A transaction is a fund transfer request within a case. When the transaction is approved by both the agency and the attorney user in that case, the transaction will be counted as either a "Todo" or a "Scheduling" transaction, and corresponding funds will be deducted from or added to the case's Trust Account.

Common use cases:

1. Make a reimbursement to the surrogate/egg donor. When the surrogate or egg donor wants to get reimbursed for some out-of-pocket expenses, she can request a transaction with herself being the receiver. When approved, the requested amount will be deducted from the case's Trust Account. All the members of a case are able to request such transactions from the case's Trust Account, with the surrogate/egg donor user being the receiver.
2. Log a transaction that was completed outside of TrustUS. If there was a transaction that happened outside of TrustUS, meaning that the transaction was done directly between the individuals, the attorney user of that case is able to log the completed transaction into the case. This helps the agency and attorney to maintain transparency and consistency of the transactions within the case.
3. Add funds to the case's Trust Account. Only an attorney user can add funds to the case's Trust Account. To do so, the user needs to complete the fund transfer on their own and then log the completed transaction into the case.
4. Pay a vendor. Sometimes it might be convenient to directly make payments to a vendor, such as a clinic or a pharmacy.

Each transaction has the following properties:

• Members. This usually contains the receiver or sender of the transaction, an agency user, and an attorney user. These are not editable after creation.
• Date. This is the proposed date that the transaction will be made. If when creating a transaction, the transaction date is earlier than the current date, the transaction will be processed immediately after being approved by the agency and the attorney user.
• Amount. The requested amount of the transaction.
• Category. The category of the requested transaction.
• Description of the Cost-Incurred Event(s). This is a description of the reason or purpose of the requested transaction.
  

A transaction needs to go through several stages in order to take effect. The transaction stages are as follows:

1. Requested. A newly requested transaction that hasn't been approved by the agency. At this stage, the agency user is able to approve the transaction, after which the transaction status will be changed to "Pre-Approved".
2. Pre-Approved. A transaction that has been approved by the agency. Note that a transaction made by the agency will automatically skip the "Requested" status and start with the "Pre-Approved" status. At this stage, the attorney user is able to approve the transaction, after which the transaction status will be changed to "Approved".
3. Approved. A transaction that has been approved by the attorney. At this stage, the corresponding fund will be deducted from the case's Trust Account balance. The transaction's status will automatically change to the next status depending on the user's subscription plan. For users with the Standard Plan, the transaction's status will be changed to "Scheduling". For users with the Free Plan, the transaction's status will be changed to "To do".
4. Scheduling. The transaction will be scheduled according to the transaction's "Date" property, and no changes can be made to the transaction from this point. When the transaction date is in less than 5 days, the transaction will be scheduled and the transaction's status will be changed to "Scheduled".
5. To do. The user will process the fund transfer on their own, and update the status of the transaction manually as "Scheduled" or "Funded".
6. Scheduled. A transaction that has been scheduled. Note that a transaction's status will stay as "Approved" and will not be updated to "Scheduled" until the transaction date is less than 5 days away.
7. Funded. A transaction that has been completed and the fund has been successfully processed.

Editing a transaction:

The permission to edit a transaction depends on the user's role as well as the transaction's status.

• Surrogates and Egg Donors
  • The user can edit the transaction that they requested if the transaction has not been approved by the agency. 
• Agency Users
  • The user can edit a transaction that hasn't been approved by themselves. After approving a transaction, the agency user can no longer edit that transaction.
• Attorneys
  • The user can edit a transaction that has been approved by the agency and hasn't been approved by themselves.
  • The user can edit a transaction that has a "To do" status. This only happens after the attorney user approves the transaction while using a Free Plan.