How to reconcile an account in QuickBooks Desktop
This article is about QuickBooks Desktop reconciliation and how to match your bank, credit card statements.
This process is like balancing your checkbook, Same way as QuickBooks User you need to review your books just to make sure they match with your bank and credit card statements. As a business owner, you need to follow this process to manage your business accounting in an effective way. We advise all QuickBooks User you must reconcile your checking, saving, and credit card accounts on monthly bases. Make sure your back statement transactions match with the transactions you entered in QuickBooks.
New QuickBooks User often has Question-related to reconciliation, Some of the Question and answers are listed below:
How do I review my opening balance:
- Most of the users have confusion about “what’s opening balance?”: An opening balance is an amount entered the very first time in QuickBooks to track transactions. Or In simple terms, we can call it a start point for your accounting with QuickBooks. Decide whenever you want to start tracking your bank account and credit card statements. The date you begin with and the amount you entered in QuickBooks account always be your opening balance. The choice is completely yours, There isn’t any ground rule for the opening balance. Depending upon your convince.
- The next thing is reviewing your opening balance. That balance needs to match with your bank account statement balance from the day you decide to track your account.
Now the next question is “How to prepare for the reconciliation?
As a QuickBooks user just make sure you enter all bank transactions from the period you want to reconcile. If some of the transactions shown in your bank statement are not cleared yet, Just wait and make sure you enter them once they clear.
How to begin with reconciliation, Follow these steps:
- Open QuickBooks and choose Banking Option from the main menu and then Reconcile
- On the next windows, it would ask you to choose Bank account or Credit Card you wish to reconcile
- Now you have auto-selected dates of 30 to 31 days after the statement of old reconciliation. Make the changes as per your need.
- QuickBooks Uses the ending balance from the last reconcile statement for the beginning balance.
- Choose and enter the ending balance as per your bank statement.
- If your bank statement has an interest that is not entered in QuickBooks.
- You can enter that by going to Service Change and then the Interest Earned option.
- After that Review, all the fields just to make sure information is correct and Proceed with start reconciling.
If you come across any issue or error during reconciliation don’t worry we here to help, Before that Compare QuickBooks and Bank statement to rectify any kind of issue. Make sure you have dates and transactions set up correctly. Steps to follow best reconciliation practices:
- Choose option Hide transactions after the statement end date, If you just want to access the current monthly statement.
- Bank account translation in QuickBooks has two sections first one money out Payments and Checks and the second Money in Deposits and credits.
- Credit card purchases like Charges and Cash Advance second credit card payments to the issuing company.
- Please reconcile one section at a time
- If you are reconciling an account set up for online baking just choose matched after that enter the statement ending date. This process allows QuickBooks to match downloaded transactions automatically.
- You can also sort the list by going into the header of the column.
- Now it’s time to match the first transaction on your bank statement with QuickBooks, Just make sure you have the same translation on the reconcile window as it’s in your bank statement.
- When a transaction matches, Checkmark that transaction as reconciled
- Make sure you compare each transaction with QuickBooks and start adding transactions as reconciled, Which subsequently decreased the cleared balance.