The financial settlement schedule: who writes each line, and why

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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On the day a Queensland property changes hands electronically, nobody counts out bank cheques across a table. The money moves because of a list. Inside the shared online workspace where the lawyers and the banks meet, one screen sets out every amount that will leave an account at settlement and every account it will land in. PEXA calls it the financial settlement schedule; Sympli's documents speak of a distribution summary and of financial directions. Whatever the label, it is the page that decides who gets paid what.

That list matters to more people than the lawyers who type it. A seller wants to know that the sale proceeds will reach the right account. A buyer wants to know why the amount asked of them is larger than the price minus the deposit. An agent wants to know when the deposit can be released. This guide follows the schedule from the first line to the moment it locks: who writes each line, why the two sides of the list have to agree, how the accounts behind the lines are checked, what happens when a figure changes late, and why, at a fixed point, nobody can touch it any more.

Titles Queensland (eConveyancing page, updated July 2026); Sympli hours of operation (updated September 2026), weekdays, Queensland time; PEXA Service Charter, version 20, August 2025, in business days.

What the schedule is, and what it is not

Titles Queensland lists two approved electronic lodgment network operators in the state, PEXA and Sympli. Each runs workspaces: one shared space per transaction where the representatives of the buyer and the seller, the lenders on both sides and the operator's own system all work on the same file. A workspace holds two kinds of content. One is the set of registry documents, such as the transfer and any mortgage or release, that will go to the Titles Registry. The other is the financial side: the payment instructions that settle the money.

The schedule is that financial side. It is not the settlement statement a lawyer prepares for a client, with its adjustments for rates and water and its final "funds to complete" figure. That statement is the calculation; the schedule is the set of instructions that carries the calculation out. A figure on the statement becomes one or more lines on the schedule, each with an amount and an account.

Nor is the schedule the movement of money itself. PEXA's service charter describes the platform as receiving payment instructions from a line item as the agent of the relevant financial institution. The banks still move the money, through the Reserve Bank's settlement system, once the workspace locks. The schedule tells them exactly what to move.

Sympli's residential seller guarantee puts the end point plainly, defining settlement as the exchange of funds between financial institutions in accordance with the instructions of the parties. The schedule is where those instructions are written.

Two columns: where money comes from and where it goes

Every line on the schedule belongs to one of two groups. Source lines say where money will be drawn from at settlement: a law practice's trust account holding the buyer's own contribution, for example, or the funds a lender is advancing. Destination lines say where money will be paid: the seller's lender, to clear the old loan; the seller's own account, for the proceeds; transfer duty and registration fees; and any other payee the parties have agreed.

The arithmetic follows from that split. Every dollar paid to a destination has to be drawn from a source, so the destination column cannot be larger than the source column. When the two totals agree, every payment has funding behind it. PEXA's service charter treats a shortfall on settlement day as a business delay: where a subscriber's registered source account does not hold enough money, the platform keeps sending its request to reserve funds at set intervals until the money is there, up to a cut-off time it sets, unless a subscriber stops the settlement.

Because both sides add lines, each side sees the other's work. PEXA's guidance for practitioners acting for a seller says that before settlement the representative enters the workspace to check the settlement figures provided by the other parties. A schedule is finished when every party has added its lines and checked everyone else's.

Who enters which lines

No single person writes the whole schedule. Each party enters the lines it is responsible for, and the platform adds some lines itself. PEXA's guides for practitioners, published in 2016, set out the division of labour, and the service charter confirms the parts that are automatic.

The purchaser's guide explains that the buyer's representative creates the source line items and destination items such as third-party rates and its own fees, while the platform pre-fills some lines, naming stamp duty, lodgement fees and PEXA's own fees, so the representative only needs to check them. The vendor's guide says the representative enters destination line items, including the seller's banking details so that the proceeds go straight to a nominated account, and that the platform prompts the outgoing mortgagee to enter its information, with banks adding the payout figure the day before or on the day of settlement.

The buyer's lender takes part as a subscriber in its own right: the service charter refers to incoming mortgagee subscribers, alongside purchaser subscribers, as parties who must confirm the settlement can proceed when a late title check shows activity. Its loan money is part of what the buyer's side brings to settlement.

A seller's lender entering its own payment line is not a detail. PEXA's residential seller guarantee notes that mortgage discharge payments sit outside that guarantee because the bank enters its own account details into the platform. The party that owns a destination writes that destination.

