This week I am going to address what a discrepancy is and how to determine if it is a posting issue or bad data in your reconciliation table. In two weeks I will write again and address the unresolved amount. Finally, in a third installment I’ll try and tie both topics together. Obviously for this blog I’ll try and sneak in a tip or two but if you’re just looking for straight up facts and figures see the links at the bottom of the blog for the knowledge base articles on the subject.
A discrepancy amount is normally caused by one of the following:
1. You have the wrong Statement End Balance
2. You have cleared a transaction in this Bank Reconciliation and it shouldn’t have been
3. You have not cleared a transaction in this Bank Reconciliation and it should have been.
4. You posted a transaction in the wrong month.
Remember that Simply calculates your discrepancy based on the following:
Statement End Balance – Statement Opening Balance= Resolved Amount (Plus Outstanding)
If you calculate the equation above and it works with your reconciliation and you still have a discrepancy you need to reset your account reconciliation to clear some “bad data”.
It is useful when trying to process a bank reconciliation, especially when you have a stubborn discrepancy, to look not only at the last month’s Account Reconciliation report in detail so it shows prior outstanding, also print off the GL report for the previous month and the current month. You will be able to see by doing this if you posted a transaction into the previous month after you posted the reconciliation. If that is the case, your discrepancy in the current amount may be the amount of that transaction. Should it be added manually as a Prior Outstanding or should you reset the module?
Hopefully this is a step in the right direction. Account Reconciliation can be extremely frustrating but with all the necessary reports and a simple equation determining how or where your discrepancy came from can save you some aggravation.
Best of Luck… and stay tuned for the Unresolved blog in a couple of weeks.
Resetting Account ReconciliationBank Reconciliation: Large Discrepancy and Unresolved Amount
Missing Transaction in Bank Reconciliation
