| This page does not go into details of starting, saving
and posting a Reconciliation. Instead I will focus on how to know if
your Reconciliation actually balances. The primary goal of a Bank
Reconciliation is to ensure that your Bank Statement BALANCE equals your
General Ledger Bank BALANCE, plus or minus differences that you can
account for, such as outstanding cheques and deposits. During the
process you will likely make GL transactions for bank charges, and other
items appearing on the bank statement that are not yet recorded in your
GL.
The problem with Spire's Bank Reconciliation lies in the fact that it
is reconciling TRANSACTIONS rather than the BALANCES.
Here is a fictional Bank Rec in Spire, using the sample data Inspire
Health. It is contrived in order to show certain things, and thus is not
necessarily realistic.
Notice that the large number in the lower right is not zero, thus
implying that your Bank Reconciliation is not balanced. However, this is
not true, and the Reconciliation is in fact balanced!
PLEASE DO NOT RELY ON THIS NUMBER TO DETERMINE IF YOUR
RECONCILIATION IS BALANCED OR NOT.
However, in this case when you print a specially modified Account
Reconciliation report (as furnished by Wildwood Canada), in which
the Bank Statement BALANCE is compared to the GL BALANCE, which is the
proper way to do a Bank Reconciliation. In this case you can easily see
that the Reconciliation is in fact BALANCED.
Please note how this report works from the Bank Statement balance,
plus/minus outstanding items, to arrive at an Adjusted Bank Statement
Balance. This is then compared to the GL Balance. In this case the
difference is zero, therefore we are indeed reconciled.
BUT note how the number in the second half of the report summary is
non-zero. TAs the report describes, this merely indicates the difference
in Transactions between the bank statement and the GL Transactions. This
number is the same as the large number in the lower right-hand corner of
the Account Reconciliation screen.
You MUST print the WWC Reconciliation report in
order to determine if your Reconciliation is properly reconciled or not.
In the following example, the report shows that the Reconciliation is
NOT BALANCED.
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