QB Issue Resolution:
Lets deal with one account first. Trying to understand your question – I assume you are saying that your opening balance on the reconcile statement does not match the opening balance on the QuickBooks Mac reconcile window for that account. Is that correct?
If that is the case (and it likely is if you haven’t reconciled for several years) you may be missing transactions in QuickBooks. Or you may have duplicate transactions in QuickBooks. Or you may have transactions that are marked “reconciled” in QuickBooks that shouldn’t be. Or you may have transactions that aren’t marked “reconciled” in QuickBooks that should be. You may have skipped a couple months of statements. Etc.
It is often very difficult to figure it out if neglected for a while. Another issue is that you are trying to fix data that is several years old – there’s a pretty good chance you already filed income taxes for the figures you have in QuickBooks last year. In that case entering any prior year adjustment in QuickBooks will cause your QB data to differ from your tax return last year. If you can get to the bottom of what was off you’ll probably discover that something was entered wrong or data was missing. When you correct it you’ll need to update your tax return with the IRS. You may be penalized if you didn’t pay enough tax. Or maybe you’ll get money back.
I’m not sure what accountants recommend here. You should reach out to your accountant to find out. I’m not an accountant so I can’t advise you on that.
Ignoring that issue, one way to straighten out the mess is to start with just the current fiscal year (often times the fiscal year is the same as the calendar year, unless you specifically set it up to be different it probably is).
Start reconciling from the first January 2014 statement (or whatever the first month of your fiscal year is). The opening balance in QB is the sum of all reconciled transactions in that account. The opening balance likely does not match – you are going to make an adjustment to get things straight in that first month.
Begin reconciling the account. Enter the closing balance and the closing date. If you’ve been downloading transactions you probably have already downloaded the interest and expense charges so no need to enter them. Otherwise, enter them.
First uncheck the “show only transactions before the statement date” check box. Note if you downloaded transactions most everything will be marked as “cleared” but not reconciled (light check mark). I usually click Unmark All to get everything unchecked.
Next make sure you don’t have any transactions reconciled after the statement. Go to the chart of accounts and double click on this bank account to open the register. Look through the register after January(or whatever month) for dark checkmarks on transactions. If you have any uncheck them in the register – nothing should be reconciled after the start date of the statement you are reconciling!
Once everything is unchecked, go ahead and enable “hide transactions after the statement date”. No need to see the stuff after the statement date now. That makes it a lot easier.
You are going to have a year or more of unreconciled transactions showing up – all the things from prior unreconciled statements. Hit Mark All.
Now go through the paper statement of the current month. Make sure everything in the month is correct – only those items that appear on the statement. You may have to uncheck a couple near the end of the month for instance because a check was written but hasn’t hit the bank yet. Just focus on that current month.
Once you have those two totals right hit the Reconcile button. You’ll be prompted to enter an adjustment – this is because the reconcile was off previously. It may be large. Again, I’m not an accountant and I’m not sure what an accountant would advise. You should check. But this will at least get you back on track. Obviously if the amount is large it is more important to check with the accountant.
Once the adjustment is made everything should be back on track. Start with the next month’s statement. Leave “Hide transactions after the statement end date” checked.
Once you are on track, most times you can do this quickly by just clicking “Mark All” and then looking at the Deposits/Credits and Check/Payments totals. If those match the paper statement you are done. If not the paper statement may be missing some transactions and you need to uncheck those. You can do the remaining eleven months of the year very quickly if you’ve been downloading your transactions as you go.
Anyway, that’s what I recommend, as it gets you back to reconciling the fastest and doesn’t change your balances on previous years (thus leaving your tax return matching your books). Obviously the adjustment doesn’t correspond to actual dates and so forth – hence the need to talk to an accountant (Or maybe one will weigh in here). I could be completely wrong about that.
But it sure feels good when you have your reconcile caught up and working. And the newer interface (2013 and later) makes the task far easier than it was in 2012 and earlier. Also in 2013 and later the reconcile status of every transaction is retained when sharing the file with a QuickBooks Windows user like your accountant.
Resolution for Issue 'my bank accounts have not been reconciled in 2 years and now when I try to balance my bank accounts, it says bank accounts do not match.' available: Yes (Solved).
Source: Intuit Community forum.
my bank accounts have not been reconciled in 2 years and now when I try to balance my bank accounts, it says bank accounts do not match.: this issue or error code is a known issue in Quickbooks Online (QBO) and/or Quickbooks. Support for this issue is available either by self-service or paid support options. Experts are available to resolve your Quickbooks issue to ensure minimal downtime and continue running your business. First try to resolve the issue yourself by looking for a resolution described below. If it is a complex issue or you are unable to solve the issue, you may contact us by clicking here or by using other support options.
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