Causes Of The Bank Reconciliation Issues
- While working on your business accounting in QuickBooks you could have problems with reconciling the bank or credit card account
- The main causes of the bank reconciliation issues are:
- Missing checks or transactions
- Some incorrect adjustments
- Mistakes when entering the transactions’ data
- Changes made to past transactions
What Should You Verify When Doing Your Bank Reconciliation?
- In the QuickBooks reconciliation screen, check that you entered the correct ending balance and statement ending date so that they match the information on the bank or credit card statement
- Verify each transaction’s information (vendor name, amount, date, description) you see in the QuickBooks reconciliation module with the information on the bank or credit card statement
- The reconciliation difference should be zero, otherwise look after new, changed or deleted transactions
- After you arrived to zero reconciliation difference, if there are any transactions in the reconciliation module left unmarked, check that these are true outstanding transactions, meaning checks that you have written, but did not clear the bank or amounts that you deposited, but did not clear the bank
- After you finish the reconciliation, check that your register balance on the reconciliation report matches the bank balance shown on the balance sheet report for the respective date
What Can You Do If You Have Issues?
Print Reconciliation Discrepancy Reports
- If you have problems with the beginning balance when trying to reconcile, you can print some reports to help you fix the reconciliation:
- If you use QuickBooks desktop, you should be able to print a “Reconciliation Discrepancy” report to see what changes were made since your last reconciliation
- For QuickBooks online you should be able to see the amount or amounts that changed:
- From the “Accounting” tab:
- choose Reconciliation
- then choose the account you want to reconcile
- go to History by account on the right top corner of the page
- From the “Accounting” tab:
Undo Previous Reconciliations
- If you’re unable to find any issues in your accounts, you may need to undo the previous reconciliation until the opening balance is correct
- If someone edited or deleted a transaction from years ago, you may need to undo your reconciliations for the past few years to get to where the opening balance is correct
- To undo the reconciliation:
- Go to the Accounting menu
- Select History by account on the top right corner
- Select the account you want to undo the reconciliation for
- On the right part of the page, under “Action”, click on the “View Report” arrow and select “Undo”
Change The Transactions’ Status
- Instead of undoing so many reconciliations and create so much work, you can:
- try to find the problem transactions in your bank register; to do that:
- go to the Accounting menu
- select Chart of Accounts
- find the account you want and select View register
- once you identified the problem transactions, verify that their status is correct (R = reconciled, C = cleared, Blank = outstanding/uncleared); if it is not, you can change their status by double clicking on the status box until you obtain the desired status, so that you can fix your beginning bank balance in the reconciliation module
- try to find the problem transactions in your bank register; to do that:
In some cases, users make journal entries to force their QuickBooks balance to match the bank statement ending balance, but we recommend you ask an accountant for guidance in this case, because an adjustment may create other problems.
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This material is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute tax, legal or accounting advice.