• Process electronic and direct money transfers on the date they were processed by your Bank.
• Process cheque and cash payments received from clients with the date you actually made the bank deposit.
• Bank credit card payments received at the Cellar Door daily as you use the CELLAR DOOR DAILY SALES UPDATE option. The same applies to Mail Order Sales.
• If a client pays with credit card, process the DEBTOR RECEIPT with the same date the transaction was banked with the credit card machine.
• Do not use cash from the Cash Till as Petty Cash - you will always have trouble reconciling the bank.
• Try to make a bank deposit the afternoon of your month-end day. This will decrease the outstanding amounts on the Bank Reconciliation.

Transactions that will normally impact on the General Ledger Bank account are:

• Creditor Payment Update
• Creditor Manual Cheque Update
• Debtor Receipt Update
• Payslips Update
• Grower Payment Update
• Grower Manual Cheque Update
• Cash Receipts Journal
• Cash Payments Journal

All transactions that include a flow of money should be processed using one of the above options. The Cash Receipts Journal and Cash Payments Journal are normally only used to process those transactions that cannot be processed using one of the other options, eg processing bank charges.

The first step in the process of reconciling the bank account will be to print the BANK RECONCILIATION, BANK TRANSACTION LISTING.  This report contains a list of transactions processed in the General Ledger Bank account. By comparing these transactions with the transactions that appear on the Bank Statement, you will identify which transactions appear on the Bank Statement, but not in the General Ledger and vice versa.

The second step will be to process the transactions appearing on the Bank Statement but not in the General Ledger, using one of the options as listed above*. The BANK TRANSACTION LISTING can then be printed and the comparison between it and the Bank Statement repeated. This will arm you with a list of transactions that were processed in Ezy but are not appearing on the Bank Statement.

* It is recommended that a check is done to ensure that such a transaction has not already been processed. It may have been accidentally flagged as presented during a previous reconciliation process.

The third step is to verify that these transactions are valid and processed correctly. If they are valid, they are actually your outstanding deposits and/or outstanding payments.

The fourth step in the process to use the BANK RECONCILIATION ENTRY option is to mark the transactions that do appear on the Bank Statement as presented. If the System Parameters 'GL: Detail Interface, Accounts Rec'able' and 'GL: Detail Interface, Accounts Payable' are set to "YES", individual transactions will show on this screen. The Parameter 'GL: Detail Interface, Payroll' is normally set to "NO". This will cause only one entry on this screen for the total amount paid to employees. We normally do this to keep the amount paid to individual employees confidential.

When you mark an entry as presented, the program will insert the Statement date in the far right hand column. When the Parameter 'GL: Bank Rec, Record Each Statement Date' is set to "YES", you can edit this date.

Once you are satisfied that all transactions have been accounted for, you can continue with step five. Use the BANK RECONCILIATION REPORT option to print a reconciliation report. If this report does not show a "Difference" at the bottom, your reconciliation is successful. If the amounts do not agree, there has been a mistake.

The most common mistake is the processing of a General Ledger Journal, or Accrual Journal against the General Ledger Bank Account which will cause an incorrect balance on the account. The solution is to reverse the Journal and present the original and reversal amount using the BANK RECONCILIATION ENTRY, although these transactions do not appear on the Bank Statement.

Another common mistake happens with the process of presenting transactions. You may find two transactions with the same value but different transaction dates,eg one dated 29/01 and the other 01/02. If you now present the one dated 01/02, enter 31/01 as the Statement Date when printing the BANK RECONCILIATION REPORT.  The transaction with the date of 29/01 will show as unpresented and will be included in the calculated total "Cash At Bank Balance". This will happen if the System Parameter 'GL: Bank Rec, Use Statement Date Cutoff' is set to "YES"

Sometimes the problem can be that the Statement Balance entered has a typing error. If your "Difference" has a result without decimal points when dividing by 2, it is normally a clue to check the Statement Balance entered. It can also be a clue that one of the transactions processed and presented may have been processed by interchanging digits in the value, eg 1,732.00 was processed as 1,723.00.

Once your reconciliation balances, you can print a hard copy (Detail) to put on file for future reference.

The last step in the process is then to archive or move the presented transactions out of the BANK TRANSACTION LISTING and BANK RECONCILIATION ENTRY options into history. Use the ARCHIVE PRESENTED TRANSACTIONS option.

This article should be seen as additional to the information already available in the Help Screens on other options that can be used when running the reports..