Chapter 4 - How to do a bank reconciliation

Introduction

There is not much banking information in your copy of ezBooks so we will make some new entries and take you through the steps required to carry out a bank reconciliation. In real life you will have at hand a bank statement (or credit card bill) and will work through it comparing it to the information revealed in the bank reconciliation section of ezBooks. In this section we will tell you:

Reviewing you cash book entries (10 mins)

For this tutorial to work you should create a new database into which we will post a few banking transactions. You can run through how to at How to set up a new ezBooks' database for a business . It doesn't matter what you call it or which type of accounting you choose. We are going to post three transactions. It doesn't matter what dates you choose. At this point you may wish to check on what you have entered. You can do this via the cash books. They are accessed via the top menu bar.



You select TheBooks > CashBook.



Click on OK then click on Display. You could have chosen different from and to dates and selected an individual bank account but you should be able to see the screen view summary of the money you received:



and, if you select the top tab Payments the payments you made:



If you click on Print you will be able to see a printable form of the cash books with even more detail.

How to do a bank reconciliation (10 mins)

If you were to receive a bank statement after these three transactions it would appear something along the following lines:



However, that would be after all the transactions had got to the bank. Say the final transaction was still outstanding, the bank account you might receive that you are faced with reconciling might look like this:



You access the bank reconciliation screen through the top menu bar:



Click on Bank Accounts > Bank Reconcile:

Normally you choose an end date from the bank statement and the name of the bank account you wish to reconcile. This time just use today's date and ANZ Then click OK. The first thing you see is the screen with any outstanding receipts at that date:



You see the $1000 credit listed and it is on your bank statement. Click in the square box next to the credit and a 'X' will appear. Now select the tab labeled Outstanding Payments:



Only the payment of $1500 is on your statement so place a 'X' next to it and enter the closing balance on the bank statement (-500) into the box where indicated by the red ring. Next click on Reconcile and you will see:



Of course you might find the accounts don't reconcile. You should then re-check the figures. There may be some items ion the bank statement which are not in your books. You can access the main screens to enter them by using the Received and Paid buttons on the tool bar.

Don't forget that once you have successfully reconciled you should print out a reconciliation statement and keep it for future reference.

END OF CHAPTER FIVE - Return to Index Page