Most agencies close for at least a few days between Christmas and New Year. The trust account doesn’t get a break. Tenants keep paying, bills keep falling due and bond deadlines keep running, while the banks take two long weekends off.
The dates are awkward this year. Christmas Day is a Friday and Boxing Day is a Saturday, so Monday 28 December is a public holiday in every state and territory. New Year’s Day is a Friday too. If you plan the trust account around those dates in November, January is a lot calmer.
The short version
- Banks won’t process BPAY, direct debits or EFT files from Friday 25 to Monday 28 December, or from Friday 1 to Sunday 3 January. Thursday 24 December is the last business day before Christmas.
- Run any pre-Christmas owner payment by Wednesday 23 December, and only pay out money that has cleared.
- Pay bills that fall due while you’re closed before you go, and never change bank details from an email over the break.
- Bonds received in December still have to be lodged on time. In NSW that means by Friday 15 January 2027.
- December’s month end is Thursday 31 December, but you won’t have that day’s bank data until Monday 4 January. Tell owners now when to expect their money.
The dates that matter this year
| Date | Business day? | What it means for the trust account |
|---|---|---|
| Thu 24 December | Yes | Last business day before Christmas. A payment that misses your bank’s cut-off won’t move until Tuesday. |
| Fri 25 December | No | Christmas Day |
| Sat 26 and Sun 27 December | No | Boxing Day falls on the Saturday |
| Mon 28 December | No | Extra public holiday for Boxing Day, in every state and territory |
| Tue 29 to Thu 31 December | Yes | Three business days. 31 December is the December month end. |
| Fri 1 January | No | New Year’s Day |
| Sat 2 and Sun 3 January | No | Weekend |
| Mon 4 January | Yes | First business day of 2027. The bank data for 31 December usually arrives today. |
Faster payments through Osko and PayID can still land on the closed days. The payments a trust account mostly relies on can’t. BPAY, direct debits and the EFT files you pay owners and suppliers from only move on business days.
New Zealand has one more holiday to plan for. The day after New Year’s Day is a public holiday there, and because 2 January falls on a Saturday it moves to Monday 4 January for most offices. Tuesday 5 January is the first normal business day across the Tasman.
Pay owners before Christmas, but only from cleared funds
Plenty of offices run an extra owner payment before Christmas, so owners aren’t waiting until the new year. I think it’s worth doing. Money is better in the owner’s account than sitting in trust over a four-day weekend.
Timing is the main thing. Run it on Tuesday 22 or Wednesday 23 December. Depending on your bank, an EFT file can take until the next business day to reach the owner. A run on Christmas Eve that misses the cut-off won’t land until Tuesday 29 December.
The bigger risk is paying out money you don’t really have yet. Rent collected by direct debit can bounce days after it shows on the ledger. The holidays add another four days before a dishonour comes back.
If you’ve already paid that rent to the owner, their ledger goes negative, and an overdrawn ledger is one of the audit red flags every auditor looks for. Check your software’s cleared funds or hold settings before the run, and don’t override them to get money out before Christmas.
Pay the bills that fall due while you’re away
Go through every bill due between your last day and your first day back. Council rates, water bills and strata levies are the usual ones, and quarterly levies often fall due on 1 January.
- Pay them in your last run before you close, as long as the owner has the funds. Enter each one with its real due date, so the history makes sense later.
- Tell the owner now if they’re short. An owner who hears about a missed levy in December can top up. One who hears about it in January gets a late fee as well.
- Plan for emergency repairs. Hot water systems and blocked drains don’t wait for January. Decide who can approve an urgent invoice while you’re closed. If you hold back a set amount on owner folios for repairs, check it’s enough before you go.
Bond deadlines don’t stop for Christmas
Bond lodgement is one of the obligations that keeps running through a shutdown. How much the break helps depends on where you are.
In NSW, agents have 10 working days after the end of the month in which they received the bond. Weekends and public holidays don’t count, so bonds received in December are due by Friday 15 January 2027. If your office reopens on 18 January, you’re already late. Bonds that tenants pay straight into Rental Bonds Online never touch your trust account, so this only applies to the ones you receipt.
In Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the ACT, the deadline is a set number of days or weeks from the day you receive the bond. The holidays don’t extend that, so a bond you take just before Christmas can fall due before you’re back. Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand count working or business days, which gives you a little more room. Our trust account compliance calendar lists the clock in each state.
Watch for payment scams over the break
Fake “please update my bank details” emails are a year-round risk in real estate. They’re harder to catch when half the office is away and the person who knows the owner isn’t the one reading the inbox.
The rule doesn’t change at Christmas. Never change an owner’s, tenant’s or supplier’s bank details because of an email. Call them on a number you already have on file, not one in the email. Leave the change until someone can check it properly, even if it means a payment waits a few days.
Check who can approve payments too. If the principal holds the only bank token and goes away, payments either stop or someone ends up sharing a login. Neither is a good look at audit. Set up a second authoriser now.
December’s month end lands in the middle of the break
The December statement date is Thursday 31 December, the last day of the month. Most banks only make a day’s transactions available on the next business day. That means you won’t have the 31 December bank data until Monday 4 January, and the December reconciliation can’t be finished before then.
That has a knock-on effect for owners. If your end of month payment normally goes out on the first business day, decide now whether someone is working on 4 January. If not, tell owners when to expect their December statement and payment. Many have mortgage repayments early in January, and a short note in December saves a lot of phone calls.
For Western Australian agencies, 31 December is also the end of the audit year. The December reconciliation is the last one your auditor will look at, so get it done and signed early in January, not in March.
When you’re back
Work through these in order:
- Reconcile every day you missed, oldest first. Payments you sent on 29 to 31 December will show as unpresented in December’s reconciliation. That’s normal, as long as they clear in the first days of January.
- Receipt rent with the date it reached your account. That way it lands in the right month’s owner statement.
- Check arrears before you send notices. Rent paid by BPAY on Christmas Eve may not have reached you until 29 December. A tenant who paid on time shouldn’t get an arrears notice because the banks were closed. Our piece on paid-to dates and part payments explains how to read the ledger.
- Lodge December’s bonds before your state’s deadline.
- Look for dishonours that came back over the break, and fix any ledger that went negative.
Make January the easy month
None of this is hard on its own. The trouble is that it all lands in the same three weeks, when the office is winding down and owners and tenants are busier than usual.
If December is always a scramble in your office, we can take the receipting, reconciliations and disbursements off your plate. Our trust accounting service covers PropertyMe, Property Tree and the other main platforms. Get in touch before the break and we’ll talk through what it would look like for your agency.
Sources: 2026 public holidays (Fair Work Ombudsman). Public holidays and anniversary dates (Employment New Zealand). Bond deadlines from each state’s bond authority, as listed on our state pages. Dates current as at November 2026. This article is general information for agencies, not legal advice.