Bank Statement Reconciliation

The Bank Statement Reconciliation utility is a way for you to double-check your transactions that you have entered into Shepherd's Staff against what your bank has applied to your bank account. Shepherd's Staff accomplishes this task by taking the beginning balance from your bank statement, applying each transaction you have marked as clearing the bank to that balance, and providing you with an ending balance, which when compared to your bank statement, should match.

Typically, bank reconciliations are performed for one bank statement at a time, which usually spans one month, and it is recommended that you only attempt to reconcile one month at a time. However, when setting up your bank reconciliation, you'll be asked to put in the beginning date and ending dates from your bank statement. These dates make up the date range of transactions that Shepherd's Staff will show you when running your Bank Statement Reconciliation. Note that the dates you see on your bank statement can vary from what they show in Shepherd's Staff, because the bank will show the date that these transactions cleared the bank, whereas in Shepherd's Staff, you are showing the original transaction date. For most transactions, this will be a small variance, typically within a day or two, but for some transactions, especially checks, this variance can be larger, as with a check, you are depending on the recipient of the check to get the check to the bank.

It is because of this date variance that you will not necessarily mark every transaction as being cleared within the date range you set up, because some of the transactions that Shepherd's Staff shows you will not end up clearing the bank until the next month. This is also why when you set up the date range for the reconciliation, you will not necessarily set the beginning of the date range to be the first date of the month you're reconciling. You may have transactions outstanding from a previous month. Typically, these will be checks, so, a good way of finding out what date you need to set your beginning date to for your reconciliation is to find the lowest check number on your bank statement, and then look up what date you entered that into Shepherd's Staff. This would then be the beginning date of your bank statement. While this is not a totally fool-proof method, this will usually make it so you see only the appropriate transactions for the month you are trying to reconcile.

Note: You must have supervisor level access to the Finance module in order to use this utility.

1. To access the Bank Statement Reconciliation utility, in Finance, click on the "Tools/Settings" tab, and then click the radio button for "Bank statement reconciliation". After you do that, click the "Start" button.
2. Select the bank account you want to reconcile in the "Bank account" field. Only asset accounts that have the "This is a bank account" box checked on the record for the account will appear in this field.
3. Set the beginning date of your bank statement in the "Beginning date" field. This field will determine how far back the bank statement reconciliation utility will go to show you transactions.
4. Set the beginning balance from your bank statement in the "Beginning balance" field. This balance will also show in the "Beginning statement balance" section of the "Reconcile with activity in Shepherd's Staff" section of the utility.
5. Set the date of the last transaction on your bank statement in the "Ending date" field. This field determines the last date the bank statement reconciliation utility will show transactions for.
6. Set the ending balance from your bank statement in the "Ending balance" field. This balance will also show in the "Ending statement balance" section of the "Reconcile with activity in Shepherd's Staff" section of the utility.
7. You will be presented with a listing of all your uncleared transactions that fall within the date range you set up in the "Beginning date" and "Ending date" fields. For each transaction, you will be able to see the transaction type (R for receipt, P for payment, and J for journal entry), document number, date, Amount (If the transaction had a negative effect on the bank balance, it will be shown in parentheses), a cleared column, a transaction description, and a vendor for the transaction. Checking the box on the "Cleared?' column will designate that transaction as clearing the bank. You can do this by double clicking anywhere in the row, clicking on the row and pressing the space bar on your keyboard, or by clicking on the row, and then clicking the "Clear" button at the bottom of the grid.
8. As you mark transactions as being cleared, the amount of the transaction you cleared will be added to (or subtracted from) the appropriate section (Payments, Receipts, Journal entries) of the "Reconcile with activity in Shepherds' Staff" section.
9. You can search for specific transactions in the "Search" box. You can search by Doc. #, description, or vendor.
10. If you need to make any changes to a transaction, click on it within the grid, and then click the "Edit" button. This will open the transaction so you can make changes to it. The transaction will be updated in the grid when you return to the bank statement reconciliation window.
11. The "Reconcile with activity in Shepherd's Staff" section will show the totals of each transaction type you marked as cleared. Before you mark any transactions on your reconciliation as being cleared, the "Difference" section will show you the amount difference between the beginning balance and ending balance you entered at the bank. As you mark transactions as being cleared, the amounts of these transactions will be added to the appropriate section of "Reconcile with activity in Shepherd's Staff" and will also change the Difference section accordingly. Payments will be subtracted from  your beginning statement balance, Receipts will be added to your beginning statement balance, and journal entries will be added (if it caused an increase in your bank balance) or subtracted (if it caused a decrease in your bank balance). This will change the "Difference" field accordingly. In the end, your difference should get to $0.00, which means that the transactions you have cleared make your balance between the bank and Shepherd's Staff agree with each other for the bank statement.
12. If you need to save your work on your reconciliation and come back to it later, click the "Save" button at the bottom of the grid. This will let you close the bank statement reconciliation window, and when you come back to it later, after you select the bank account you were reconciling, it will pick up right where you left off.
13. The "Export" button will let you export the reconciliation grid to a spreadsheet, and the "Print" button will let you generate a reconciliation report that will show you all the details of your reconciliation, including statement beginning and end dates, beginning and ending balances, cleared transaction totals, Difference, and each transaction on the reconciliation, and whether those transactions have been cleared or not.
14. Clicking the "Post" button will finalize your reconciliation. You can only post your reconciliation when your difference is at $0.00. When you click post, this will change the status of all transactions you marked as cleared in the reconciliation as Cleared throughout the rest of the finance module. Cleared transactions can no longer be edited or voided.