.