Accountings go by many names including, Fiduciary Accounting, Trust Accounting, Conservatorship Accounting, Guardianship Accounting, Court Accounting and Probate Accounting. I refer to them all as "accountings."
The fiduciary, e.g., Trustee, Conservator, Guardian, Executor, Administrator or Personal Representative, is charged with the responsibility of managing the assets of the trust estate, conservatorship estate, probate estate, or simply "the estate". Those assets are being managed for the benefit of the beneficiaries of a trust, the conservatee or ward, or heirs of a decedent's estate. An accounting is the fiduciary's opportunity to demonstrate to those parties, and sometimes to the court, that the assets of the estate have been well managed.
The format and content of an accounting is governed by California law, primarily the Probate Code, California Rules of Court, local court rules, and potentially by specific terms of the trust. Hence, completing an accounting requires a thorough understanding of the law and always requires more thought than merely entering numbers into a computer program.
Accountings vary wildly in size and complexity. Some cover a period of just a single year and thus may have only a few hundred data points or entries. Others may cover a period of ten years or more and have thousands of data points or entries. The data to prepare an accounting comes from bank and brokerage statements, credit card statements, real estate appraisals and other documents provided by you.
Every data entry can be thought of as a sworn statement by you to the beneficiaries or to the court regarding every single transactions that took place during the accounting period. Consequently, I only prepare accountings for fiduciaries who are represented by counsel, with two exceptions 1) fiduciaries who are themselves a California licensed attorney or 2) CPA's.