How can I keep non-cleared transactions from affecting balance sheet?

Stacy Bastian

At the end of the last reconciliation the balance sheet account balance and the bank statement ending balance were off by the amount of 3 uncleared checks. What could or should I have done to prevent this? Is this a posting/timing error? Something else?

Roberta A. Gilbert

@Stacy Bastian:

At the end of the last reconciliation the balance sheet account balance and the bank statement ending balance were off by the amount of 3 uncleared checks. What could or should I have done to prevent this? Is this a posting/timing error? Something else?

This is how it should be. Your GL bank balance will include credits for all of the checks you've written, but the bank statement only reflects the checks which have been paid by the bank. The difference is the total of your outstanding checks.

Roberta A. Gilbert

@Stacy Bastian:

@Roberta A Gilbert

Thank you Roberta. It didn't seem like a problem to me, but the bosses were adamant that the account values should match in both places. I Googled around, and I also read in various places that the numbers should match, so then I got worried. I went back and looked at some previous recons and those values did match….but that could just be fewer checks were written that month and/or all happened to clear by the time of reconciliation.

As long as the difference can be accounted for by those uncleared checks, it doesn't seem like a problem. Thank you for confirming

Stacy

Do you use the Reconciliation function in FE? (Not sure if it has been ported to NXT yet, so you might have to find it in the Database.) That will let you reconcile your bank statement to the Registry, and also produce a report, showing the outstanding items that make up any difference.

Stacy Bastian

@Roberta A Gilbert
Yes, I reconciled through NXT view. Next time I'll verify that the “outstanding posted payments” on the reconciliation report equals the amount by which the account total varies between the bank statement ending balance and the balance sheet account balance.