There’s no national trust account calendar. There are eight Australian jurisdictions running to their own audit years and lodgement dates, plus New Zealand on a system that doesn’t resemble any of them. About the only thing they have in common is that missing a date is your problem, not your auditor’s.
So here’s the whole year on one page: what falls due when, which jurisdictions it applies to, and the obligations that run all year rather than once a year. Dates are current as at September 2026. Always confirm your own with your regulator, particularly in Queensland and South Australia, where the deadline follows your own licence cycle rather than the calendar.
The short version
- 30 September is the big one. Audit reports fall due that day in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory.
- Western Australia runs on the calendar year, with reports due 31 March. Queensland’s period is set by your licence month, and South Australia’s by your annual return.
- New Zealand is examined three times a year, not once.
- Tasmania has an extra Trust Account Report due 31 July, and Victoria wants a trust deficiency reported within three business days.
- Monthly reconciliation and bond lodgement never stop, and they produce more findings than any annual date does.
The one-page version
| Jurisdiction | Audit year | Report due | Bond lodgement |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 1 Jul to 30 Jun | 30 September | 10 working days after month end |
| Victoria | 1 Jul to 30 Jun | Within 3 months of 30 June | 10 business days from receipt |
| Queensland | 12 months, set by your licence month | Within 4 months of your period end | 10 days |
| Western Australia | 1 Jan to 31 Dec | 31 March | 14 days |
| South Australia | Set by your annual return cycle | In line with your annual return | 2 weeks |
| Tasmania | 1 Jul to 30 Jun | 30 September, plus a separate Trust Account Report | 10 working days |
| ACT | 1 Jul to 30 Jun | 30 September | 2 weeks |
| Northern Territory | 1 Jul to 30 Jun | 30 September | No central authority |
| New Zealand | 31 Mar balance date, 3 examinations | Within 10 working days of the final audit | 23 working days |
Three of those rows carry a difference worth knowing before you read on. 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 isn’t audited once a year. The Real Estate Authority (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, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory. It’s the cleanest moment of the year to fix a process you’ve been putting up with, 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 which year income belongs to. The answer isn’t the date you paid the owner. It’s the date the money came into your trust account, which catches out owners and, now and then, 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 a month of the period end. That’s separate from, and on top of, the annual audit due in September. A late fee applies, and agencies that have come across from the mainland are routinely unaware it 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 sell property and haven’t enrolled, deal with that first. 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 do your own dry run before they do: every month reconciled and signed, no unpresented items sitting longer than they should, dormant ledgers cleared, adjustments documented at the time rather than reconstructed from memory. Anything you find and fix yourself reads very differently in an audit file from the same thing found by the auditor.
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’s a member of CPA Australia, CA ANZ or the Institute of Public Accountants.
- 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.
Five 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.
Queensland agencies whose licence was issued in September also lodge this month, four months after a 31 May period end. Check your own month.
October 2026
Remediation month. If your audit produced findings, fix the process behind them now rather than making a note to do it next year. An auditor who sees the same finding twice is looking at a pattern, not 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’ve 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 the 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 nothing drifted over the break.
February 2027
New Zealand agencies start preparing for the 31 March balance date.
In Western Australia, if you’re going to need an extension, the request has to be made and approved before 31 March. An auditor running late isn’t 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
No fixed national date. It’s a good month to lock in your auditor for the year ahead and check that every month since July is reconciled and signed, before the June rush.
June 2027
30 June closes the audit year in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory, and the cycle starts again.
Queensland runs to your licence, not the calendar
Queensland doesn’t put every agency on a 30 June year. Your audit period is 12 months long, and where it ends depends on the month your licence was issued. The report, or a statutory declaration if the account wasn’t used, is due four months after the period ends, which lands in your licence month. An agency licensed in October, for example, runs a 1 July to 30 June period and lodges by 31 October.
Queensland also requires the auditor to carry out two unannounced examinations during a 12-month audit period, and the annual report has to state, month by month, whether the trust cash book, trust bank account and trust ledgers were reconciled. A year of tidy monthly reconciliations isn’t just good practice there. It’s reported on explicitly.
South Australia sits outside all of this too
South Australia doesn’t put every agency on a shared year end either. 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 completely different deadlines. If you operate in South Australia, the 30 September rhythm in this article doesn’t apply to you, and knowing your own date matters more there than anywhere else in the country.
The deadlines that aren’t annual
The dates above are the ones agencies diarise. The obligations below run all year, and they’re the ones that actually produce findings.
Monthly reconciliation. Your trust account has to 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. A private landlord has 10 working days from the day it was paid. The 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 don’t. If you become aware of a deficiency in a trust account or trust ledger account, you have to 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 the ledgers add up to the bank. Pull together the documents your auditor will sample: receipts, deposit records, disbursement authorities, management and tenancy agreements, bank statements. 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 on its own. What makes trust account compliance hard is that they land 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 in 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’ll talk through what it would take to fix that.