Case insights
Every transaction categorized
Each row gets a category and a clean payee name, applied on the way in. By the time you open the matter the fixed views are built: what came in, where it went, who was paid, what stands out, and whether you are holding a complete record.
- 16 categories, 104 detail categories
- Every spelling bundled
- Source page on every row
Coverage
63 of 66 months
Income
Monthly, running total
Categories
16 categories, 104 detail
Merchants
318 names, 47 businesses
Anomalies
27 worth a second look
Checks
118 written, 10 missing
Built before anyone asked a question
Categorization
Every transaction gets a category
A bank prints the same payee a different way every month, and a production has hundreds of those strings in it. CounselPro reads each row, names the business behind it, files it under one category and its detail category, and records whether the money moved online or across a counter. Then it reads the whole case again and makes every spelling of the same business agree.
What five statements printed
- VENMO PAYMENT 1029384756 NEW YORK NYChecking ••8102 · statement 3 of 11
- VENMO*PAYMENT WEB ID 3264681992Checking ••8102 · statement 4 of 11
- PAYPAL *VENMO 4029357733 CAChecking ••8102 · statement 5 of 11
- VENMO CASHOUT PPD ID 5264681992Checking ••8102 · statement 6 of 11
- VENMO PAYMENT NRQ4H2 NEW YORK NYChecking ••8102 · statement 7 of 11
What the ledger holds
Venmo
- Category
- Transfer out
- Detail category
- Other transfer out
- Payment channel
- Online
- Rows
- 61 transactions
- Out
- $18,412.00
Sixty-one payments to one payment app, spelled five ways across eleven months. That total is the work, and nobody adds it up by hand.
The sixteen categories every row is filed under
104 detail categories
- Income7
- Transfer in6
- Transfer out5
- Loan payments6
- Bank fees6
- Entertainment6
- Food and drink7
- General merchandise14
- Home improvement5
- Medical7
- Personal care4
- General services9
- Government and non-profit4
- Transportation7
- Travel4
- Rent and utilities7
The list is fixed, so a row carries the same label in March that it carries in November and the same label in this matter that it carries in the next one. Money in and money out stay apart inside every category, and a transfer takes its direction from its sign, so a category never nets itself down to nothing.
What came in, and where it went
Deposits totalled month by month with the running line under them, every period reduced to what it actually cleared, and the spending broken to the categories it fell into. Internal transfers and credit-card payments stay out of all three, so a shuffle between the client's own accounts reads as a shuffle.
$486,200.00 11 months
+$37,200.00 over the period
$400,800.00 16 categories
- Rent and utilities $96,400
- Transfer out $84,200
- General merchandise $61,900
- The other thirteen $158,300
The businesses that took the most
318 printed names · 47 businesses
- Keystone Property Mgmt4 spellings · 33 rows$96,400.00
- Halloran Builders3 spellings · 19 rows$38,400.00
- Venmo5 spellings · 61 rows$18,412.00
- Whole Foods Market6 spellings · 128 rows$14,200.00
- Amazon11 spellings · 214 rows$11,480.00
- Delta Air Lines2 spellings · 14 rows$9,240.00
The spellings column is the work. Eleven printed strings resolving to one retailer, four to one property manager, and the totals beside them are what the client actually paid each one across the period. Read on the raw descriptions, the same money is scattered over hundreds of rows that never add up to anything.
Rowan matter · Jan to Nov 2024 · Six accounts, two institutions
What counts as unusual here
A $4,000.00 charge is a routine month in one matter and the only one of its kind in another. CounselPro reads what a category actually runs at in this case, then surfaces the rows above it. What comes back is odd for this client rather than large in the abstract.
$180 to $3,100 in this matter
How to read it
One bar per charge, put in order of size. The scale stops at $3,100, which is where this matter's home-improvement spending actually tops out, so sixty-three bars climb to the line and stop under it.
The sixty-fourth runs off the top at $18,200.00, six times the tallest bar beside it. That line was measured off the sixty-four charges themselves rather than set at a round number, which is why the same reading works on a matter where $18,200.00 is an ordinary week.
The same reading in every other category
Rowan matter · Jan to Nov 2024
| Category | Transactions | Range in this matter | Outside it | Largest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transfer out | 212 | $200 to $4,800 | 2 rows | $28,400.00 · Mar 14 |
| General services | 148 | $95 to $1,250 | 1 row | $9,400.00 · Feb 9 |
| Home improvement | 64 | $180 to $3,100 | 1 row | $18,200.00 · Jun 30 |
| Travel | 39 | $240 to $2,900 | 1 row | $14,100.00 · Aug 5 |
| Food and drink | 486 | $12 to $180 | 1 row | $2,840.00 · Sep 21 |
Round-number amounts
22 flaggedExact multiples of $100. A round figure is a made figure: an estimate, a transfer, an arrangement between two people. A $10,000.00 payment reads differently than a $9,847.13 one.
Weekend activity
14 flaggedSaturday and Sunday movement, with the interest and fees the bank posts on its own schedule left out. What remains is money somebody chose to move on a day the business was closed.
