The Charge Statement Reconciliation utility is a way for you to double-check the transactions that you have entered into Shepherd's Staff against what your charge account provider has applied to your charge account. Shepherd's Staff accomplishes this task by taking the beginning balance from your charge account statement, applying each transaction you have marked as clearing the charge account provider to that balance and providing you with an ending balance, which when compared to your charge statement, should match. Charge accounts are most typically credit cards, so this is how you would reconcile your credit card statements.
Typically, charge account reconciliations are performed for one charge account 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 charge statement reconciliation, you'll be asked to put in the opening date and closing date from your charge account statement. These dates make up the date range of transactions that Shepherd's Staff will show you when running your Charge Statement Reconciliation. Note that the dates you see on your charge statement can vary from what they show in Shepherd's Staff because the charge account provider will show the date that these transactions cleared their system, 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.
Because of this small variance, the opening date will not always be right at the start of each month you reconcile, and you may need to go back a few days to the end of the previous month to include all transactions needed on your Bank Statement Reconciliation.
Note: You must have supervisor-level access to the Finance module in order to use this utility.
- To access the Charge Statement Reconciliation utility, in Finance, click on the "Tools/Settings" tab, and then click the radio button for "Charge statement reconciliation". After you do that, click the "Start" button.
- Select the charge account you want to reconcile in the "Charge account" field. Only liability accounts that have the "This is a charge account" box checked on the record for the account will appear in this field.
- Set the opening date of your charge account statement in the "Opening date" field. This field will determine how far back the charge statement reconciliation utility will go to show you transactions.
- Set the opening balance from your charge account statement in the "Previous balance" field. This balance will also be shown in the "Previous statement balance" section of the "Reconcile with activity in Shepherd's Staff" section of the utility.
- Set the date of the last transaction on your bank statement in the "Closing date" field. This field determines the last date the charge statement reconciliation utility will show transactions.
- Set the Ending balance from your charge account statement in the "New balance" field. This will also show in the "New statement balance:" field in the "Reconcile with activity in Shepherd's Staff" section of the utility.
- You will be presented with a listing of all your unreconciled transactions that fall within the date range you set up in the "Opening date" and "Closing 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), Action, document number, date, Amount (If the transaction decreased the charge account balance, it will be shown in parentheses), a "Reconciled?" column, a transaction description, and a vendor for the transaction. Checking the box on the "Reconciled?' column will designate that transaction as clearing the charge account provider. 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 "Reconcile" button at the bottom of the grid.
- As you mark transactions as being reconciled, the amount of the transaction you reconciled will be added to (or subtracted from) the appropriate section (Debt payments, Purchases, Receipts / advances, Interest and fees) of the "Reconcile with activity in Shepherds' Staff" section. (Receipts/ advances are created by making a journal entry that increases (Debits) an asset account as well as increases (Credits) the charge account. Interest and fees are recorded by making a journal entry that increases (Debits) an expense account and increases (Credits) the charge account).
- You can search for specific transactions in the "Search" box. You can search by Doc. #, description, or vendor.
- 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.
- The "Reconcile with activity in Shepherd's Staff" section will show the totals of each transaction type you marked as reconciled. Before you mark any transactions on your reconciliation as being reconciled, 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 reconciled, 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. Debit payments will be subtracted from your previous statement balance, Purchases will be added to your opening statement balance, as well as Receipts/advances and Interest and fees. This will change the "Difference" field accordingly. In the end, your difference should get to $0.00, which means that the transactions you have reconciled make your balance between the charge account provider and Shepherd's Staff agree with each other for the bank statement.
- If you need to save your work on your reconciliation and come back to it later, click the "Save work" button at the bottom of the grid. This will let you close the charge statement reconciliation window, and when you come back to it later, after you select the charge account you were reconciling, it will pick up right where you left off.
- 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 opening and closing dates, opening and closing balances, reconciled transaction totals, Difference, and each transaction on the reconciliation, and whether those transactions have been reconciled or not.
- Clicking the "Post" button will finalize your reconciliation. You can only post your reconciliation when your difference is at $0.00. This will post your reconciliation. Unlike the Bank Account Reconciliation, this does not change the status of the reconciled transactions in the Status column, so you can still go back and edit these transactions, but they will not appear in the Charge Statement Reconciliation utility again.