The short answer
For most trust and estate accountings, the best free tool is the one your court already publishes. If your state has an official accounting form or a model account, start there, because that's the layout the judge, the clerk and the beneficiaries' lawyers expect to read. If it doesn't, the national model format built on the Uniform Fiduciary Accounting Principles is the safe default.
For keeping the books while you work, a free spreadsheet template is enough for a short, simple estate or a single year of a family trust. For anything larger, free general accounting software such as GnuCash gives you double-entry books and bank reconciliation, though nothing in it knows what principal and income are.
Summafolio is not one of the free options. It's paid software ($349 or $699 per accounting), and we've put it in its own section at the end. Its free templates and executor fee calculators are free and appear in the ranking, and we say plainly that they're ours.
How we ranked them
A fiduciary accounting is judged on three things: whether it follows the format the reader expects, whether it balances, and whether every figure can be traced to a statement or receipt. We ranked each free option on how much of that it does for you:
- Format. Does it follow a statute, court rule or official form, or is it a generic list of money in and money out?
- Balance. Does it check that charges equal credits, or that what you started with plus what came in, less what went out, equals what's on hand?
- Principal and income. For trusts, does it keep the two apart?
- Cost and catches. Is it free without an email, an account or a limit, and what does the paid version add?
Everything below was checked against each publisher's own page when this guide was published. Prices and limits change, so open the link before you rely on one. This is general information, not legal advice.
At a glance
| Rank | Tool | What it is | Cost to you | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your court's official forms | Official account forms and model accounts | Free | Any accounting filed in a state that has them |
| 2 | Uniform Fiduciary Accounting Principles model | National model format | Free | States with no prescribed form |
| 3 | Summafolio's free templates (ours) | Blank PDF and Excel accountings | Free, no email | Seeing the structure, short accounts by hand |
| 4 | Summafolio's executor fee calculators (ours) | Statutory fee calculators for six states | Free, no email | Checking a statutory fee |
| 5 | ExecutorLedger spreadsheets | Excel and CSV ledger and inventory | Free, no sign-up | Keeping an executor's books |
| 6 | Balanced California template | California §1061 probate account in Excel | Free download | A California decedent's estate |
| 7 | Cleanout Directory workbook | Five-tab estate ledger | Free, email required | A simple estate, kept monthly |
| 8 | TrustLedger | Browser-based trust ledger | Free tier with limits | One small family trust, one period |
| 9 | GnuCash | Free double-entry accounting software | Free, open source | Larger books you want to reconcile properly |
1. Your court's official forms and model accounts
Before you download anything else, find out whether your state or county already tells you what the account must look like. Several do, and the forms are free:
- California. Conservatorship and guardianship accountings use the Judicial Council's GC-400 and GC-405 forms. Under Cal. Rules of Court, rule 7.575, the summary of account is mandatory in every accounting, and the other schedules are optional but the account must follow the same categories and general format. The forms are listed on the California courts' self-help forms page. For trusts and decedents' estates, California prescribes the account's contents by statute (Probate Code §1061 and following) rather than by a Judicial Council form. Our California trust accounting guide explains that layout.
- New York. The Surrogate's Courts publish official accounting forms: the non-trust account (JA-7) for executors and administrators and the trust account (JA-4) for trustees, with the petition, receipt and release, and waiver forms that go with them. The court's page says the PDFs can be filled in on screen and printed, but not saved or submitted online. See our New York estate accounting guide.
- Ohio. The Supreme Court's standard probate forms include the fiduciary's account for executors and administrators, Form 13.0. Some county probate courts publish their own version, so use your court's.
- Pennsylvania. Orphans' Court Rule 2.1 requires accounts to conform to the Model Accounts in the Appendix to the rules unless the court orders otherwise. The Unified Judicial System posts the Model Estate Account and Model Trust Account, along with the 1983 report of the National Fiduciary Accounting Standards Project.
- Florida. Florida Probate Rule 5.346 sets the contents of accountings other than guardian accountings, and its Appendix A gives a model format. The committee notes call it "only a suggested form", but it's the layout most Florida readers expect. Our Florida trust accounting guide walks through it.
Why it ranks first: no template, however well made, beats the format the court actually asks for. The catch: official forms are blank pages. They don't add anything up, check a balance or tell you whether an item is principal or income, and a form built for one kind of account (say, a conservatorship) isn't automatically right for another (say, a trust). Our state pages list the format for each state we cover, with links to the sources.
2. The Uniform Fiduciary Accounting Principles model format
Many states don't prescribe any form. For those, the best free reference is the model account that came out of the National Fiduciary Accounting Standards Project, built on the Uniform Fiduciary Accounting Principles. Pennsylvania and Florida both draw on it: Pennsylvania's Rule 2.1(c) adopts the principles, and the Florida committee notes describe Rule 5.346 as substantially adopting them.
