Trust Operations
Mineral trust accounting,
built for people who have to be right.
Bank trust departments and fiduciaries have a duty to account for every mineral interest they hold. AlphaWells keeps the per-account books, runs the beneficiary statements, and assembles the Regulation 9 evidence from the same verified statement data, with separation of duties provable from the record.
The duty is clear. The tooling never was.
- Mineral income arrives as hundreds of operator statements a month, in formats your core trust system was never built to read.
- Principal and income splits depend on the state and the trust instrument, and they are worked out by hand in spreadsheets.
- Examiners ask how you know the payments are right, and the answer is a binder assembled by hand once a year.
- Money you cannot pay yet (unknown owner, probate, title dispute) sits in a spreadsheet next to the ledger instead of in it.
- January means building 1099 data from statements, one account at a time.
The Books of the Account
Not a reporting layer over spreadsheets. AlphaWells keeps auditable books for each trust account, built on statements it has already extracted and reconciled to the penny.
Principal and Income Cash Books
A real double-entry register for each account, kept under the general ledger, not a report computed from statements. Every receipt is adopted once, on its deposit date, and classified between principal and income. Corrections are reversals, never edits.
Principal and Income Classification
A seeded, cited rule pack: the Uniform Principal and Income Act baseline plus state variations for the major oil and gas states. Set a governing state per account, and record audited overrides where the trust instrument directs its own treatment.
Beneficiary Allocation
Each account's reconciled income is allocated across its current beneficiaries by effective-dated share, penny-exact, with mid-period changes split at the change date.
Suspense Subledger
Held funds become tracked items the moment they post, with aging, a register-to-ledger reconciliation that offsetting errors cannot fake, and an approaching-dormancy report by state.
A Path to Books of Record
Start with a sourced opening balance and run alongside your core trust system, fed by a CSV of the register. When the variance is zero, switch AlphaWells to books of record without changing a single balance.
Beneficiary Statements
On your letterhead, keyed to your system.
Pick a period and every beneficiary gets a branded PDF: income by well, operator, and product, expenses, and income and principal columns for their share.
- Both identifiers your trust system uses, account number and client number, on every statement and every filename. A missing identifier is a named exception, never a blank.
- Versioned commentary per run, and a per-account statement of receipts and disbursements on the principal and income books.
- Approved runs export as one package, foldered by client number, delivered through your own channels.
A monthly account statement: your letterhead, both identifiers, and income by well, operator, and product.
Controls
Evidence you can hand an examiner.
Separation of duties is enforced by the system and provable from the record alone.
Three-Person Approval
Statement runs, Regulation 9 reviews, and transfer packages each pass preparer, reviewer, and final approver: three distinct people, enforced even for administrators, every step on the record.
Fingerprint-Locked Approvals
Approved content is fingerprinted. Any later change to amounts, beneficiaries, identifiers, commentary, or branding voids the approval automatically instead of letting it go stale.
Regulation 9 Annual Reviews
A due and overdue dashboard on the 12 CFR 9.6(c) cycle, a frozen review packet built from the platform's own data (every asset including non-producing interests, trailing income and expense, open findings, suspense), asset-by-asset suitability, a checklist, and an examiner-ready PDF.
Retention and Legal Hold
One retention policy per record class and legal holds by owner, document, or date range. Held records cannot be deleted, and nothing is ever disposed of automatically.
Life Events and Tax Season
The work that piles up around the calendar and the family tree.
Ownership Transfers
One case per death, trust termination, successor trustee, sale, or name change. AlphaWells finds every paying operator from statements and division orders, prepares NADOA-based transfer packages, and closes an operator only when payment on the new owner number actually arrives.
1099 Data Packages
Amounts per recipient and per paying operator, mapped to form boxes by interest type, with year-aware thresholds, a pre-filing exception list, an e-file-ready CSV, and substitute Copy B statements.
Depletion and Basis
Records your confirmed tax facts and computes provisional percentage and cost depletion candidates, with a labeled schedule for your preparer.
Every Morning
The Trust Operations Diary
The department's to-do list, computed from the books each time it opens: statements not yet run, approvals waiting, Regulation 9 reviews due, suspense aging toward dormancy, transfers past their follow-up date. Every line opens the screen that clears it.
Switching
The Cutover Control Report
During the parallel run, upload your current system's check register each month. AlphaWells matches it to what it booked, explains every difference, and produces a signed control report on your letterhead. You switch when the months agree.
The Operations Diary: what is overdue and due across every account, computed from the books.
What Stays With You
AlphaWells keeps the books and prepares the outputs. Your bank moves the money, files the tax forms, and decides disposition and escheat. Built with a bank trust department, and designed around how examiners actually review.
Rule pack values for principal and income, dormancy periods, and tax treatment are reference values for your counsel and tax advisors to confirm. AlphaWells is not legal, tax, or accounting advice.
Every account also gets Royalty Assurance, three independent checks per well, and TitleIQ for the chain of title behind the decimals.
See It on One of Your Trust Accounts
We will walk your team through the books, the statement run, and the approval chain on a demo account, then load one of yours.