Reconciling your accounts to line up with your bank, credit card, and other account statements is a vital part of routine accounting. QuickBooks makes reconciling accounts easy with just a few simple steps.
To prepare for reconciliation, you should back up your company file to ensure that your data is protected. If this is your first time reconciling a specific account, you’ll have to establish your opening balance by entering that value from the beginning of a bank statement.
You’ll need to gather the bank accounts and credit card statements to reconcile and ensure that all relevant transactions have already cleared. When reconciling several months at once, you should start with the oldest statement.
Now, you can open QuickBooks and follow these steps:
- Select Reconcile from the Banking menu.
- Select the specific bank or other accounts you wish to reconcile in the Account field.
- Your Statement Date should fill automatically. Verify that it matches the date on your bank statement, and change it if necessary.
- The Beginning Balance will fill automatically based on the ending balance of your previous reconciliation.
- Take the Ending Balance from your bank statement and enter it into QuickBooks.
- Enter any Interest Earned or Service Charges from your statement, but be careful not to enter any charges already present in QuickBooks.
- Review the information you’ve entered and select Continue.
If any numbers don’t line up, you can select Locate Discrepancies to generate a report that highlights potential reconciliation issues.
Now, you can compare each individual transaction in QuickBooks to those listed on your bank statement. Simply check off the transaction in the checkmark column if it matches to reconcile it. Once all transactions are cleared, select Reconcile Now to complete the process.