The six principles are simple and worth following even in an informal account to family members: write for readers who aren't accountants, put a summary first, make the account self-contained, show both carrying value and current value, report gains and losses together, and show significant non-cash events such as a stock split. The model accounts that accompany them also keep principal and income in separate sections. The original 1983 report is on the Pennsylvania courts' forms page, and our uniform format page explains the layout in plain English.
The catch: it's a set of principles and a sample, not a fill-in form, so you'll still need somewhere to keep the numbers.
Free spreadsheet templates, compared
Most people who search for a "free trust accounting template" want a spreadsheet: something that opens in Excel or Google Sheets, has the right columns and adds up. Here's what each free option actually contains, with the ones we publish marked as ours.
3. Summafolio's free accounting templates (ours)
We publish three blank accounting templates, each as a PDF and an Excel workbook, with no email or sign-up to download:
- California trust accounting template, in the structure of Probate Code §1061: a summary of account in charges-and-credits form followed by its schedules.
- Trust accounting template, an annual trust account that keeps principal and income on separate schedules from the first entry, splits each trustee fee between the two, and lists distributions by beneficiary.
- Estate accounting template, an executor's account running from the date-of-death inventory through creditor claims, fees and distributions to the proposed final distribution.
In the Excel versions the summary pulls each schedule's total, so you can see whether the account balances as you fill it in. Each comes with a Read me sheet that explains the schedules.
Why it ranks here: the templates follow recognized formats rather than a generic cash list, and the trust template is one of the few free options that separates principal and income. The catch: they're templates, not court forms, and no court has approved them. They don't carry the statutory notices some states require (California's §16063 statements, for example), and you still enter every transaction by hand.
4. Summafolio's executor fee calculators (ours)
In states that set a personal representative's compensation by statute, the fee is a calculation, and it's easy to get a tier wrong. Our free calculators work it out tier by tier, show the arithmetic, and cite the statute:
- California (Probate Code §10800, with the attorney's fee under §10810)
- Florida (Fla. Stat. §733.617)
- New York (SCPA §2307 commissions)
- Texas (Estates Code §352.002)
- Ohio (R.C. 2113.35)
- Oregon (ORS 116.173)
The catch: a calculator gives you the statutory figure, not the fee a court will allow. Extraordinary services, a will that sets compensation, a waiver or a court's discretion can all change the answer.
5. ExecutorLedger's free ledger and inventory spreadsheets
ExecutorLedger offers two free templates, a transaction ledger and an estate inventory, as Excel files and as plain CSV. The page says no sign-up is needed, and that the templates open in Excel and Google Sheets with category dropdowns, rows colored by type, running totals and a balance check. Its guide on the same page explains which columns an estate accounting needs and why.
The catch: it's a well-built ledger rather than a court format, so you'll still need to rearrange the figures into your state's layout at the end. ExecutorLedger also sells software: its pricing page lists $149 per estate, one time, when you want the finished documents without a watermark.
6. Balanced's free California probate accounting template
For a California decedent's estate specifically, Balanced publishes a free Excel workbook in the Probate Code §1061 format. Its page describes a summary of charges and credits linked to a sheet for each schedule, so the totals and the balance line update as you type, plus a worksheet for statutory compensation of the personal representative and the attorney under §§10800 and 10810.
The catch: it's California-only and built for estates, not trusts or conservatorships. Balanced also sells a paid service that prepares the accounting from statements, listed on the same page at $699 per accounting.
7. Cleanout Directory's five-tab estate workbook
Cleanout Directory offers a five-tab workbook: a read-me, an estate inventory, money in, money out, distributions (with a column for whether a release was signed) and a summary that reconciles what the estate should hold against what it does. The page says it works in Excel and Google Sheets, and it links an Ontario version for Canadian estates.
The catch: you have to enter an email address to unlock the download, and like any cash ledger it doesn't follow a US court format or separate principal from income.
8. TrustLedger
TrustLedger is a browser-based tool for family successor trustees, published on GitHub. Its README says it needs no account, stores data only in your browser, pre-fills principal or income for each category using the default Uniform Principal and Income Act rules, and prints a report with schedules for assets at the start and end, receipts and disbursements of principal and income, distributions and a summary.
The catch: the free tier covers one trust, one accounting period and up to 40 transactions. Unlimited transactions, more periods and CSV bank import are in a paid Pro version sold as a one-time key. Because the data lives in your browser's storage, you're responsible for exporting backups.
