# Court Clerk Closeout Reconciliation > Prepare a structured JSON closeout/register/field-packet for a court clerk by reconciling messy local materials (bench/hearing notes, clerk worksheets, finance-queue extracts, petition & budget summaries, form excerpts) against the authoritative court-operations records the task exposes (case, charge, docket, citation, fee-schedule, payment-policy, form, and financial-petition records). Use for criminal sentencing closeouts, traffic-violation dispositions with payment plans, and post-sentencing field packets (probation-referral / license suspension / installment-order forms). Trigger words: closeout, disposition register, reconcile, audit findings, fee reconciliation, payment plan / installment order, sentencing packet, clerk worksheet, hearing/bench notes. - Skill: `prism-shadow/court-clerk-closeout-reconciliation` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add prism-shadow/court-clerk-closeout-reconciliation` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/prism-shadow/court-clerk-closeout-reconciliation/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Security - Author: prism-shadow (https://skillmd.com/u/prism-shadow) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/prism-shadow/court-clerk-closeout-reconciliation --- # Court clerk closeout & reconciliation These tasks give you (a) **local materials** that are explicitly unreliable — bench/hearing notes with shorthand, draft worksheets, finance-queue imports, petition intake sheets, form excerpts — and (b) an **authoritative court records portal** (read-only lookups for cases, charges, docket entries, citations, fee schedules, payment policies, forms, financial petitions). Your job is to **reconcile** them into one JSON object that exactly matches the task's `answer_template.json`. The core skill is knowing **which source wins for which field**, catching **stale/draft artifacts**, refusing to **invent or over-charge**, and getting the **arithmetic and formatting** exactly right. ## Workflow 1. **Read the prompt + `answer_template.json` first.** The template defines the required top-level keys, the shape of each list item, every enum's allowed values, sort orders, and currency/date formats. Build your answer to that contract — never emit prose where an enum value is required. 2. **Read every local payload.** Note which values are flagged as draft, carried forward, archived, "old worksheet," "ready to post," etc. — those are suspects. 3. **Pull the authoritative record for each target** case / citation / petition from the portal (identity, counsel, status, charges, and the relevant fee-schedule, payment-policy, and form rows for that jurisdiction). Match by the identifier the task gives you; read the whole collection and filter locally rather than probing. 4. **Reconcile field by field** using the source-of-truth rules below. 5. **Compute** fees, totals, and any payment schedule with the arithmetic rules below; re-derive, don't copy the draft numbers. 6. **Format and sort** exactly as the template says, then self-check against the pre-submission checklist. ## Source-of-truth rules (who wins) - **System-of-record portal case data wins for identity and standing:** legal name, date of birth, counsel type & attorney, case status, and the structured charge fields. A finance queue / worksheet that disagrees is usually a stale import — correct it to the portal value. - **Hearing / bench notes win for what actually happened in the courtroom:** the plea entered, whether guilt was adjudicated, the pronounced sentence (fine, jail imposed/suspended, probation), amendments, and whether a final order was signed. Trust them over stale worksheet outcomes ("Dismissed", "draft guilty plea", pre-amendment charges). - **When a portal charge row looks corrupted or mismatched** (e.g., a statute or offense label that clearly doesn't fit the offense described in court), prefer the hearing notes for the substantive offense/severity, and let the courtroom facts drive derived fields (e.g., felony-vs-misdemeanor treatment). - **Current fee schedule wins for amounts.** Draft/archived amounts on worksheets are for audit history only. - **A corroborating memo** (e.g., a defense cover memo) can resolve a conflict that both the queue got wrong and the notes only hint at. - **An unsigned/continued order means "hold"** — the courtroom record beats any draft disposition sheet that assumed the case closed. - Record each conflict you resolve as an audit finding: the conflicted value, the corrected value, and which source resolved it. ## Stale / draft artifacts to catch - **Old fee amounts.** Use the schedule row whose `effective_date` ≤ the disposition/hearing date and whose `end_date` is null or ≥ that date. Ignore ended rows even if a worksheet still cites them. - **Spurious sentencing departures.** Only record a departure if the courtroom actually pronounced one. "Top of the range" / "within the plea-agreement cap" means **no departure**. Legacy "dispositional/durational departure" text carried from a draft worksheet should be corrected to no-departure unless the judge confirmed a departure. Departures are a **felony** concept — for misdemeanors use the "not evaluated (misdemeanor)" value; for pending/continued matters use the "not entered / pending" value. - **Pre-amendment charges.** If a count was amended to a different charge, the conviction is the **amended** charge. Count the amended-away original as a dismissed/amended-away count, and drop any fee that only attached to the original charge (see crime-lab fee below). - **Draft dispositions on unsigned orders / continued matters** — see "Held". ## Fees: apply only what is supported Never add a fee that no current schedule row, portal record, or triggering event/order supports. Typical fees to **exclude** unless directly supported: account-management/maintenance, collection/referral, late-payment, DMV/notice/ reinstatement, returned-check, traffic-school, copy/certification, restitution (when none was ordered), court-reporter, and court-appointed-attorney fees. When the template asks you to *list* excluded items, list each with the reason it fails (stale schedule, not in the hearing order, no triggering event occurred, not current policy, unsupported post-disposition). An obsolete "service charge" in an old form footer is **not** current policy — exclude it and record the applied amount as 0. Gating rules that recur: - **Public-defender user fee:** apply only