Quickbooks Reconciliation Tips and Tricks
Bank and financial reconciliations are an important part of managing a Quickbooks account. Whether you operate a small, medium or large-sized business, you’ll need to perform reconciliations to ensure all the transactions are correct and everything is setup properly. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, accidents and typos are bound to happen. The good news, however, is the reconciliations are designed to find and fix these common problems. Keep reading and we’ll go over some simple tips and tricks for reconciling your Quickbooks account.
First, let’s go over what exactly reconciliations are used for, as some people are hearing this term now for the first time. In short, it’s a process similar to balancing a checkbook. You’ll check the balance on your Quickbooks account to the balance on your bank statement to see if they match. If they match, you know everything is correct and entered in properly. On the other hand, a mismatching balance is a sign that something isn’t right, and you must go back to find out what’s causing the two numbers to be off.
Tip #1 – Using The Reconciliation Feature
If you’ve never reconciled a bank account through Quickbooks before, you might be surprised at just how easy the process is. Before you start, though, you’ll need to have access to your most recent bank statement. Next, launch your Quickbooks account and click the “Banking” tab at the top left corner of the page. From here, you can select “Reconcile” to start the process. It’s literally that easy to start the reconciliation process of a bank account through Quickbooks.
Tip #2 – Check Balances First
The very first thing you should do after starting the bank account reconciliation process is to compare your balances. Check the balance on your Quickbooks account to see if it matches with the balance on your bank statement. Hopefully, it matches up and you can close out of the process. If it doesn’t, however, you’ll need to find out what transaction is causing the problem. Checking the balances first will make the reconciliation process ten times easier.
Tip #3 – Save The Larger Accounts For Last
When you reconcile accounts through Quickbooks, it’s usually best to start with the smaller ones and gradually work your way to the larger accounts. Doing so will get some of the easier accounts out of the way first, allowing you to focus your time and energy on the harder accounts. Of course, some people may have their own preferred method, but I’ve found this is generally helpful when reconciling bank accounts through Quickbooks.