Bulk Reconciling and Cash Coding

Did you know you can bulk reconcile your bank transactions by using the cash coding function?

To access the cash coding select the cash coding tab from the bank reconciliation screen. If you don’t see this option, give us a quick call to update your user settings.

Cash Coding Tips

• Sort statement lines by a specific column to group similar transaction lines together. Do this first to avoid losing any changes.
• To ensure you don’t reconcile a statement line that already has a transaction in Xero, select the Show lines with suggested matches A green tick shows at the end of the statement line if there’s a suggested match.
• Reconcile up to 100 statement lines at a time.
• If you’ve already entered a payee as a contact, start typing the contact’s name in the Payee field, then select them from your contact list. This avoids creating a duplicate contact if the payee on the statement line is different from the contact name in Xero.
• Hover over the note icon to view a comment added to the statement line.
• Create bank rules for regular transactions while cash coding, so you don’t have to code them again next time.

If you would like to learn more, call our office on 03 5833 3000.

Bank Reconciliations

Reconciling your bank accounts is one of the most important bookkeeping tasks. Depending on the business it can be done daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.

What is bank reconciliation and why is it important?

A bank reconciliation is the process of matching the transactions in your accounting software with the actual transactions in your bank account.

It allows you to check that all bank transactions have been entered into your software, ensuring your financial reports are an accurate reflection of your business. It also helps find data entry/payment errors that need to be corrected and verifies your cash flow.

How do I reconcile my accounts?

Depending on your software and whether you use bank feeds there are different procedures for reconciling your bank accounts. But the end result will always be the same, the Closing balance on your bank statement will match the Calculated balance in your software.

You can find step-by-step instructions for your software in these help articles:

AccountRight | Essentials

What if my account doesn’t reconcile?

If your account doesn’t reconcile you need to find what is causing the out of balance and make the necessary changes.

Some of the common causes for an out of balance amount are:

• the wrong date has been entered
• the wrong balance on your statement has been entered
• not all bank transactions have been recorded in your software
• a transaction is selected that doesn’t appear on the bank statement
• a transaction amount has been recorded incorrectly, eg, $217.50 instead of $271.50
• a previously reconciled transaction has been deleted or changed in your software causing it to become unreconciled

To help you find the cause and correct any errors our help articles have detailed information on reconciling your bank accounts:

AccountRight: Resolving out of balance bank reconciliations

Essentials: Reconciling with a paper bank statement

Merge Similar Accounts

Occasionally in QuickBooks similar or redundant accounts are created in error.

The best option to solving this issue and allowing you to manage your accounts properly up your is to merge accounts.

Merging is also available for employees as outlined below.

Steps to merge accounts

Step 1: Choose two accounts for merging. First, choose one account name and then move to another account for merging.

Step 2: Then right-click and then paste and the name of the account you want all to be merged into.

Step 3: Click Save. After that QuickBooks will ask if you want to merge the accounts. Click on Yes.

Steps to merge employees

1. On the left menu, choose Employees, then Click Edit.
2. Change the First name and Last name field to exactly match the employee you wish to keep.
3. Change the Display Name to match the name you just entered.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Yes to confirm that you want to merger the two employees

Undo a Reconciliation Mistake

It happens to everyone: You’re in a groove, zooming through your bank feed, and before you know it, you’ve incorrectly matched a transaction. Xero’s “Unreconcile” feature lets you fix this mistake quickly. Since unreconcile keeps the account transaction and the bank statement line but removes the connection between them, this Xero tip will save you a ton of time and hassle.

To unreconcile an account transaction:

1. Click on the three little dots to the right of the account name on the Dashboard.
2. Go to Account Transactions under the Find header.
3. Click the transaction you want to change to open it.
4. On the next screen, click Options and then select Unreconcile.
5. Click OK on the pop-up window to unreconcile the transaction.

After you’ve completed this process, you can now re-reconcile the bank statement line.

Bulk Delete Old Jobs

If you have a large amount of old job codes that you no longer need that’s causing a large list being more difficult to scroll through or even making the software a little bit slower, you can follow the steps below on how to delete all the older jobs in Bulk.

This method has been tested with AccountRight 20xx.x, AccountRight Classic (v19) and AccountEdge.

Note: Always make a backup before importing incase anything goes wrong.

Steps to setting up bulk deleting

1. Go to Lists > Jobs

2. Click New and create a new Header Job called “DELETE”

3. Click OK then go to: File > Import & Export assistant

4. Choose Export Data

5. Export Jobs

6. Just click Next when asked what format you want (We want Tabs to make life easier)

7. Add all Fields to export:

8. Click Export and save the JOBS.TXT file somewhere on your computer (Like the Desktop)

9. Once exported, close the Import & Export Assistant in AccountRight and go to where you exported it

10. Open the file in Excel (Support note: Opening an export file in Excel)

11. In Excel just add the DELETE Job Number to the “Sub-job of” field on the Jobs you want to delete: