Sage 100

Bank Rec - how we love it. I have a client who 6 months ago messed things up by adding two checks into Check, Deposit and Adjustment entry instead of clearing the checks from AP like they should have. The resulting issue is that the two checks from AP are still there as uncleared and the part that hurts my brain is that if I delete them or clear them, the registers are out of balance by that amount. I know I can force the balance by changing the current balance in Bank Code Maintenance, but their current balance actually matches to the GL and having it not match gives them spasms. Can anyone think of a way to get those entries out of there and still preserve the current bank balance?

Rebuild sorts. Then wind up changing the bank balance to equal today's GL balance exactly. That's my start. Then I look to see what else I can do to eliminate - usually by clearing the two items and/or rebuild the sort

Kate - All I can say is I feel for ya. I'm working on someone's bank rec now myself and have similar issues. I don't know why such a little module is such a brain-drainer.

I recommend to all my clients that they use the ""old school"" 4 column bank reconciliation to TRULY balance their GL to the bank statement. I have encountered many instances where the MAS BR will ""balance"" but the GL doesn't reconcile to the bank statement. Attached is an example. MAS says all is well, but for the second month now, there is a problem. A common problem is when a check may be dated 3/31, but the GL is updated on 4/1. And the check cleared on 3/31. An anal accountants nightmare!

You can just delete the entries from the check/deposti/adj screen. I just learned that the other day, after spending WAY too much time with a client on a similar issue.

I have utilized the delete many times! Unfortunately, in this situation deleting them throws all the balances off and I just need to convince the client to accept having the BR not match the GL. I can already feel the accountant twitching.

Turn off integration between ap and gl, them delete the checks from bank rec, and repost through ap.

This is what I ended up doing: I made a fake bank rec for just the two checks. In Reconcile Bank, I entered a negative amount as the bank statement balance to make the ""out of balance by"" zero. Printed the Reconciliation Report and purged the cleared documents. The bank balance stays the same and the duplicate checks are gone.

Thanks for the feedback.

Why couldn't you have deleted the checks in BR, then changed the bank balance back to what it was before the deletion, thus keeping BR in balance with the GL?

I tried deleting the checks and then modifying the bank balance, but then the reconciliation was out of balance by those two checks. We thought we had it fixed with the mini-bank rec situation but then the out of balance came back the next month. I told them we were going up against simple math and either the GL had to be wrong or the bank rec was wrong. They fought me on it for a few weeks and finally re-audited their GL and *surprise* found an entry that was causing the out of balance. Sometimes I love clients even more than I love bank rec.

Maybe I'm just being an old accountant, but if the client entered two new transactions (so the original transactions are now doubled), why don't you enter to new offsetting entires and then clear the check against the offset? If the original mistake posted through to the GL, then the reversal will correct this as well. That way, the GL balances with the BR balances and all God's Children should be happy. What am I missing?

Are all God's Children ever happy? The issue was that the original GL entry and duplicate checks were entered in September of 2010 and it wasn't until now that the customer decided to take issue with it. We were dealing with half of the entries being cleared out and gone and no idea what had been done over a year ago. Had they noticed the issue back then, your solution would have worked!

@KateKrueger did the original entries to BR hit the GL? If so, their effects remain and need to be reversed. If not, turn off the interface, process the corrections, then turn the interface back on. Am I still missing something? (My wife tells me yes all the time so don't be shy!)

@ShawnSlavin half of the entries were done in check, deposit and adjustment entry without posting back to the GL and then on a different date, the entries were made to the GL. They have since made correcting entries to the GL and since the bank rec portion was cleared last year, i think they are back in balance and happy again.

@KateKrueger I'm slow on the pick up at times but it sounds as if you have things tied down.