HOW TO DO A BANK RECON ON LEGALSUITE

Author:                   Cindy Kruger

Date:                      April 2008

Audience:             Bookkeeping

Summary:              How to do a bank recon on LegalSuite

CONTENTS:

· Introduction

· Accessing the Bank Reconciliation

· Definitions on the Bank Reconciliation

· Explanation of the Balances Screen

· Processing the Bank Reconciliation

Introduction:

Use the Bank Reconciliation function to reconcile items on the specified Bank's Statement with Business Transactions for the Bank Account in the Business Ledger. A user will reconcile the bank account to make sure that the information in LegalSuite agrees to actual Bank Statement.

LegalSuite has recently changed the Bank Reconciliation program. This new Bank Reconciliation is more advanced with better features.

Accessing the Bank Reconciliation:

On the business ledger window click on the bank reconciliation  icon to access the bank recon program.  The following window will appear:

The Bank Account field is currently blank.  You have to select the Bank Account you wish to reconcile.  You can do so by clicking on the black arrow pointing down to activate the drop down menu.  Alternatively you can click on the lookup library button and select the bank account from there. 

The Period and Year will default to the period you are currently in.  Should you wish to reconcile a prior period, type in the period and click on the drop down if you wish to change to a period from Last Year.

The bank recon transactions can be sorted by recon number, date, period, Amount  or type order.  The default is by period.

By default it shows all the transactions in your bank reconciliation:  Reconciled, unreconciled and also all transaction types: receipts, payments and other.  Should you wish to filter the transactions, click on the yellow filter button and remove the tick from the applicable  types,  to only view the transactions you currently want to work with.

To find an item in the bank recon, select the criteria you wish to search by, by clicking on the black arrow pointing down to activate the drop down list. You can search by Recon No,Voucher, Amount or Date.  Fill in the voucher number or amount in the next field to begin the search.  To move to the next or previous found item click on the blue arrows pointing left and right.

Once you have selected a bank account and period it will load the transactions and balances for the applicable bank account:

Definitions on the Bank Reconciliation:

Reconciled items represent the items that have been ticked off against transactions appearing on the bank statement for the period being reconciled.

UnReconciled items represent entries in the Cash Book that have not been ticked off against entries on the bank statement on hand to date.

Adjustments are items that need to be added to the bank reconciliation only. These items are not posted financial transactions but can be used by auditors if any adjustments are necessary or to reconcile part of a multiple transaction.

Explanation of Info screen:

Left block:

The Ending Balance on this screen is the amount you fed in as the ending balance on the general screen. The Opening Balance is made up of all the previous reconciled items on your system and should equal the balance on your last bank statement (up to where you last reconciled and cleared the items).  The reconciled amount is the total of all the currently reconciled items.  The difference is the calculated amount (Ending balance less opening balance and reconciled items) and should equal zero for your bankrecon to balance.

Right block:

The Cash Book Balance is the closing balance on your cashbook for the specific period you selected.  The UnReconciled total is the total of all the unreconciled transactions in your bank recon. The On Statement amount is calculated by subtracting the UnReconciled transactions from your Cash Book Balance and should equal the closing balance on your physical bank statement up in till the point where you have reconciled.

Processing the Bank Reconciliation:

Once you have selected the bank account and period the day-to-day bank reconciliation is processed as follows:-

Make sure you have all the relevant bank statements before starting your reconciliation.  Make sure that the opening balance on your bank statement agrees with the On Statement (Calc) on your bank recon info screen, prior to starting your reconciliation. 

Now search your bank recon for the first amount that has gone through on your bank statement.  When you have found your entry and the Cash Book and Bank Statement agree click on the Reconcile button

To reconcile the item.  If you click on the Recon button again the entry will be un-ticked (un-reconciled).  This is used when erroneously ticking an entry.  Once you have run through all the entries on your bank statement you wish to reconcile enter the ending balance on statement after the last entry on your bank statement to see if you are in balance:

The tick next to the entries indicates that it has been reconciled.  The difference should be zero.  And your On Statement (Calc) amount should also agree with your ending balance.

You should now print your bank reconciliation report so that you have a hard copy of your reconciliation prior to clearing the reconciled transactions.

Once you are satisfied that your bank recon is in balance you can click on the Allocate transactions button (next to the print button)  to clear the reconciled transactions.  The following screen will pop up:

Here you are required to feed in your bank statement number of the bank statement you just reconciled .Click on Yes if you wish to go ahead.  Or No if you wish to cancel this process. 

The reconciled transactions have now been removed from your bank reconciliation and the Opening Balance would have been adjusted to equal the total of all the reconciled transactions cleared to date.

You are now ready to start the reconciliation for the next day / week or period.