After reading and studying bank reconcilliation i thought i would put it into practice, have come a bit stuck because the bank statements we get are from the 13th- 12th of the following month, not the 1st-30th of the month like what we study. Are you suppose to work it out manually?
Many banks send business bank statements out from mid month to mid month, so nothing unusual in this. For doing a bank rec if it is part of the month end procedure I would just reconcile up to the last day of the month and then reconcile from the 1st to the 12th the following month, but if you want to do them more regularly then you can do the reconciliation to whatever date you like.
It is common to reconcile to the end of the month but not mandatory. If you want to get on with it sooner try writing to your bank or getting the client to write asking them to write up the statements to the 4th of each month.
It might be different now but when I asked for 31st I found that sometimes days would be missed off if it fell on a weekend or bank holiday. Just an idea. TIm
I will write to the banks to to see if i can have it changed.
I have been taking care of my husbands books- completely wrong of course this is why I have started the icb course so i can do it correctly but it still hard as i have no on hand experience.
As i've previously mentioned that i do my husbands books. I have never done a bank rec as such, but every week i go through the bank statement (online banking) to see what expenses have been withdrawn and not posted in the books but i have never rec the figures from bank statement to cash book he has been trading for 4 years now, if i was to try and do it properly, how would i go about it? would i have to start back right at the beginning? My husband does have an accountant who does the books annually for tax purposes, if this is any help
If accounts have been previously prepared by accountant then what you should get is the last year end bank reconciliation from them.
This will detail any o/s cheques/lodgements or other adjustments at the year end and give you a point where to start the bank rec.
Would probably make sense to get your husbands accountant to sit down with you and show you how to do a bank rec. I would suggest they should show you how to do the first month in your year, you do the second month in the year under their supervision and after that you should be able to do yourself.
If you do the bank rec, which the accountant would previously had to do, then this should save the accountant time in preparing the accounts and thus reduce your husbands fee. Would get accountant to give you a fixed fee for the acocunts on the basis you provide a fully analysed set of records with bank reconciled at year end.
I think that might be a start, i suppose i didn't want to place my husband's accountant in a difficult position by asking them to show me, but as you say it will save them alot of time and hopefully my husbands fee's.
