Have you seen the “Reconcile” feature in Quickbooks and wondered what that is all about? Or maybe your bookkeeper has told you that they need your bank statements in order to “reconcile” your books? Ever wondered what this means?
Reconciling is the current-technology way of balancing your checkbook. It ensures that nothing has been duplicated or left out.
When you reconcile, you have your starting balance in that bank account, the ending balance for that month, and the date the month ended on. You fill out that information in the Reconcile screen, and then it brings you to the detailed Reconciliation.
If nothing is left out or duplicated, then it will have a beautiful green $0.00 that shows there are zero discrepancies. If that isn’t true, it’ll show you how much you are off, either over or under.
If you are off, it is most likely because of one of these reasons:
- You have transactions in the bank feed that haven’t been categorized yet
- You have transactions that should have been “matched”, but were added instead, causing duplicates
- A transaction was duplicated by the system when it was brought over, caused by a glitch
- A transaction wasn’t brought over at all (This tends to happen when you get cash back on a credit card, or something like that)
As you can see, there are many things that could happen to cause your books to be “off”. If you reconcile your checking and credit card accounts, it is a simple and straightforward way to double-check what is in the system to make sure everything is correct.
Need a bookkeeper to do a free review of your books and make sure reconciliations are being done?
-Valerie