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Kate1618
Level 2

Unreconciled Transactions

This question is not specific to QB its general bookkeeping stuff so I hope it's ok to post.

 

So I took over from a previous bookkeeper for a Limited company, I reconcile the bank account every month and there are no issues, but there are lots of transactions that had been entered onto the system before i started which have never been reconciled as they were from before the new business account was set up.

 

Do you think I should delete all these transactions so the bank balance is correct? Or will that effect the VAT return from the periods they go into?

Solved
Best answer June 03, 2019

Accepted Solutions
JessT
Moderator

Unreconciled Transactions

Congrats on your new client, Kate!

 

There's no need to delete their historical transactions. You can still balance their reconciliation even if they exist.


You have two options to reconcile them:


First option: You can undo all the reconciled transactions and start from the very beginning. This will give you correct reconciliation reports.


Second option: You can reconcile the historical transactions without touching the reconciled ones. However, you’ll have an incorrect ending balances on the reconciliation reports since we'll be using a different ending balance. This option is for the sake of reconciling the historical ones.


Here’s the explanation: You've already reconciled the later months. This means you will not use the statement's ending balance of the historical month that you'll be reconciling. Instead, you’ll use the ending balance of the last reconciled transaction in the bank register. Otherwise, you can't balance your reconciliation.


Let's say you've already reconciled May 2019, and you need to reconcile the April 2019 transactions. You’ll use the ending balance in May as the Ending Balance on the April reconciliation.

 

About the effect of deleting the transactions on the returns, the filed ones (marked as filed) will not be affected. However, the changes will be brought the to latest VAT return as exceptions. Therefore, I'd suggest not deleting them.

 

You can always go back to this thread if you need more help.

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1 REPLY 1
JessT
Moderator

Unreconciled Transactions

Congrats on your new client, Kate!

 

There's no need to delete their historical transactions. You can still balance their reconciliation even if they exist.


You have two options to reconcile them:


First option: You can undo all the reconciled transactions and start from the very beginning. This will give you correct reconciliation reports.


Second option: You can reconcile the historical transactions without touching the reconciled ones. However, you’ll have an incorrect ending balances on the reconciliation reports since we'll be using a different ending balance. This option is for the sake of reconciling the historical ones.


Here’s the explanation: You've already reconciled the later months. This means you will not use the statement's ending balance of the historical month that you'll be reconciling. Instead, you’ll use the ending balance of the last reconciled transaction in the bank register. Otherwise, you can't balance your reconciliation.


Let's say you've already reconciled May 2019, and you need to reconcile the April 2019 transactions. You’ll use the ending balance in May as the Ending Balance on the April reconciliation.

 

About the effect of deleting the transactions on the returns, the filed ones (marked as filed) will not be affected. However, the changes will be brought the to latest VAT return as exceptions. Therefore, I'd suggest not deleting them.

 

You can always go back to this thread if you need more help.

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