This can happen if someone has used file maintenance to modify or delete transactions that have been reconciled.
It basically means you need to reconcile manually to try and find where it's gone wrong, and then correct it.
The best way to do this is to open each saved reconcilation (start a new reconcilation, click 'View history' along the bottom). Look for the reconcilation date in the PDF file, and then go to financials and search "Where Bank reconciled date is equal to <the bank rec date>".
You need to check these off against the reconcilation. As per my first sentence, there are two likely contenders for your problem: Deleted transactions, and modified transactions.
The deleted ones, if there are any, are going to be easiest: As long as the client hasn't compressed the data to remove deleted transactions, they will be (red, obviously) in the search results: In this case, you'll find transactions on the reconcilation which *only* match to the deleted ones in the search results.
Modified ones might not stand out so easily: In some cases, you might find a transaction on the reconcilation that you haven't matched to the search results, and one in the results not on the reconcilation. (In all likelihood, the details will match - such as cheque number or whatever, and just the amount has changed).
In other cases, they might have unreconciled it - in which case it'll be on the reconcilation, and didn't turn up in the search results, so you'll need to find the transaction in Sage.
The corrections you'll need to make when you find the transaction(s) that caused the problem will obviously be up to you once you've found it/them, and investigated why the changes have been made.
Edit: Forgot the forum parsed out the contents of the angle brackets in the quick reply.
-- Edited by VinceH on Thursday 31st of May 2012 12:48:56 AM
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
I have a new client who has been using sage, however its in abit of a mess.
When I double click on the bank account, so you have the account details, activity tab, memo tab etc, it says that the last bank reconciliation was performed on the 04/04/2012 with a balance of say £(5,000). (this agrees with the bank statements)
When I open the reconciliation window for the same bank account, it says in the lower pane o/bal last reconciled balance say £(3000).
So for some reason the two balances differ. Has anyone come across and explain how I may correct it.
As an afterthought, a couple of 'preliminary' checks you could do in the hope the errors will be easy to find, or will just be obvious and stand out:
1: start a reconciliation and look at the unreconciled transactions: investigate any old ones that are still there - they might be transactions that have been unreconciled via file maintenance. Do be careful, though - such a transaction might be listed there because, for example, it's a duplicate, and the other was reconciled.
2: do a search in the financials for all transactions that have been bank reconciled, and scan the list for red (deleted) ones, looking into any you see, since they may be a part of the problem.
If you're really lucky, the problem will be down to just one deleted transaction, and it'll stick out like a sore thumb!
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
This i think is going to take a while!. For some reason, when I go into the bank reconciliation and choose history, it doesn't show any saved PDF's. The Sage software has recently been saved to a laptop to allow me to work on it, but I'm guessing the saved reconciliations are on the other computer!
I have noticed a couple of deleted transactions that were reconciled previously so will investigate these.
Possibly - if the data was transferred using a backup/restore, whether the saved reconciliations are transferred depends on the backup settings (ie which items are included). I haven't at any point tested this, but I'd guess things like the reconciliation PDFs are only backed up if "Company Archives" is ticked in the Backup -> Advanced Options tab.
And the other possibility is that they've simply turned off the saving of reconciliations. Settings -> Bank Defaults -> Create Bank Reconcilation PDF.
With luck the transactions you've spotted might be the problem - or a part of it.
If not, you might be able to still work back as I suggested, but it might be more hit and miss: You use the statements instead of the reconcilation PDFs, but you have to try to identify the date they used when reconciling each one.
Hopefully, they'll have either reconciled each day's transactions (so the reconciled date is each day's date) or simply used the last date on each statement - and not, as I've seen done, simply accepted the defaults when clicking reconcile, so the reconciled date is actually the day on which they did the reconcilation; the date the statements run to, plus a few days before the bank sent them and a few days for the post, with a few more added for good luck until they got around to doing it.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
It should be possible to manually transfer the historical bank rec pdfs from the other computer (if you know what folder they have been saved in, and provided that they haven't been deleted, of course)
Occasionally, the pdfs don't exist at all despite what the settings are. (eg, if Sage crashed in the middle of saving the bank rec, or if there is a problem with the pdf printer)
I've managed to sort it. I had to use the sage bank statements and go through each reconciliation period until the closing balances differed from the original bank statements. I then manually ticked and reconciled until I was then able to locate the missing figures which had been deleted by the client!
I'm not a great lover of Sage, but its even worse when the client knows nothing about how to enter information, and his accountant has left him without any correction for several years!
I await to see what other little gems I find in the figures
