How to resolve a difference between the bank account (which balances) and the bank reconciliation report (which is out of balance) when using primary/subsidiary bank accounts

When using Primary/Subsidiary Bank Accounts, the bank account reconciles but the bank reconciliation report shows a difference.  

If your reconciliation is in balance but your reconciliation report is out of balance check for a subsidiary bank account that has had its Bank Account checkbox unchecked.  

• When using Primary/Subsidiary bank accounts, all transactions for all accounts, since the accounts began, are used to determine the balance on the Reconciliation Report. 
• However, on the Reconciliation page itself, only the transactions used that month are shown. 
• In order for transactions to show on the Reconciliation report they have to be "against" a bank account, so removing the bank account designation (the checkmark) removes all of the transactions for that account from the report, causing it to be out of balance.

If you have access to the Audit trail you can use it to determine which account(s) has/have had their 'bank account' designation removed. If you do not have this access, find someone in your church or diocese who does. The audit report will tell you the shortcut to the account with the likely broken subsidiary designation. So, the account with the field name of BankAccount will have been updated from True to False.

1. If your Accounting Role is Church Administrator, you have a tab called Church Manager.  Click that tab and then click the Audit tab.
   
   Filters
2. Set Area to Account. 
3. Skip the Transaction Number/Name field.
   • If you know the Transaction Number/Name, you can use Ledger & Payables → Accounts to pull up the account and check its bank account designation. In that case, there is no reason to run the audit.
4. Next, either fill in the Audit Date From and To fields, or if you are not sure leave them blank.
5. Click Search.
   
   
   • You will get returns of all Accounts that have had some action (Insert, update, delete) against them up to the Number of Records indicated (default 100).  This number of records returned can be changed but can't exceed 1000.  Normally you don't need to change the number from the default of 100 as the change should have happened recently.
   • In any case, you are looking for the shortcut number of your bank account(s) under the Transaction Number/Name column.  You can ignore the rest. 
   • Once you find one, verify the Action is Update. 
   • Click Expand on the far right (currently in the screenshot below it is expanded so it now says Collapse). 
   • If the Field is BankAccount and the Old Value is True and the New Value is False, this is likely one of the accounts (or the only account) causing the out-of-balance state.
     
   • Continue looking for other bank accounts in this same manner.
   • Once you find the account, go to Ledgers & Payables → Accounts, redesignate it as a bank account, and submit. 
6. Print the reconciliation report again.  If it is now in balance you have solved the issue. If not, go back to the audit and look for other accounts to correct.

Note: 

If you no longer use a bank account and don't want it to appear as a selection on Checks and Deposit pages, you must archive the account instead of unmarking it as a bank account.  The balance of the account has to be zero before it can be archived.  Other factors have to be met as well.  See How to archive an account.

Updated June 22, 2023 19:42