How to use the Account Balance Report to assist with bank or credit card reconciliation issues
When you have a reconciliation issue (Bank or Credit Card), we recommend that you print the Account Balance Report for the troubled account. This report will list every transaction debit/credit that hit the account in the time frame you request. Use the date range your statement covers. It is usually the full month you are reconciling for a bank and normally spans portions of two months for credit cards.
When printing the report, we recommend that you always use the view PDF option instead of the preview report option. This way the report will come up in Adobe Reader separately from the ParishSOFT Accounting program.
- This allows you to continue to work and research in the program and view the report simultaneously.
- It also allows you to use the CTRL-F (find feature) to search for an amount on all pages of the report at the same time.
The important things to look for are the following:
- Any deposit that has both a debit and a credit. This is the most common error and it happens when you put the bank account in the line item of the deposit. This will then show as a credit to that bank account. Occasionally a different bank account is used in a line item of a deposit when someone tries to (erroneously) transfer money between bank accounts using a deposit.
- Transaction Type of Paid Bill: You should never see Paid Bill on this report unless this is your very first bank reconciliation.
- We use a method called pseudo checks for entering any outstanding check from the prior accounting system. This is the only time it is okay to use a bank account in the line item of a bill.
- If you are transferring money between bank accounts and you are writing a check it is important to use a transfer account in the bill's line item and then create a deposit for the other bank account that is receiving the funds. We have a separate article on how to record transfers.
- Assets that are not bank accounts can be used in the line items of the bills. The reason this is so important is that bill, deposit, and credit card line items do not show on bank reconciliations. Therefore, the offsetting asset is not available to clear on a bank reconciliation and yet it will not balance because of its effect on the books.
So, if you see the transaction type of Paid Bill on your Account Balance Report you will have to delete the check. - Do not void the check as that will not solve the problem, it only makes it worse.
- If you do not have the permissions to delete the check, ask your church administrator or diocese administrator to help you do so.
- If you are not part of a diocese that uses our program you can call support for help but we can't give you delete permissions. We can only point you to the person, in your organization, who can give you those permissions.
- If you have already voided the pseudo check, you will have to contact support so we can "un" void it. This is true for everyone using the program.
- Once you have the report displayed in PDF view, use the find feature (CTRL + F) to search for the amount that you are off.
- When using Find you can enter anything you wish to look for.
- The exact dollar amount or perhaps just the amount of cents in the difference.
Sometimes you are out of balance by the sum of more than one transaction. If this is the case you will need to review all transactions and determine what is most likely the issue and research it. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer if multiple transactions are the problem.
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