Every flag is a lead
Twenty-seven flags in this matter: six category outliers and twenty-two round numbers, with one row being both. The reading puts each of them in front of you with the page it was printed on, and the conclusion stays yours.
Every reading
What each transaction insight shows
Thirteen readings run on every case, across every transaction in it. None of them needs a prompt, a filter or a question. What follows is the whole set, and what each one is good for once you are holding it.
Whether the record is whole
- Coverage, account by account and month by month
- Confirm you hold every statement before you trust a total under it. A thin month is usually a missing statement, and finding it now means asking for it in the current round rather than in a motion.
- Duplicate statements and repeated pages
- A scanner double-feed or an overlapping cycle inflates every figure downstream. Compare the copies, keep one, and the totals underneath are the totals you can stand behind on cross.
- The account directory
- Whose account is whose, resolved across the whole stack by reading how every statement names it. An estate account nobody listed on the inventory shows up here first.
Where the money went
- Income by month, with a running total
- Set it beside the sworn schedule. A month running above stated income is a deposition question, and the running total is the figure a support or means calculation starts from.
- Spending by category and by detail category
- The standard-of-living argument with the categories under it. Money in and money out stay split inside every category, so a category never nets itself down to nothing.
- Merchants, with every spelling bundled
- The real total paid to one business over the period, which is the number a preference analysis or a dissipation claim actually turns on. Nobody adds that up by hand across eleven months.
- The payment channel on every row
- Online, in person, or other. It separates ordinary card spend from the wires, apps and payments that move money worth chasing.
- Internal transfers marked
- Money between the client's own accounts stays out of the income and spending totals, so a shuffle from savings to checking reads as a shuffle. It is the first thing opposing counsel will test.
What stands out
- Category outliers
- Start the review here. The range comes off this matter, so what surfaces is odd for this client rather than large in the abstract: a five-figure line in a category that otherwise runs in the hundreds.
- Round-number amounts
- Exact multiples of $100. Round figures are hand-made ones: an estimate, a transfer, an arrangement. A $10,000.00 payment to an insider reads differently than a $9,847.13 one.
- Weekend activity
- Saturday and Sunday movement, with the interest and fees the bank posts on its own schedule left out. What remains is money somebody moved on a day the business was closed.
- Check payees, ranked by what left
- Who was written a check, and how much went to each over the period. A payee that appears nowhere else in the case is the name to put in the first interrogatory.
- Check sequence gaps
- The numbers between the checks you were given. A run of eight missing from the middle of a register is a discovery demand that writes itself, and it names the account and the numbers.
Find missing checks in a production
A check register runs in order, so the numbers you are holding say which numbers you are not. CounselPro reads every check image in the production, sorts the register per account, and names the runs that never arrived, along with who the checks that did arrive were written to.
Checking ••8102
64 of 74 numbers produced
A number that was read short is set aside rather than reported as a hole, so a gap on this strip is a gap in the production. That is a demand you can write in a sentence: these numbers, this account, this period.
Who the checks were written to
41 payees
- Halloran Builders$38,400.0011 checks
- D. Ruiz$19,200.006 checksNowhere else in the case
- Keystone Property Mgmt$14,400.0012 checks
- Ardent Group$9,750.003 checks
- Cash$6,000.004 checks
Ranked by what left the account. A payee the rest of the case has never heard of is the name that goes in the first interrogatory.
What a reading says
A reading is only worth having if you can put it in front of someone who is paid to take it apart. These are the rules every one of them is computed under, and they hold whether the figure is a total, a flag or a gap.
Every figure keeps its page
Each row behind a reading carries the statement page it was printed on, so a figure in a total opens the page it came from.
The readings state what moved
Money in, money out, net, and a running net for every period. That is what a statement prints and it is what a reading says.
A flag is a lead
An anomaly puts the unusual in front of you and leaves the conclusion where it belongs. The reading names what stood out and why it stood out.
You decide what stays
A duplicate is flagged with its copies side by side, and the copy that stays is the one you keep. The originals stay where they are.
Balancing every statement cycle to the totals the bank printed is a separate piece of work and a premium entitlement. It has its own page: self-healing reconciliation.
Next
From a reading to a question
- Ask the case a question
- A reading points at a $28,400.00 transfer in March. What you want next is where it went, and who was on the other end. Daystrom reads the same labeled rows and answers in plain English, with the figure computed and the page cited.
- Turn the readings into a document
- When the findings have to be written up rather than looked at, the long-form forensic report builds the narrative sections around them: asset tracing, income analysis, lifestyle, the forensic timeline, each one tailored to the matter type.
- Where the labeled rows come from
- Every reading on this page runs on rows that came off statement pages. Extraction is where a production is split by account, put back in order, and read into the ledger these readings run across.
The readings are the questions every matter asks, answered before anyone asks them. They are where a review starts, not where it ends. What they buy you is the first hour back, and a list of the places worth spending the second one.
Bring the pile nobody has read
Send the production that landed last week, the one still sitting as a stack of PDFs because nobody has had a clear day to work it. Open it and the readings are already built.