How to Prepare a Bank Reconciliation: 8 Steps with Pictures


If there are still some differences, these may be due to errors in either the two balances or the bank reconciliation process. The company may need to repeat the process until the balance becomes zero, or it identifies any errors. The unrecorded differences may have other items as well, such as errors in the bank statement or bank book, dishonored checks, interest received, etc.

One of the primary reasons responsible for such a difference is the time gap in recording the transactions of either payments or receipts. After adjusting all the above items what you get is the adjusted balance of the cash book. Standardizing the process with what is holiday pay a set of steps to follow for reconciliation can make the process more organized and save time. This can be done by creating a checklist or using a software tool. Small business owners may find that sufficient funds from the previous month are not enough.

Fortunately, bank reconciliation doesn’t have to be done manually. MYOB’s bank feeds feature can automatically pull in your transactions and create a bank reconciliation statement. Finally, fraudulent activity in a bank account can cause problems with reconciliation. But catching theft, embezzlement, and other forms of fraud are also some of the main reasons for reconciling accounts in the first place.

  1. Match each deposit from the debit side of your record to the credit side on the bank statements while ensuring that the amounts correspond.
  2. If the bank has made errors, notify them so that they correct the transactions.
  3. Below is a video explanation of the bank reconciliation concept and procedure, as well as an example to help you have a better grasp of the calculation of cash balance.
  4. This is often done at the end of every month, weekly and even at the end of each day by businesses that have a large number of transactions.

The cash account balance in an entity’s financial records may also require adjusting in some specific circumstances, if you find discrepancies with the bank statement. In these cases, journal entries record any adjustment to the book’s balance. After fee and interest adjustments are made, the book balance should equal the ending balance of the bank account. Cloud accounting software like Quickbooks makes preparing a reconciliation statement easy.

Mary Girsch-Bock is the expert on accounting software and payroll software for The Ascent. You will be increasing your cash account by $5 to account for the interest income, while you’ll be reducing your cash account by $30 to account for the bank service fee. The goal is to get your ending bank balance and ending G/L balance to match.

How does cash management software improve bank reconciliations?

As mentioned above, these include timing differences and unrecorded differences. The reason why companies must categorize the differences is that the treatment for both is different. If transactions on the bank statements are correct, you need to adjust your books.

How to prepare your bank reconciliation statement

Once these figures are verified, the company can safely assume the error is somewhere in the bank charges or small amounts. Therefore, it can expense out the difference without any consideration to what may have caused it. Since the bank statement balance according to the bank reconciliation matches the bank balance in the bank statement, the reconciliation can be considered correct. Preparing a bank reconciliation requires a company to take a step by step approach. The easiest step by step approach to preparing bank reconciliation is through a 5-step process. If a company has more than one bank accounts, it will need to carry out the process for each account separately.

If the bank didn’t receive a deposit, investigate why it’s missing. Whatever method you prefer, it’s important to keep solid records of every transaction to reconcile your bank account properly. Businesses maintain a cash book to record both bank transactions as well as cash transactions. The cash column in the cash book shows the available cash while the bank column shows the cash at the bank. Deposits in transit are amounts that are received and recorded by the business but are not yet recorded by the bank. It’s the duty of any business, large or small, to keep accurate financial records to ensure things balance.

How Frequently Should You Reconcile Your Bank Account?

Non-sufficient funds (NSF) checks are recorded as an adjusted book-balance line item on the bank reconciliation statement. A bank may charge an account maintenance fee, typically withdrawn and processed automatically from the bank account. When preparing a bank reconciliation statement, a journal entry is prepared to account for fees deducted. You first need to determine the underlying reasons responsible for the mismatch between balance as per cash book and passbook. Once you have determined the reasons, you need to record such changes in your books of accounts. NSF cheques are an item to be reconciled while preparing the bank reconciliation statement.

TallyPrime‘s auto bank reconciliation will minimize the time spent and the risk of errors during bank reconciliation. Auto bank reconciliation in TallyPrime provides a simple and no-frills method of reconciling your company bank books with the https://intuit-payroll.org/ bank statement. You’ll need a bank statement for the period you want to reconcile, as well as your business’s accounting records for that period. For a proper reconciliation, these should contain all transactions – both incoming and outgoing.

A bank reconciliation statement is produced after comparing the cash balance on a balance sheet to the corresponding balance on the bank statement. This act of reconciliation helps to identify whether accounting changes need to be made. The company found that there are $300 bank charges, $250 interest charges, and a $1,000 deposit by a customer, who didn’t notify ABC Co. of the deposit. Since these are all unrecorded differences, ABC Co. must record them in its accounting system. The difference between the books and the bank statements is $40,000. The company reflected the payment it received from debtors in its cashbook, but the payment hasn’t yet reflected in the bank account.

How to Do Bank Reconciliation?

For most companies, bank reconciliation should be prepared once a month. A company, ABC Co., receives a bank statement from one of its banks stating the balance in the bank account to be $2,650. On the other hand, the bank balance in the bank book of the company is $3,200. Since both balances are different, bank reconciliation should be prepared.

Bank reconciliation statements are tools companies and accountants use to detect errors, omissions, and fraud in a financial account. Bank reconciliation is a simple and invaluable process to help manage cash flows. To successfully complete your bank reconciliation, you’ll need your bank statements for the current and previous months as well as your company ledger. An online template can help guide you, but a simple spreadsheet is just as effective. Nowadays, many companies use specialized accounting software in bank reconciliation to reduce the amount of work and adjustments required and to enable real-time updates. After adjusting the balance as per the cash book, make sure that you record all adjustments in your company’s general ledger accounts.

To reconcile your bank statement with your cash book, you need to ensure that the cash book is complete. Further, make sure that the bank’s statement for the current month has also been obtained from the bank. The above case presents preparing a bank reconciliation statement starting with positive bank balances.


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