how can you be sure your customer records are correct to the last detail the way to make sure
that all is correct is to reconcile with your customers if you have any questions about this
topic you can leave them in the comment section below and I'll do my best to help you and of
course if you feel the video helped you I hope you will click like and don't forget to subscribe to
get updates on new videos that come out all the time now you may well ask what is the customer
reconciliation process well first you both have to start from the point that you and your customer
agree that your records match the customer records for every last detail now usually that moment
in time where you agreed is usually the last statement date but if you did not have a chance
to reconcile for several months unfortunately you would have to go back to the point at which you
agreed and then start checking from that moment forward the customer is responsible for reading
the statement details and agree to the balance owed as of the closing date of whatever statement
you happen to be sending the customer must contact you if there is a discrepancy between your records
and the customer records regarding what is owed so in short we send out the statement it's their
job to make sure that it matches their records if not they have to tell us immediately so what are
the specific steps when working with customers to ensure accuracy well the first thing you have to
do is confirm that the customer has either the transaction statement or the balance forward
statement two of the three types of statements that we learned about in the previous video and
they have to have either one in order to be able to read each transaction to each other one by one
in date order usually you're doing that over the phone let's just remind you what each of those are
transaction statement or about to do this you open the new transaction menu either click on the top
left where it says new or if you don't have that go to the top right and click the plus sign close
to the cogwheel either one will open the same choices in the new transaction menu either one of
these types of statements give you the ability to look at each transaction one by one so if we make
the settings like we did in the previous video when we click preview you can see each individual
transaction listed in date order showing the money amount all of them for the month of January you
also have that ability if you choose a balance for word type of statement notice you can go one by
one and read each individual transaction and make sure nothing is left out now as you're comparing
each transaction to your customers records any difference found such as a missing transaction a
duplicate transaction an inaccurate transaction or something like that must be examined and have the
source documents for each difference checked by both you and the customer to do this in QuickBooks
Online you could preview their statement again however it's better to use the report called
transaction list by customer and it's better to use that report than anything else when you're
on the phone with the customer because that report gives you the ability to open up each transaction
as you go along and compare one by one so in other words if you're looking at the statement
you can read it but you can't double click like double-click payment on the 9th and see exactly
what I put but if I do this if I leave this window and I come over here to reports and then in
reports I look at transaction list by customer I can look at Allen and I can read each transaction
one by one in date order for every transaction that happened during that period of time but the
difference here is if I see that this particular transaction happens to be different in the report
I can double click and I can open up exactly the window that I recorded the original transaction in
and if the customer disagrees and I'm wrong I can change it right here and save it then all I would
have to do is print a fresh statement and mail it to the customer so they have confidence that they
are correct now if you still disagree with your customer that means that you would have to go back
to the original source document related to this transaction if it were a check you'd have to go
back to the check if it were a credit card swipe you'd have to look at the statement or if you
physically attached a file you could reopen this and click attachment and you would actually see
the attachment which would be normally the picture of the source document that you attached to this
payment receipt and we are going to talk about attachments to transactions very soon but you
don't have to attach a document or a picture to a transaction you can take the source document and
file it and then when you reopen this you can go and compare what you put to what the actual source
document was now this procedure seems easy enough and it will fix every possible mistake that you
could make when keeping customer records except one very special type of mistake what if the total
balance as of the statement date is an agreement between you and your custom but the balance of
each individual open invoice on the statement was different in your customer records what would you
do in that case well first you'd have to ask what mistake was made and then you'd have to ask how
do you go and fix it it's very challenging and that's what's coming up in the very next video