Your first bank reconciliation

To ensure the accuracy of your business records, you should ensure that the record of your bank account balances matches the amounts on your bank statements. This task is called reconciling accounts.

If your business traded prior to your conversion month and you have uncleared banking transactions as at the first day of your conversion month, you need to do an initial bank reconciliation. (The conversion month is the earliest month in the financial year for which you recorded transactions in AccountRight.)

Uncleared banking transactions are withdrawals and deposits that have not been cleared by your bank as at the start of your conversion month. They include unpresented cheques and credit card purchases yet to appear on your bank statement. Make sure you have entered your account opening balances before doing your initial bank reconciliation.

To do an initial bank reconciliation

1. Identify uncleared withdrawals and deposits

Compare your banking source information (such as your chequebook and deposit book) with your bank statements for the period that includes your conversion date. If you find transactions that have not been cleared by your bank as at this date, you will need to record the details of these transactions in your company file.

For example, in June, the month prior to your conversion month, you wrote a cheque for $1,000 and deposited $500 you received from a customer. If these transactions had not appeared on a bank statement by 30 June, you need to record both transactions in your company file.

2. Record uncleared withdrawals and deposits

When you entered the opening balance of your bank account, if this included the value of any uncleared transactions (such as unpresented cheques), you'll need to record these uncleared transactions in such a way that the opening bank account balance is not affected.

To record these uncleared deposits and withdrawals, you need to post a debit and a credit of equal amounts for each transaction against the applicable bank account. This will then allow you to reconcile these transactions when the cheques are eventually presented.

3. Reconcile

If this is your first bank reconciliation, you're ready to reconcile if you've identified and recorded uncleared withdrawals and deposits (see above).

To reconcile your bank account

1. Go to the Banking command centre and click Reconcile Accounts. The Reconcile Accounts window appears.
   

   

2. In the Account field, select the bank account you want to reconcile.

3. In the Closing Statement Balance field, enter the closing bank balance as at the day prior to your conversion month (for example, the closing balance as at 31/12/2016).

4. In the Bank Statement Date field, enter the first date of your conversion month. (For example, if your conversion month is January 2017, enter 01/01/17.) Your uncleared transactions appear. When you recorded uncleared transactions, the same account was debited and credited. Therefore, an uncleared transaction appears as both a deposit and a withdrawal.

5. For each uncleared withdrawal, click the select column next to the deposit.

6. For each uncleared deposit, click the select column next to the withdrawal. When each uncleared transaction is selected, $0.00 appears in the Out of Balance field.
   

   

7. Click Reconcile. A confirmation window appears. If you want, do one of the following:

   • To print a report, click Print Report. When the report is printed, click Reconcile.

   • To reconcile without printing a report, click Reconcile.

   • To change any details you entered in the Reconcile Accounts window, click Cancel and make the required changes.

See Reconciling your bank accounts to learn more about:

• reconciliation accounts you receive bank feeds for

• manually reconciling

• reconciling against imported bank statements (using the Get Statement function)