I have my first job interview tomorrow in a looooong time as I have been travelling. I have mostly worked in accounts payable and have been applying to so many agencies with competition so tough I just found out tonight I finally have an interview tomorrow.The job requires that I have strong cash and bank reconciliation skills. I am not so sure that these skills are so strong. can anyone discuss how these skills within accounts payable would be used and also how I would show to have a little bit extra knowledge than normal with these reconciliations.
Im sure i already know this but need a bit of a memory refresh and also settle a few nerves help me focus.
reconciliation skills would be matching up quarterly statements from the bank to the company however how do i discuss this and should i discuss the following as reconciliation?
Matching purchase Orders to specific accounts
chasing up purchase orders from purchasing where PO's not assigned
end of month issuing customer statements and chasing up unpaid invoices.
Im sure there is more to it and feel i may be a bit of course
please please please can you forward me your valued knowledge.
Matching up the quarterly bank statements is pretty much an exercise of ticking off the payments (and receipt) on the actual bank statement compared to the cash book in the accounts. reconciliation (as you know) means agreeing, so you are agreeing that what you have in the accounts is what you have on the bank statement. However, it will rarely match as there will be cheques written and sent that are in the cash book but have yet to be presented to the bank. Also there may be direct debits etc on the bank statement that have not been included in the cash book. So the closing balances will be different but these items should make up the difference. Do you know what software you will be using?
Also you will be reconciling the suppliers statements, ie what they say you owe to what appears on your ledgers. again it will either be a case of looking at the balance on the software and if it is different, ticking it off again.
On the sales ledger, you will be sending out a statement based on what you have on the ledger, ie invoices posted less receipts allocated. sending out these statements and chasing up overdue invoices is, as I'm sure you know, called credit control (sorry if I am stating the obvious).