A worked example, line by line

A worked example makes the balancing concrete. Assume a Queensland house sold for $720,000, with a $36,000 deposit already paid and held in the selling agent's trust account. The buyer is taking a $600,000 loan. The seller still owes $310,000 on a mortgage. To keep the example simple, transfer duty is worked at the general rate, as it would be for an investor; adjustments for rates and water, the mortgage registration, and the platforms' own fees are left out.

The general rate table published by the Queensland Revenue Office, last updated in June 2026, charges $17,325 plus $4.50 for each $100, or part of $100, over $540,000 for a property between $540,000 and $1 million. On $720,000 that gives $25,425. The Titles Registry fee schedule for 2026–27 lists $248.04 to register a change of ownership of one lot, plus $46.56 for each $10,000, or part of $10,000, over $180,000. On $720,000 that adds 54 steps of $46.56, or $2,514.24, for a registration fee of $2,762.28.

The seller's side adds up to the balance of the price. The deposit of $36,000 is already with the agent, so the buyer's side owes $684,000 at settlement, and that sum is split between the seller's lender, at $310,000, and the seller, at $374,000. The buyer's side then carries its own costs on top: duty and the registration fee bring the total it must fund to $712,187.28. With $600,000 coming from the loan, the buyer's own contribution is the remaining $112,187.28, the figure the buyer's lawyer will have asked the client to place in the firm's trust account beforehand.

The two columns meet at the same total. If the seller's lender raised its payout figure by even a few dollars on the morning of settlement, the seller's proceeds line would have to come down by the same amount for the columns to keep agreeing. That is the kind of late change the rest of this guide is about.

Lines the platform writes itself

Some lines are not typed by anyone. PEXA's service charter says fee and stamp duty line items are system-generated, which means the amounts come from the operator's own calculation or from the Duty Authority's assessment rather than from a representative's keyboard.

The duty line depends on a check that runs in the background. For Queensland, the charter describes duty verification at three points: two days before settlement, on the morning of settlement, and within the hour before it. If verification fails, the stamp duty line items are removed from the schedule. If the check two days out passed but the same-day check cannot be completed, the charter says PEXA proceeds with the financial settlement. The rules ARNECC sets for operators, in the Model Operating Requirements, say an operator must not present a document for lodgment unless it has been assessed for duty and the Duty Authority is satisfied that duty has been paid or that an irrevocable commitment to pay has been made.

Registration fees follow the same logic. The Model Operating Requirements say an operator must not present a document unless the lodgment fees have been collected by it or irrevocably committed to it, and must remit those fees to the Registrar. In an electronic settlement, the system-generated fee line is where those fees appear on the schedule. For duty in Queensland, PEXA's charter says the amount is paid to a duty disbursement account nominated by the representative subscriber.

Where the agent's deposit and commission fit

Many readers expect to see the agent's commission on the schedule. Often it is not there, because the money it is taken from never enters the workspace. When the deposit has been paid into the selling agent's trust account, it stays there until settlement.

The Queensland Government's guide for sellers on settlement day describes what follows. The agent holds the money in a trust account, works out the commission and passes the balance to the seller after settlement. The agent must give the seller a written statement within 42 days of settlement day, or within 14 days if the seller asks for it sooner.

That is why, in the worked example, the buyer's side owes only the balance of the price. The deposit has already been paid, and its release happens outside the schedule, through the agent's trust account, once settlement is complete.

The agent still has a reason to follow the workspace. PEXA's service charter says that once the financial settlement is done, all participants are notified, and the estate agent is notified too if the agent's email address was entered before the workspace locked. For an agent waiting to release a deposit, that notice is the signal that the sale has settled.

Checking the accounts behind the lines

A line on a schedule is only as good as the account number it carries. The checks differ for the two columns.

On the source side, the check happens when an account is first connected. PEXA's service charter requires a subscriber's trust account to be held at a payment-integrated financial institution, which validates the account details and the people named as payment authorisers; only validated accounts are added to the subscriber's profile, and the process repeats for every new account or authoriser. A subscriber that does not run a trust account can use a PEXA Source Account instead, which accepts only Australian domestic transfers and asks for cleared funds to arrive at least three business days before settlement. Funds in it are held on trust for the purchaser.

On the destination side, most of the risk sits in the step before typing: getting the client's real account number. A PEXA article from 2021 urged practitioners to confirm bank account details with clients verbally before entering them in the workspace, and discouraged email for passing them on. PEXA also offers an app through which a client can send account details straight into the workspace; PEXA's description for practitioners says the details arrive encrypted, are checked against what is entered in the workspace, and that the client confirms with a code sent by text.

