Reconciling your accounts can sometimes prove to be a challenging task.  There are a few ways to help you find errors depending on your situation.

What if my beginning balance does not match the beginning balance on my statement?

• Run a Reconciliation Discrepancy report under Reports>Banking, and look at any transactions that appear on the list.  Transactions appearing on this list have been changed by someone after already being reconciled to a previous statement.  The most common change to a transaction that has already been reconciled is that it gets deleted.  You will have to replace the transaction that was deleted in order to fill this void and “catch up” the reconciliation before you can continue to the current statement.
• Check to make sure that any transactions previously reconciled to an interim statement are not listed as pending.  It is not good practice to enter transactions into the pending status, as they can be forgotten, and even change in value between the pending reconciliation and the final statement reconciliation.

What if I am having difficulty balancing my reconciliation and cannot seem to find the discrepancy?

• Check your statement carefully.  Some institutions will list refunds in line with other debits but they will have very tiny minus signs in front of them.  These minus signs are often hard to see, so be vigilant and read carefully.
• Divide your overall difference with the bank statement by two (2) and see if the result matches one of the transactions on the bank statement.  This can happen if you mistakenly enter a debit as a credit or a credit as a debit in QuickBooks.  How?  Because this one entry error added on one side and equally subtracted on the other side.  The result is an error that is double the amount of the entry.
• The most common error is simple transposition.  Accidentally swapping two digits in a number such as entering $56.87 as $65.87.

Still have questions?  Contact AccuraBooks.  We are happy to help!