Ensuring your business records are accurate and up to date is one of the issues that allows the concept of live reporting. Accurate records are also vital for accurate tax reporting and business planning. Cash Book Reconciliation provides a way to ensure the Cash Book is up to date and it should be run once a month.
Location: Finance Manager, Banking and Debt or Finance Manager, Taxation
Overview
The process of reconciling is essentially to verify that the details in Business Administrator’s Cash Book maps the details in your current account. It’s about verifying that items on your bank statement match those on Business Administrator.
Cash Book Reconciliation, when started, will show a list of all items in the Cash Book that have not be reconciled.
There will always be a date discrepancy between Business Administrator’s Cash Book and the bank statements: Business Administrator should generally be ahead by a few days. You should not worry about small discrepancies in dates.
Aside from the date issue, everything else should be correct. If it is, then it is just a matter of clicking Reconcile Item from the Function Bar, and the item will disappear from the list. You might be wise to put a tick on the paper statement next to the same item as you commit to reconciliation.
Editing items
Sometimes, there are margins of error, either because of mistakes, changes of mind, or unexpected events taking place. To cater for these, Business Administrator offers the ability to fully edit all items.
However, you should only edit items as a last resort. The reason for this is because changing something in the Cash Book here, won’t update invoices or wages or anything else. You should try to go back to the source of the error and correct that.
In the normal scheme of things, it is not possible to reconcile every item in the list. Frequently, items are still going through your bank account as you reconcile it.
Commands
Reconcile Entry: Mark the entry as correct and reconciled.
Edit Data: If the data is incorrect, you can edit it with this command. Only use this command as a lost resort, and edit as little as possible
Add Bank Charges: A quick way to register charges your bank may have made.
Include Previously Reconciled: Normally the list only include items that have not been reconciled. Click this command to show all items: it will show all items in the Cash Book.
Exclude Previously Reconciled: If previously reconciled items are showing in the list, then click this to show items not reconciled: it will allow you to focus on reconciling the remaining items.