when `counsel_type` is `public_defender`. Never for appointed-private or retained counsel. - **Crime-lab / drug assessment fee:** apply only to a **controlled-substance conviction** count. If the drug count was amended away to a non-drug charge, there is no lab fee even if a worksheet still lists one. If the judge reminded the clerk of the lab assessment on a CS conviction, it **is** due even if the worksheet omitted it. - **Mandatory court costs** apply to a disposed case; a waived fine is 0. ## Held / pending / deferred / continued matters If no final order was signed (matter continued, deferred, plea paperwork incomplete, status issue raised), then: do **not** post financials, do **not** enter a disposition, use the "hold" / "exclude / no final order" actions and statuses, set the disposition date to null, set posted amounts to 0, mark financial posting not allowed, capture the **next-setting date** as the status check, and **exclude the matter from register/batch totals** (count it separately as held/excluded). ## Identity & placeholders — never invent - Do not invent identifiers or contact details. For a form field that is required but genuinely absent from all materials (SSN, address, phone, driver-license number, probation officer/office), use the **exact placeholder string the materials specify** (commonly `TBD from case file`), and — where the template has a placeholder list — record the field name and a reason. - Never borrow a value (e.g., a DOB) from a similarly-named party in search results. A genuinely missing DOB becomes the placeholder plus a verify-before-permanent-entry flag; the disposition can still post with the placeholder if the order was signed. - When the portal has the correct identity/counsel and a queue/worksheet has a wrong one, correct to the portal value. ## Payment plans & installment math Read the jurisdiction's **payment policy** row for: monthly min/max band, down-payment requirement, account fee, `first_due_days`, `return_to_court_offset_days`, and restitution priority. - **`total_due` = fines-and-costs balance + restitution balance + any policy-supported account fee.** Restitution **is** part of the balance the plan pays off. If the policy's account fee is 0 (or the noted fee isn't current policy), the applied account-fee amount is **0** and `total_due` excludes it. - **Approved monthly amount:** approve the requested amount when it is inside the policy min/max band **and** affordable from disposable income (`income − obligations`). Classify support accordingly (supportable / below-minimum / above-maximum / unsupported-by-budget). A plan being set up means the petitioner is not "exempt / no payment." - **Installment breakdown** (see `references/installment_math.md` for a worked, value-free template): - `full_installments = floor(total_due / monthly)` - `remainder = total_due − full_installments × monthly` - if `remainder > 0`, there is one extra **final installment** equal to the remainder; `total_installments = full_installments + 1` and `final_payment_amount = remainder`. If it divides evenly, the final payment equals the regular installment and there is no extra one. - **Payment application order:** if restitution > 0 and policy is restitution-first → restitution-before-fines/costs; if there is no restitution → fines/costs-only. ## Dates (these patterns are consistent) - `first_due_date` = **submission/order date + policy `first_due_days`**. - Installments fall monthly on that same day-of-month. - `final_due_date` = `first_due_date` + (`total_installments` − 1) months. - `return_to_court_date` = `final_due_date` + policy `return_to_court_offset_days` (a **day** offset, not months). - A **return-to-court trigger** for a current (non-default) first installment order is nonpayment, not a scheduled default review. ## License suspension & probation referral (field-packet forms) - **License suspension start = the conviction date.** A release-from-confinement date is memo context only and does **not** replace the conviction date for the suspension consequence. `suspension_end_date = start + suspension_months`. Basis is the conviction type (e.g., DUI conviction). - **Probation referral:** prepare it only if supervised probation was actually ordered by a signed referral form. If no referral order was signed, mark it not-ordered, term 0, and no report datetime — even if a portal field still carries a scheduled report time. - **Form identity/labels:** use the portal form's `form_id`. For a free-string form-label field, use the portal form's **`label`** value (the short official label), *not* the long descriptive form name. When the template restricts the label to enum/allowed values, use those verbatim. When a "labels used" list is requested, include all of the form's structural labels. ## Output discipline - Emit exactly the required top-level keys and item shapes; use enum values **verbatim** (never paraphrase into prose). - Currency: numbers to two decimals. Dates: ISO `YYYY-MM-DD`. Datetimes: ISO local `YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS`. Times: `HH:MM`. - Apply the template's sort orders (usually by case/citation/petition identifier ascending; sub-lists such as missing-fields or excluded-items alphabetically). - **Totals sum only the posted/disposed matters.** Held/excluded matters contribute 0 to money totals and are counted in the separate held/excluded count. Re-derive each total from your per-matter numbers and confirm the grand total equals the sum of per-matter totals. ## Pre-submission checklist - [ ] Every top-level key from the template is present; every enum value is one of the allowed values. - [ ] Identity/counsel/status come from the authoritative record; courtroom facts (plea, outcome, sentence, amendments, order-signed) come from the notes. - [ ] Fee amounts use the schedule row effective on the disposition date; no unsupported fees added; PD-user fee only for public defenders; lab fee only for a CS conviction that wasn't amended away. - [ ] Held/continued/unsigned matters: no disposition, no financials, disposition date null, excluded from totals, next-setting captured. - [ ] Missing required identifiers use the exact placeholder string; nothing invented or borrowed. - [ ] `total_due` includes restitution; account fee = policy-supported amount (often 0); installment/remainder split and all four derived dates recomputed. - [ ] Currency 2dp, ISO dates/datetimes, arrays sorted, totals equal the sum of per-matter amounts.