Clearing Outstanding Items in Bank Accounts

Carolyn White

Couple of questions relating to clearing items in bank accounts. Is there a way in webview to clear multiple items at once from the bank accounts? In database, you are able to highlight numerous items and set to cleared at once. I cannot figure out how to do it in webview.

Also in webview, can you determine the total dollar amount of filtered items without exporting the result. (eg - cleared items for the month)? Although a minor frustration, it is still frustrating to have to download each filtered amount when working in the bank accounts.

Nikki Baldwin

@Carolyn White, here are a couple of screenshots wherein I've put some boxes around the areas you're hoping to access in your reconciliation.

For the clearing, you have the option to ‘Select All’ or you can mark multiple boxes from the ‘Cleared’ column to mark several off.

For the amount cleared without exporting, you should see that running total changing at the bottom of the screen based on what's been marked as cleared. Please ignore the confusing amounts I have showing there from my sample data. However, you will see that ‘cleared balance’ changing as you mark and unmark items.

Hope this helps!

Makenna VanderWilt

@Nikki Baldwin Is there any plan to clear checks efficiently for organizations that do not have cash management activated and reconcile outside of FE? I can see that there is an option to clear one at a time, but we have hundreds each month and are wondering if there is something in the works.

Thank you!

Nikki Baldwin

@Makenna VanderWilt, every FENXT subscription we've sold includes Cash Management and not as an add-on module. Only with Financial Edge 7 was it an add-on/pick. I'm not sure I understand how we would assist within FENXT if you're reconciling outside of the solution. Why do you think you don't have Cash Management to reconcile the bank account?

Makenna VanderWilt

@Nikki Baldwin We have it, but it has never been activated in any of our bank accounts. We currently pull reports from FENXT to reconcile in our spreadsheets so we can see more detail about specific outstanding items. We have been clearing checks in database view. We recently attempted to turn it on for one of our bank accounts in order to clear checks in web view as shown in this post, but it wants us to post items in past years that are closed in order to reconcile the information. Just trying to find a simple solution if there was one.

Nikki Baldwin

@Makenna VanderWilt, we definitely update and expand on reconciliation capabilities within FENXT's Cash Management functionality. We wouldn't be adding reconciliation to FENXT or banks outside of that capability that already exists, so I'd strongly recommend you do start utilizing the reconciliation functionality that we have built within FENXT. I'm not sure I understand how you would've hard closed periods with not yet posted transactions – how did you balance your GL to your AP/Banks with unposted transactions? If everything is in balance because you created Journal Entries to force the subledger balance, then you could edit those transactions in the past to have a status of ‘Do not post’ so that they will not need to be posted to GL. Honestly, I'd recommend pulling in a consultant (either from Blackbaud or you can look in our Partner Marketplace for partner consulting firms by searching for ‘consulting’) to get a good look at what you have going on and ensure you get a good start on your reconciling within FENXT.

Makenna VanderWilt

@Nikki Baldwin Thank you for your advice - we will continue to try to implement the FENXT cash management and reconciliation. I think I was confusing when I said that it wanted to post to closed years - we do not have any standing unposted transactions in closed years. The reconciliation tool wanted to post adjustments and when we changed the adjustment to “do not post” it did not seem to save to the reconciliation. I suspect this was likely some form of user error, and we will try again to reconcile these prior years.

The organization I'm working for has been using FE since 2002, and overall has been a slow adopter to change. I imagine this transition to web view will bring discovery of many features we did not know about that could have helped us in the past! Thank you again for your discussion.

Nikki Baldwin

@Makenna VanderWilt Good luck with moving forward there, I know that's not the easiest to take on after so many years. Again, highly recommend a consultant to make sure you get off to a good start but if you can figure it out and post to move forward, you'll appreciate the ease of being able to reconcile each month moving forward!

Whitney Benefield

@Carolyn White
I called Blackbaud support and according to them, there is no way to clear multiple items at once in FENXT which is terrible in my opinion. I have over 1000 endowment funds and when we do our spending allocation, each one of those gets cash entered, which means over 1000 clicks to clear the deposit. The answer I got was to select everything and then unselect what I didn't want to clear. That is NOT how a bank reconciliation is done. What a nightmare this is going to be!

Whitney Benefield

@Carolyn White I finally figured out a way to clear multiple items in some cases. I have an entry that is done semi annually to move money from investments to cash and it affects about 800 projects, so it is about 800 lines that have to be cleared. I put the entry description in the search bar. That gave me only those entries and I was able to “clear all”. I hope this helps a little.