Introduction
If you enter transactions directly from your bank statements, then the bank account balance per VT Transaction+ should agree exactly with your last bank statement. However, many businesses enter transactions into VT Transaction+ as soon they incur them. There may then be some delay before they appear on a bank statement. This is especially true for cheques sent to suppliers as there may be a delay before these cheques are banked. In these circumstances, you should use the bank reconciliation procedure in VT Transaction+ to agree the balance. It is fast and easy to use and provides a list of the entries you have made in VT Transaction+ that have not yet gone through your bank account.
Reconciling your bank account is a vital step in ensuring the accuracy of your accounts, and also highlights any mistakes made by your bank.
Bank accounts are reconciled by displaying the bank account in the bank reconciliation view. Any number of bank accounts can be maintained and reconciled.
Transactions that have been reconciled can still be edited, but the system will not allow you to make any change to a transaction that would alter the closing balance of a reconciled statement.
Step by step
1.At the bottom of the screen, select the period corresponding to the bank statement being reconciled, e.g. for a bank statement at 31 January 2023, select Jan 2023.
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2.Click on the Reconcile bank account button on the toolbar (R). This displays the bank account in the account window with the view set to bank reconciliation
3.Ensure that the Balance per last statement reconciled shown at the bottom of the window is correct. If you have inherited a reconciliation from another system, click on the entry representing the statement balance instead
4.Click on each item also on the bank statement being reconciled (do not click on any text shown in blue as this jumps you to another report)
5.If you find you have omitted transactions from VT Transaction+, enter them now
6.If an entry is incorrect in VT Transaction+, click on it with the right mouse button and choose Edit Transaction from the pop-up menu
7.If the bank statement contains an entry in error, enter it as a transaction and analyse it to a bank errors account. When the error is subsequently corrected, enter it and analyse it to the same account
8.If you have correctly selected all the entries which are on the statement being reconciled, the current statement balance should be correctly displayed in the row above the column headings
9.To save the reconciliation, click on the Add reconciliation mark button (§) that appears when entries are selected on the toolbar just above the entries
Section of the bank account window in the reconciliation view showing the Add Reconciliation mark button
Displaying/printing statements and undoing reconciliations
Bank statements as such are not saved by VT Transaction+, but reconciled entries can be shown grouped by bank statement. These ‘statements’ in VT Transaction+ are identical to the underlying bank statements except that the entries may be in a different order.
To display a summary of reconciled statements, click on the Display statements summary button on the toolbar at the bottom of the account window, or click on the Balance per last statement reconciled caption in the reconciliation view. This displays the Statements summary dialog. To display the entries on a particular statement, click on a statement in the Entries column of the dialog. In the Entries dialog, there are buttons to change the date or number of the statement, or to de-reconcile the entries if you have made a mistake.
The dialogs referred to above both have a Print button. However, there is very little need to print a statement as it is permanently available on-screen, and the amounts of the entries that make it up can no longer be edited.
Displaying/printing bank reconciliations
A reconciliation can be displayed at any time by clicking on the R button on the toolbar, or by clicking on the Reconciliation tab if you are already displaying the bank account window.
The reconciliation displayed is the last one dated on or before the end of the current accounting period. If you want to display an earlier reconciliation, simply change the current year/period back to an earlier period by clicking on the captions on the application status bar. If the reconciliation you are displaying is not the latest one, a reconciliation mark (§) against an entry indicates that the entry is matched off to a later statement.
You can print a reconciliation by clicking on the Print button on the main toolbar. However, as with statements, there is very little need as it is permanently available on-screen, and the entries that make up the statement balance can no longer be edited.
Reconciliations for all bank accounts in a ledger can be displayed/printed by choosing the Display>Ledger Report>Single Ledger command.
