Does anyone use an automated bank reconciliation option in their software?
I always do reconciliations myself (ie I print off the bank statement and 'tick' the transactions on whichever software I'm using) and I don't like the idea of importing the bank statement and leaving the software to enter the transactions and correctly assign them; what if the VAT invoice is missing, or a payment has been duplicated in error, or a supplier has provided something different as a one off? To me it's asking for errors.
So...am I right to do it myself or am I a dinosaur who is wasting her time (and so also wasting her clients' money)?
You're not alone. I always do the reconciliations myself as well. In fact I print off the nominal activity for the bank and tick that off against the bank statement and also do a manual bank rec on excel, just to double check figures when I do it in Sage.
I also don't fancy the idea of an automated bank reconciliation. If you have two payments/receipts for the same amount and one has gone through the bank but the other is outstanding, how does the automated system know which is which? Maybe it does know, I don't know as I've never used an automated system. But I'm with you.....I do it manually.... and I don't think that spending time making sure everything is correct and you know what's what is wasting time or clients' money