The responsibility for the line stays with the practitioner. Sympli's residential seller guarantee requires practitioners to ensure, when they apply their digital signature, that their client's bank account details are true, accurate, complete and up to date. PEXA's guarantee lists the practitioner's duty to enter settlement information, bank details included, accurately, and to check it before approving it. Both guarantees describe protection for sellers in certain kinds of fraud, and both exclude payments directed to the practitioner's own trust account.

The rules for every subscriber point the same way. Rule 6.11 of ARNECC's Model Participation Rules requires a subscriber to take reasonable steps to make sure all the information it supplies about a conveyancing transaction is correct and not misleading.

Signing the schedule, and why a change unsigns it

The schedule is not just typed; it is signed. PEXA's vendor guide speaks of the representative entering destination line items and signing the financial settlement schedule, and Sympli's system requirements refer to digitally signing documents and financial directions. A digital signature on the schedule is the representative's statement that the lines it is responsible for are right.

That signature is tied to the figures it covered. PEXA's service charter says the platform automatically unsigns a registry instrument or a settlement schedule whenever workspace data referenced in a signed document has changed, and that subscribers are notified when changes cause documents or the schedule to be unsigned. It also notifies parties when a line relating to a third-party beneficiary is created, modified or removed.

This loop is deliberate. A schedule that could change quietly after the other side had signed it would let one party's late edit stand unseen. Forcing every party to sign again means each one has looked at the final version.

Changes are normal right up to settlement. PEXA's description of client-supplied account details says a line item can be edited at any time leading up to settlement. What the system guarantees is not that nothing changes, but that no change goes unsigned.

Locking at settlement time

Every workspace has a scheduled settlement time, proposed by one party and accepted by the others. PEXA's service charter says it will only lock the workspace at the scheduled date and time, and only if the workspace is in ready status, which for registry instruments means each has passed lodgment verification, has been digitally signed and has not changed since that verification other than by added signatures. Settlement begins at the point of locking.

The reason for locking is order. Once a workspace locks, PEXA's service charter describes a fixed sequence: payment instructions for the source funds go to the financial institutions, a request to reserve the funds goes to the Reserve Bank, the documents go to the land registry, and only then is the money exchanged and paid out to the destinations. A line that could still move during that sequence would mean paying out on figures nobody had agreed to.

The other reason is finality. The Model Operating Requirements say an operator must not present the documents of a settlement transaction for lodgment unless the financial settlement is irrevocable. PEXA's charter adds that once financial settlement occurs, the transaction cannot be unwound. The lock is the last moment at which the schedule can still be corrected.

When the figures are not ready on time

Settlement times are not open-ended. Sympli's published hours show financial settlement available in Queensland between 9.30am and 4pm on weekdays, outside public holidays and the days between Boxing Day and New Year's Day. PEXA's charter sets its own rebooking cut-off times by state: an unfinished settlement past the cut-off has to be rebooked for another business day.

PEXA's charter also describes what happens when a workspace is not ready an hour before its time. Subscribers are notified, and the charter describes the platform moving the settlement to a later available time, within limits that differ by state. If one of several linked workspaces is not ready, all of them move together, which matters when a seller is buying another home on the same day.

Even after settlement, a mistaken payment is not left without a path. PEXA's charter says that when a financial institution reports a problem with account details, the platform goes back to the subscriber that created the line item and lets it provide corrected details through a corrective payments process. More broadly, the Australian Payments Network says its Industry Code for e-Conveyancing Payments sets a process for managing mistaken or incomplete payments between members, and ARNECC's operating requirements oblige each operator to comply with that code once it has taken effect.

The schedule is a promise written in two columns. Each party signs its share, any change wipes the signatures, and once the workspace locks the promise is kept exactly as written.

Reading the schedule as a client

The workspace is run by the lawyers and the banks; clients mostly see their lawyer's settlement statement and, if they use one, a tracking app. Knowing how the schedule works still helps a buyer or seller ask the right questions in the days before settlement.

For a seller, the questions are about the destination column: whether the account for the proceeds was confirmed by a call or a secure channel rather than by email, whether the lender's payout figure has been entered, and whether the sale proceeds will reach one account or several. For a buyer, the questions are about the source column: when the firm needs the buyer's own contribution in its trust account, and whether the total asked for includes duty and registration fees as well as the balance of the price.

Every answer depends on the particular file. The lawyer acting on it is the one who can say which lines apply, what each will be, and when the schedule will be signed.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →