Reconciling Bank account - matching - and cleared checks

tmalloy · ‎March 15, 2021

I am new to QB (2 months in)

I am having issues with the Matching and Reconciling functions.

We started out "Matching" transactions on a daily basis, but were running into too many errors my mistakenly matching something that hadn't even been paid yet, which resulted in vendor payments being missed. I read this as an issue with others on the discussion board. Therefore, we decided to not do the matching.

We do a monthly bank reconciliation which is not in QB. I looked through the QB Reconciliation function and viewed a how to video - it said you should reconcile until you get to zero or QB will automatically create a journal entry for the difference. That seems crazy, because there is always a difference due to uncashed checks or deposits in transit. So then I'm thinking maybe I don't do the reconciling function either, since I do one manually.

In our previous system, I would go in and mark checks as Cleared when they hit the bank and put in the date cleared. I can't really find a place to do that. I found where I thought I could do it, but now that I am in March posting a check as cleared requires me to open a prior period. Not understanding QB entirely I am hesitant to do that for fear it will somehow change finalized results. Also, I had to filter on each individual check number which would take days; filtering on payment type 'check' showed no results.

Looking for any suggestions or advice.

Thank you.

Mark_R · ‎March 15, 2021

Thank you for choosing QuickBooks as your accounting software, @tmalloy.

Allow me to provide some information on how reconciling accounts work in QuickBooks.

It seems that you added the uncleared checks to QuickBooks that's why you get a difference when reconciling the bank account. Moving forward, you'll want to wait until the checks are cleared from the bank before including them in QuickBooks. This way, you'll avoid discrepancies when reconciling your bank account every month.

I'm adding these articles to learn more about reconciling accounts and how to fix it when you encounter balance issues:

Should you need any additional assistance while managing your bank transactions, you can leave a comment below. I'll be sure to get back to you.

tmalloy · ‎March 15, 2021

How would that work? When you pay a bill it records your check number and enters it as paid.

Is there another step I've missed, or not been doing?

Thanks,

JessT · ‎March 15, 2021

Hi tmalloy,

Checks are usually encashed or issued to the bank at a later time. As such, there’s a tendency that you won’t be able to reconcile with them in the month they’re dated in QuickBooks. You can simply exclude them if they are not cleared on the month that you want to reconcile.

For example, if a check is dated February 28, 2021, and clears your bank on March 1, 2021, you can exclude it in the February reconciliation and include it in March instead.

About marking a check as cleared, you can also do this in QuickBooks. Simply open your checking register, click the check transaction and put a C (Cleared) mark in the Reconcile field. You can edit the check and put the clearing date in the memo field if you want to.

Please feel free to go back to this thread if you have other questions about reconciling a check.

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Reconciling Bank account - matching - and cleared checks