Bank Account Reconciliation (Manual)

For those users that choose not to use the bank statement upload and reconciliation process for electronic bank statements a manual process is described in this user guide.

If however uploading an electronic statement process is preferred, review the Bank Statement Upload and Reconciliation topic for more information.

Manual Bank Reconciliation

Bank reconciliation is the process of checking that all transactions in the various business bank and credit card accounts are fully reflected in system records. Regularly performing reconciliation ensures that no items are missed. For example a debit card payment will show up in the bank statement, but you may have forgotten to update your accounting records. The bank reconciliation will highlight the omission. You may have misplaced a credit card slip which the reconciliation to the credit card statement will make clear; or may be you have inadvertently entered a transaction twice; the reconciliation will expose this error. Performing regular bank reconciliations is vital to ensuring that your accounts are as up to date and accurate as possible. It is strongly recommend that whenever a new bank statement is received it should be reconciled as soon as possible.

This addresses the following topics.

Where is a bank reconciliation performed?

Whenever a bank or credit card account is set up a bank reconciliation process will be available to manage that account.

From the Accounts menu move the cursor to a particular bank or credit card account and click Reconcile.

The Reconciliation Screen

The reconciliation screen lists all the un-reconciled transactions recorded in the selected bank account. All previously reconciled transactions are still visible in the normal view of the bank account, but as they are already reconciled they do not need to be shown again in the reconciliation screen. The completion of a reconciliation process creates a batch report that is available to view and if necessary delete to start again.

Key Features of the screen are: -

SAVE WORK button
When visible, saves the current status of the page. The user may then leave the page or log-out. When they return the situation on the page is restored. NOTE - a reconciliation is NOT complete until the SUBMIT button is showing and selected.
SUBMIT button
Completes the reconciliation of this batch and creates a batch record. The button will only be visible where they are reconciled items and the 'Amount to Reconcile' is 0.00.
RESYNCH button
Reloads the reconciliation state as currently stored on the remote data base servers.
PROVISIONAL SELECTION BY DATE
Will select all unreconciled items to your 'Reconcile To' date as reconciled (can be edited - see below)
Action menu
Opens the particular transaction for amendment. When completed the user is returned to the reconciliation screen. The screen status will remain exactly the same except for any amended value.
Reconciled From
is the date of the last reconciliation. The date will either have been entered by the user in a manual process or taken as the date of the newest item from a statement upload process. It can be overwritten if necessary, for example if a previous reconciliation batch is deleted and needs to be re-reconciled out of sequence.
Reconciled To
is the date of the bank statement that is now being reconciled. This may be used in conjunction with the Provisional Selection by Date button (see above).
Starting Balance
is the closing balance of the last reconciled bank statement
Ending Balance
is the closing balance on the bank statement now being reconciled.
Payments/Deposits reconciled
are the running totals in each category as they are marked as reconciled
Amount to Reconcile
is the residual amount still to be reconciled. It is the difference between the Ending and Starting Balances plus the Payments reconciled less the Deposits reconciled. A reconciliation process CANNOT be completed until this is 0.00.

It is usual for Banks to show on Statements any bank charges or interest charged or earned. Often it is not until you receive the statement that you become aware of these figures. The system allows you to both account for these items and enter them as reconciled in one process.

Bank Charge
enter the amount and date shown on the statement as the bank charge. Select the expense account required.
Interest Charge
enter the amount and date shown on the statement as the interest charge. Select the expense account required.
Interest Earned
enter the amount and date shown on the statement as the interest earned. Select the income account required.

The remaining section of the screen outlines the details of the un-reconciled transactions as recorded, making it clear as to whether they are payments or deposits. The final column is where an item can be marked as reconciled. Simply click on the box. A green tick mark will appear. Clicking on it again removes the tick mark. If you wish to remove a number of tick marks simply click on CLEAR at the top of the column.

Reconciling the account

Ensure that you have the bank statement to hand.

Enter the current statement Date Reconciled From and Date Reconciled To and the Ending Balance.

Clicking the PROVISIONAL SELECTION BY DATE button when a Reconciled To date has been set, automatically marks all un-reconciled items dated up to and including that date as reconciled. If the Ending Balance is appropriate the Amount to Reconcile will be zero and clicking SUBMIT may complete the reconciliation. This must to be used with care.

Enter any bank charges or interest items.

There will now be a figure in the Amount to Reconcile field which represents the amount to be reconciled.

From your bank statement locate each transaction with the matching one in the reconciliation screen. Click on the tick box to reconcile.

If you find that you need to break off to correct an amount click the EDIT button adjacent to the transaction.

When the figure in the Amount to Reconcile field is zero a SUBMIT button is highlighted clicking on this completes the reconciliation process and creates the reconciliation batch record. A message appears towards the top right of the next screen confirming the process, 'The account reconciliation has been successfully performed'.

Changes and deletions after reconciliation

In the event it is necessary to make changes or delete a transaction that has already been reconciled, it must first be un-reconciled. We recommend care in making changes.

Locate the relevant transaction from the bank account screen. Select the date range that covers the transaction you are amending. Click on the . to un-reconcile this item.

Confirm the confirmation request. The item reappears with the DELETE option now available. The user may now either delete the item or amend the value by clicking on EDIT The system amends the closing balance of the last statement by the amount changed or deleted when reconciliation is next activated.

Reconciliation History

Each time a bank reconciliation is completed a batch record is created and a report of the batch is available.

Click the Reconciliation History sub-menu (see above) to display the list of reconciliation batches. Each reconciliation batch for the account is listed, sorted by the Reconciled To date. Starting and ending balances are shown as well as the user who completed the batch and the date it was performed. Note that if the user is BATCH then the batch has been created from historic records of reconciliation processes by the system when the particular user name was not stored.

Clicking the Print icon generates a report of the details of a particular batch.

If necessary a particular batch may be deleted by clicking the DELETE button. ALL those items in the batch will have their status reset to Unreconciled and subsequently will need to be re-reconciled.

Unreconciled Items Report

At any time there will be items that have been recorded in the bank accounts that have not been reconciled to a bank statement. These are known as un-reconciled items. It is good practice to regularly review un-reconciled items to ensure that they are correct. If particularly the item is dated sometime in the past, perhaps a cheque has not been banked for example, and then perhaps some corrective action is necessary.

The report is accessed via the Reports menu.

Reports - Unreconciled Items

Enter a date for which the report is to be run. Note that the report will prepare the list of Unreconciled items existing as that date.

Click on the bank account or accounts you wish to prepare the report for then GENERATE to prepare the report that is in pdf format and can be printed, saved or even e-mailed.

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