We appreciate you for raising your concern here, @Cricket42. We have helped plenty of customers reconcile their accounts in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT). Today, allow me to share the process for reconciling and insights before performing it.
First, back up your company file to ensure you will have a copy whenever an unexpected error occurs during or after the reconciliation. And if you're reconciling for the first time, we must review the opening balance.
Furthermore, enter all transactions for the bank statement period you plan to reconcile. If there are transactions that haven't cleared your bank yet and aren't on your statement, wait to enter them.
Once we get your bank statement, start reconciling. Here's how:
- From the Banking menu, choose the Reconcile option.
- In the Account field, pick the bank or credit card account you want to reconcile.
- The Statement Date is automatically filled in. Usually, it's 30 or 31 days after the statement data of the previous reconciliation. Change it as needed to match your bank statement.
- QuickBooks also automatically enters the Beginning Balance. It uses the ending balance from your last reconciliation to get this number.
- Type in the Ending Balance based on your bank statement.
- Enter the Service Charge and Interest Earned based on your bank statement. Don't enter charges you've already entered in QuickBooks.
- Review the fields. If the info is correct, select Continue or OK.
Please note that if you're reconciling multiple months, start with your oldest bank statement. Reconcile each month separately. On top of that, if it's a Merchant or Payments account and QBDT sees that you aren't signed in, you'll see a sign-in window. This ensures your account is successfully linked to a valid company ID.
If your beginning balance doesn't match your statement, don't worry. You have a few tools that can help you.
- If the numbers don't match, select Locate Discrepancies. This gives you reports you can use to find discrepancies and other reconciliation issues.
- If you still have issues, here's how to fix your opening balance and beginning balance.
- If you need to start over from scratch, you can select Undo Last Reconciliation.
Moreover, when you undo a previous reconciliation, your beginning balance reverts to the beginning balance of your previous reconciliation. All cleared transactions on the reconciliation become uncleared.
Additionally, we recommend reaching out to your accountant to help you with the reconciliation processes and to review all your transactions to ensure that they're placed in the correct accounts.
If you need additional info about the steps above, check out this article: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Desktop.
We'll also share these articles to guide you on what you can do next after reconciliation:
We feel delighted to have you here. Please come back if you need additional queries. We'll respond to it as soon as possible. Take care always.
