(upbeat music)
- [Bonnie] Beginning balance mismatch means that someone
edited or deleted a reconciled transaction.
To see how all this works,
let's look at the checking account register.
On the homepage,
head to the banking panel and click check register.
In this case, the company has more than one bank account.
In the use register dialog box,
click the down arrow and choose checking, then click OK
and that opens up the checking account register window.
Let's scroll back a bit
and here we have on September 22nd,
there's a check for electric service.
It's number 1915 for $80.45.
One of the common culprits is when somebody changes
the cleared status of a transaction.
And here's how that happens.
In the check mark cell,
if you click that cell, well, first of all,
you get a warning.
So don't say that QuickBooks didn't warn you.
And it'll tell you that it's going to mess things up.
But if you click yes anyway, it will change it
and you'll see that there's an asterisk
instead of a check mark.
If you proceed and click record, you get another warning
and it tells you that it's not a good idea.
But if you click yes, it changes the transaction.
Let's change another reconciled transaction.
Another culprit is when somebody changes
the amount of a transaction.
Well, we've got this electronic funds transfer
to machine cleaners and it's $125.
What if we select that and type 150 instead
and then just go forward and click record.
Again, you're going to get a warning that it's not a good idea.
But people are people.
And if you click yes,
QuickBooks will let you save that transaction.
Well, let's see what this does
when you try to reconcile the account.
Head up to the banking menu and choose reconcile.
You get the begin reconciliation dialog box.
In this case, the statement date is actually September 30th.
I click the statement date calendar icon
and then choose the correct date,
but the beginning balance isn't right either.
Let's say on my bank statement,
the balance is $29,581.85.
Well, you can see that's not what QuickBooks has.
When this happens,
head down to the bottom left corner of the dialog box
and click locate discrepancies.
Then in this window, click discrepancy report.
Lo and behold, there are the culprits.
Now, this report actually shows you, first of all,
the type of change.
So you can see that with machine cleaners,
the amount was changed.
With electric service, it was uncleared.
You can also see the dollar amount of the effect,
and that'll tell you what your beginning balance is off by.
Well, we've got our two culprits
and we can see them in the report.
Let's now correct them.
It's easy enough to correct
the machine cleaners transaction.
In fact, you can just point at it in the report
and you'll see this magnifying glass with the Z.
That means you can double-click it.
And that opens it up in the appropriate window.
In this case, it's write checks.
Now, we know that the original amount was $125.
You can select that in the dollar field,
type the correct amount, and then click save and close.
Now, here's the interesting thing.
You get this message and it says you can do this,
but it's not a good idea.
Well, in this case, it is a good idea
because we're trying to get it back
to what it's supposed to be.
Go ahead and click yes.
You get a message that the report needs to be refreshed.
Click yes.
And sure enough, now that we've corrected that transaction,
it disappears from the report.
Okay, so we just have to correct the electric service.
To do that, I'm going to click in the background
to get back to the checking account register window
and we bring that up
and here's the electric service transaction.
What we want is we want this asterisk
to go back to being a check mark.
And what that means is you have to click that
until it changes to a check mark.
The first time you click it, it actually empties the cell.
That's not what we want.
Click again and you get the check mark.
Click the record button and then click yes to say yes,
you want to record your changes.
Now, let's go back and look at that report.
On the left icon bar, click open windows,
and then click previous reconciliation.
It tells you the report needs to be refreshed. Click yes.
And now the report is empty,
so we know that all the discrepancies
have been taken care of.
Let's head to the top right corner
and click the X to close that report.
Now, let's check the reconcile again.
I go up to the banking menu and choose reconcile.
Now the statement date,
because QuickBooks automatically changes the date
every time you do this,
we're going to click that icon and go back to September 30th,
but the beginning balance finally matches
what's on the bank statement.
I'm going to click cancel because there's one other thing
I want to show you.
Another culprit is when somebody deletes
a reconciled transaction.
I'm going to scroll up a little further,
and here September 10th,
I have an electronic funds transfer
for merchant bank, $211.2,
and it's for bank service charges.
Let's say that somebody deletes this.
If you right-click and choose delete check
and then click OK to confirm, the transaction is gone.
If I go to the banking menu and choose reconcile,
you can see once again the beginning balance does not match
what's on the bank statement.
Remember, the bank statement says $29,581.85.
If I try to use the technique that we used the last time,
which is clicking locate discrepancies
and then clicking discrepancy report,
well, yeah, you see that it's deleted
and you see the dollar amount,
but you don't know the accounts, if there were splits,
you just don't have the information you need
to recreate this transaction.
Fortunately, there is a way to get that info and here's how.
You go to the reports menu, click that,
point to accountant and taxes,
and then choose voided deleted transactions detail.
Aha, this report it shows the deleted transaction,
but you can actually see the accounts and the splits.
So now you have the info to recreate it.
This was a check,
so you can head to the banking menu and choose write checks.
We know that there was no number.
It was actually an electronic funds transfer,
so we type EFT in the number box.
It was dated on September 10th.
In the date box, you can type the date
or click the icon and choose the date.
In the pay to the order of dropdown list,
you choose merchant bank.
You know that the amount was $211.2
and it was for bank service charges.
So everything is the way it needs to be.
Click save and close.
I'm going to close these reports,
so I head to the top right corner and click the X.
Click the X on this one as well.
And I'm going to click cancel and locate discrepancies.
Well, now we've recreated the transaction,
but it's not reconciled.
You can see that right here.
We need to reconcile that transaction.
To do that, head to the banking menu and choose reconcile.
Once again, we have to bring the statement date
back to September 30th, so I choose that
and we've got the beginning balance
and that's still not correct.
So what we're going to here is in the ending balance box,
we type the beginning balance
from the bank statement, $29,581.85.
Then click continue.
Now you can see that the difference is off by $211.2.
That's the one that we recreated.
So all we have to do is turn on the check mark cell
for that transaction.
The difference is zero. Click reconcile now.
In this case, you can display the reconciliation reports
or print them.
I'm just going to click close.
Now you can see that the transaction is reconciled.
Here's the check mark and your bank account is back on track
to be reconciled in the future.
That's how you coax your QuickBooks beginning balance
to match the beginning balance on your bank statement.
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