I'm wondering if anyone can help me. My biggest client has got auditors coming next week. They need a certain amount of information by this afternoon. I have given most.
The one thing I am struggling with is the bank reconciliations. I of course know how to do bank recs but they want the year end reconciliations of the difference between the book balance on sage and the statement balance.
This will of course by un-presented cheques but what is the quickest way for me to find this information on Sage? Year end is 31st March 2014 and at the time I didn't save the un-reconciled amounts as didn't think I needed to....!! If I use the reports for un-reconciled transactions as at 31/03/14 none come up??!?!?!?! Help please
If you run a nominal activity report for the period, the right hand column headed B will show either R or N for reconciled or non reconciled transactions.
Not trying to be pedantic, but what they are asking for IS the bank reconciliation. Ticking off entries on Sage is just the first part of the job.
The only way to find them now is probably to print out the last month or so of bank transactions from Sage for last year, and see which ones appear on the bank statements for the new year. If that doesn't explain the difference easily, you'll need to tick off the transactions on last years statements too, until every entry is accounted for. Use copy statements as they tend to get covered in ticks, crosses, highlight pens etc as you tear your hair out trying to get it right! Unless it's a very small business, this isn't a 5 minute job, and not one to be done under pressure.
I used to love doing this sort of thing, but not when it was urgent!
Option 2, if you go to the bank recs screen and hit the history button at the bottom, you might find all previous bank recs, saved as pdf files. In which case just find the year end bank rec.
Thank you both for your speedy replies. I usually like this sort of thing but hate the pressure. I'm not supposed to be working, its the summer holidays and have the kids under my feet too, so not the best situation. I work on their system remotely so the only way I can print is by exporting to excel, saving and sending it from their work email they've given me to my private one!
Gordon - Trouble is with doing the nominal activity I have since reconciled April's, Mays and June's so all transactions that have been reconciled since year end would also show as reconciled on this report. Also for some reason when I go into history I have Jan 14 and May 14 and June, but for some reason Feb and March didn't save automatically, so don't have this report which would have been really handy! I think this may be due to them moving premises at this time, but I can only guess...Urgh!
John - If I had realised it wouldn't be that easy to find the un-reconciled transactions at a later date I would have saved the file. It's certainly something I will do going forward, especially at year end.
Its not a very small company. I average about 50 hours a month for them, so suspect going through the bank statements (which I don't have paper copies of - I have a pdf file for each day they send me!)
I honestly thought this information would be straight forward and easy thing to find!
Thanks so much for your help and taking the time to reply, if you think of anything else please let me know!
A bookkeeper will continue to reconcile on top of reconcile with Sage, and so loses the historical info... but an accountant should have a year end reconciliation on file to support the bank figure on the balance sheet.
You should always keep a back up of Sage, taken directly before you run the year-end procedure. Again, if you are only the bookkeeper, would you have sent the accountant a pre-year end back up?
What you could do, is go into Financials, sort by date order. Go down to the last 31.03.14 entry, and then work your way back up, looking at the bank rec date.
Any pre 31.03.14 entries that have post 31.03.14 bank rec dates are what you want
You should always keep a back up of Sage, taken directly before you run the year-end procedure. Again, if you are only the bookkeeper, would you have sent the accountant a pre-year end back up?
To correct myself - this might not work, if the year end procedure is run mid-year, when the new year bank rec's have been run. You would need to have taken the back up before posting anything for April. Sorry! Always print off something when you have done the 31.03.14 bank rec, instead, maybe!?!
(But you should keep this back up)
-- Edited by FoxAccountancyServices on Wednesday 30th of July 2014 03:54:12 PM
Option 2, if you go to the bank recs screen and hit the history button at the bottom, you might find all previous bank recs, saved as pdf files. In which case just find the year end bank rec.
Regards
Gordon
This is a good suggestion also, because if you find the first report that was reconciled in April, you should see March dates detailed on it.
I'm just the bookkeeper, there is an accountant that works for them just a few days a month and is also swearing at the additional work we've been given at such short notice. I honestly didn't think this was in my remit, I just reconciled the day to day, month to month work on Sage. I don't mind doing it and learning but don't like the pressure! I will certainly be making sure I save each month in the future. I've not been part of an audit before so didn't know what would have been needed and what isn't saved automatically in Sage.
I went to the Bank activity and sorted by reconciled date and then went through all the transcations that reconciled in the following two months with a transaction date of pre-year end......put these all manually into a spreadsheet, crossed my fingers and hey presto the figures actually match up!! but yes thank you Michelle, Gordon's was a good idea, I just panicked too much to think about going into April's!
So happy!
Thanks again so much for all your input, you all stopped me feeling along and calmed me down enough to try and think logically!
This is why I always do a manual bank rec on excel for my own records too. (You know, bank balance at end date, less unpresented cheques, add unpresented deposits = cash book balance). Then it would have been a simple job to look back to the year end reconciliation for the information you wanted.
