Sorry but the 'too busy' line to action client funds is not acceptable. If cut offs are missed because of bank delays or client delays then fine. That happens and can be explained to a client. If a cut off is missed because the solicitors office is too busy, then it is not. I deal with client funds for a financial institution. If I miss a client instruction because 'I am too busy', do you think that's the end of it? I certainly don't leave the client 1c out of pocket. And yet for some reason, we seem to think that solicitors who could have millions of euro going through their accounts shouldn't be held to the same standards. If the solicitor came back and said we only got the funds on Friday afternoon after the cut off then fine. But to come back with the line of 'we were too busy with client meetings and we did it when we got a chance days later' is not acceptable.
A solicitor is not a financial institution, and the considerations are quite different.
Here is a perspective from a typical small office (one principal solicitor; 8 total staff)
a) When money lands in a client account, the office book-keeper must go online, note the lodgment and write it up in the accounts of the firm. It is bad practice for a solicitor to do this (much too easy for errors to creep in when you are doing book-keeping along with other tasks - though in a solo practitioner outfit, the sole practitioner may well have an hour of "do not disturb time each day for this task)
b) Once the lodgment has been written up (and not before), a payment out of the client account can be actioned - i.e. solicitor instructs book-keeper to set up payment.
c) if the destination bank account has not already been set up, there is a separate admin process to be gone through in order to do this (with a mortgage redemption, it is likely that the beneficiary account details are already set up in the solicitor's online banking ; nevertheless, many offices will have a policy that all beneficiary accounts should be phone-verified immediately before a fund transfer, regardless of the destination).
d) the office book-keeper can then set up a fund transfer out of the client account (in this case to the mortgage redemption account)
e) the solicitor with signing authority can then go online to authorise that payment.
There was a time when a solicitor would make a payment (at branch or by cheque\draft ) and then have the payment 'written up in the books'. That went out with the quill pen or it least it ought to have done. The online equivalent (do the fund transfer and then sort out the books) is just bad practice.
While it is not forbidden, it is a bad practice to set up a fund transfer without first having the funds (both the receipt and the payment out) written up in your practice accounts; (This is because the accounts system itself operates as a safeguard against accidentally making a payment of €102k out of client funds when you are only holding €101,995 to that client's credit - and it makes sense to always utilise that safeguard)
While it is likewise not forbidden, it is a bad idea for the responsible solicitor to do the book-keeping and\or the banking single handed. Far too much scope for error. Always better that any fund transfer be reviewed by two people (solicitor and book-keeper).
Most small solicitors offices do not need a full time book-keeper. In a 3-4 solicitor firm, lodgments to, and payments from the client account might come to between 5 and 20 transactions per day. So this might take up from 0.5 hrs up to 2 hours of a book-keeper's time.
A small solicitor's office does not maintain the staff resources to ensure that all client transactions can be written up and actioned on a near-real-time basis during working hours, or even on a same day basis. To do so would be wasteful and inefficient, and would certainly create such an additional overhead as would result in increased legal fees.
