[Tono23]

All,

I cannot for the life of me reconcile our main bank account. I looked at the w/p paper over two days; I reviewed the outstanding checked and g/l. Could someone help?

I am the only accountant at our small office, and forget asking the director of finance for help.

[MSIM]

Actually, I would advice you to ask your director for help. If it took you 2 days to reconcile a bank account, it would be more cost-effective to ask your director instead of using up more time doing this.

But, for me, I usually start with…how much is it off? Does this amount ring any bells (eg, if it's off $35, it must be due to bank charges, if it's 1,250 it must be related to customer payment, etc)?

Are you sure the last periods are properly reconciled? It might be because the other prior periods are off… Make sure you didn't input anything incorrectly. I think if you transposed an amount, you can use this to check: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/transposition-error.asp

BUT REALLY, JUST ASK YOUR DIRECTOR 🙂 I always give myself a “max” time to figure something out. If I passed that, I'm wasting time trying to figure out something that someone can probably just explain it to me in 2 mins… GOOD LUCK!

[viking]

How many transactions are in the account? Are you manually reconciling checks? Is this “Master account” an account that operates as your organizations main operating account and the others are Zero Balance accounts so there are transfers from all the other account everyday? Can help but need some guidance for what you have done/your normal procedure.

[Tim]

Can you just extract the ledger to excel? Then download bank transactions in excel. Sort them by amount and put them side by side in column A and B. Then make column C the difference (A-B). This should identify anything that's missing/wrong from one or the other.

[Tono23]

All, Thank you for your replies. Unfortunately, I cannot extract the ledger or bank transactions into excel. I work for a small municipality and our budget precludes us from having fancy technology, so its all paper-based process with the exception of using excel to prepare the bank reconciliation. @MSIM, the finance director has given some pointers, but I still cannot pinpoint my 20k difference.

@ Viking, this account processes a ton of transactions for a given month. The other smaller accounts either transfer funds into this “main control” account, or they just earn interest. Our main account is the one that has been giving me a huge headache. Yes, I reconcile the checks manually via our A/P module, which I manually input a “y” or “n” if the check has cleared. This process takes a while to do.

Thus far, I have compared the statement to our books, and every transaction which appears on the statement is properly reflected on the books. Now, I decided to compare the books to the bank statement to see what we have recorded that is not reflected in the statement. And I found two withdraws in transit which are being withdrawn in the subsequent period.

This is where I am at….stuck and I do not know how to account for the 20k difference. I

[Elisabeth]

@Tono23 – I'm not sure what all you have on your bank rec, but try using the following tools to help isolate your difference(s):

Checks/Other Deductions: Take Prior Month Outstanding + New Issued Checks/Deductions (i.e. Payroll, Bank Fees, etc) – Paid Checks/Other Deductions per Bank

Deposits: Take Prior Month Total O/S Deposits + Cash Receipts – Cash Receipts per Bank

This may give you an idea where to focus your energy. Good luck!

[Will]

you mean we can't just book the difference to marketing? ;p

1 – not being able to balance sucks – especially if there are > 1,000 transactions
2 – how much are you off? CTR + F and search the bank statement for the amount is my first step
3 – is the $ amount even or are the pennies involved? If the balance is off by $100.XX then it's possible that you have more than 1 transaction off. If you're off by $50 even it's likely (though not for sure) you're missing a single entry. If it's $50.24 then it could be $10.10 + $30.10 + $50.04. This makes it harder b/c you're not sure how many items you're off by.
4- recurring transactions? I know many times it's possible to be off by a normally occurring transaction. One of my clients gets $750 charges to facebook and $1500 to Google for hundreds of times a month. If I'm off by $1500 I'm likely off by 2x facebooks or 1x Google. This should help narrow your searches
5 – check the cutoff for both beginning & ending – often times errors are cutoff. double check all the first few and last few days by hand and see if you find your error.
6 – finally – check those pesky checks. I'm not sure how big your company is but it's very easy for a check to go unnoticed (outstanding checks) – especially if you use Billpay (yea you BofA) and the Billpay will show up on the statements when they send payment instead of when it cashes

hope this helps. Also, like someone else said, take it to a someone else to review. Maybe you did something like enter BB/EB cash balance wrong and they will find the mistake right away.

[Gimme_a_75]

I know I'm a little late to the game, but I find most of my bank recon issues are stray journal entries hitting my cash and cash clearing GL accounts. I typically identify entries posted to those accounts by accountants in the office that either have a history of hitting the wrong account or those who should never post journal entries hitting a cash or cash clearing account. I've even had cases where an accountant will post an entry backwards throwing off the accounts. I'd check for those items first.

[Author]

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