9. GnuCash
GnuCash (version 5.17 on its download page) is free personal and small-business accounting software, licensed under the GNU GPL, for Linux, BSD, macOS and Windows. It does real double-entry bookkeeping, tracks bank, stock and fund accounts, imports QIF and OFX files, matches transactions and reconciles against statements.
Why it's on the list: for an estate or trust with many accounts and hundreds of transactions, double-entry books and proper reconciliation are worth more than a prettier spreadsheet. The catch: it has no idea what principal, income, carry value or a court schedule is. You'd set up your own account structure to keep principal and income apart, and turn its reports into your state's format by hand.
Others we looked at
- A blank spreadsheet of your own. Perfectly acceptable for an informal account to family, if you keep the inventory, receipts, disbursements, distributions and a reconciliation that ties them together. Most of the templates above are just a head start on that.
- General small-business accounting apps. Several have free tiers, but they're built around invoices and sales tax. Without fiduciary categories they add little over GnuCash for this job.
- UK estate accounts templates. Free templates for England and Wales follow a different structure (capital, income and distribution accounts) and aren't suited to a US court account.
Free versus paid: when a free tool stops being enough
Free tools hold up well when the estate or trust is small: a few accounts, a year or less, a few dozen transactions, and beneficiaries who'll accept an informal account. They start to cost more than they save when:
- There are many statements. Typing hundreds of transactions by hand is where most errors come from, and the hours add up.
- The account doesn't balance and you can't see why. A spreadsheet tells you there's a difference. It doesn't tell you which statement it came from.
- You need a court format. Moving figures from a ledger into a state's schedules is slow, and a missed schedule is a common reason an account is sent back.
- Principal and income matter. Allocating each receipt and expense correctly, period after period, is where generic tools fall short.
At that point the paid options are worth comparing. They range from per-estate software to full administration platforms:
- Estateably is an estate and trust administration platform with a fiduciary accounting product. Its pricing page lists platform plans of $279, $648 or $1,204 a month billed monthly, each with a $350 onboarding fee, and per-file pricing that includes $399 for a trust, estate or PoA file.
- ExecutorLedger lists $149 per estate, one time.
- Balanced lists a $699 per-accounting service for California estates.
- Summafolio, below.
Where Summafolio fits (it's paid)
Summafolio is paid software, which is why it isn't in the ranking. It turns the bank and brokerage statements for one matter into a reconciled accounting in the format your state uses: we support 18 state formats and a uniform format for the rest. Every account is reconciled to its statements before you can export, and the export is a court-style PDF, an Excel workbook with live formulas and a CSV bundle.
Pricing is per accounting: $349 for Standard (up to 12 months, 5 accounts and 750 transactions) or $699 for Complex (up to 36 months, 15 accounts and 3,000 transactions). You pay when you export the final accounting. You can set up a matter, upload statements and reconcile before paying anything. Summafolio is a product of MRSLM Group LLC, in business since 2022.
What it doesn't do: it doesn't fill in or file official court forms (where a form applies, it produces the schedules and totals to carry onto it), it doesn't prepare tax returns, and it isn't a law or accounting firm. If a free template and an afternoon will do the job, use the template.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free trust accounting template?
Yes. Our trust accounting template is a free PDF and Excel workbook that keeps principal and income on separate schedules, and our California trust accounting template follows the Probate Code §1061 layout. Neither is a court form, and no court has approved them.
Does my state have an official accounting form?
Some do. New York's Surrogate's Courts publish the JA-4 trust account and JA-7 non-trust account, Ohio has Form 13.0 for executors and administrators, Pennsylvania requires its Model Accounts, Florida gives a model format in Appendix A to Rule 5.346, and California uses the GC-400 and GC-405 forms for conservatorships and guardianships. Many states prescribe no form at all. Our state pages list each format we cover.
Can I do an estate accounting in Excel or Google Sheets?
Yes, for an informal account and often for a simple court account too, provided it follows the format your court expects and it balances. Keep the inventory, receipts, disbursements and distributions on separate tabs, and add a reconciliation that ties them to the closing balances on your statements.
Is GnuCash good for trust accounting?
It's good for keeping accurate double-entry books and reconciling to statements, and it's free. It isn't built for fiduciary accounting, so you'd set up separate principal and income accounts yourself and rearrange its reports into your state's format.
How do I calculate an executor's fee for free?
If your state sets the fee by statute, our free calculators cover California, Florida, New York, Texas, Ohio and Oregon. The statutory figure isn't always what a court allows, so check the will and your court's practice.
Is Summafolio free?
No. It's $349 or $699 per accounting, paid when you export. Our templates and fee calculators are free.
How Summafolio handles it
When the free tools stop being enough, Summafolio keeps one reconciled ledger per matter and renders it in the format you choose. See a sample accounting, read how it works, or look at the formats by state.