Why won't my QuickBooks Online reconciliation balance?
Reconciliation is the matching of your bank statement against your QuickBooks Online register, item by item. When it refuses to balance, the cause is usually one of four things. The beginning balance may not match the statement, or transactions may be missing or hidden. A deposit may be net of processing fees, or a check may not have cleared yet. Each has a different fix, and none of them is solved by forcing the difference to zero.
Why is the beginning balance wrong?
The beginning balance is not a number you type. QuickBooks calculates it from every transaction already reconciled in that account, so there is no field to edit on the Reconcile screen. If it disagrees with the opening figure on your statement, something behind it changed.
Two changes account for most cases. A transaction that was already reconciled has been deleted or edited since, or a transaction was added or moved to a date inside a period that was already reconciled. Review your earlier reconciliation reports or the account register to find which one moved. Once you know, correct or re-enter the transaction, or undo the earlier reconciliation and redo it with the account back in order.
Where did the missing transactions go?
If an item is nowhere on the Reconcile screen, first confirm it exists in QuickBooks at all. When the bank feed stops importing recent months, check the status of your bank connection. A failed connection can be worked around by uploading the transactions yourself from a CSV file.
Re-importing has a catch. QuickBooks tags every downloaded transaction with a unique ID and remembers those IDs even after you delete the transactions, to stop duplicates appearing. A file imported once will not bring the same entries in again. Transactions deleted after import have to be re-entered by hand.
If the transaction does exist, two settings can hide it. Check that its date falls between the statement start and end dates. Then look for the option that hides transactions after the statement’s end date. With that box checked, anything dated beyond the statement is invisible on the screen, even though it still sits in the register. This often explains a journal entry made to close a small difference that never appears: the entry is dated outside the statement period. Uncheck the option when you need to see a future-dated item.
Should an uncashed check be marked as cleared?
Only check off items the bank has actually processed. A customer refund or vendor payment that has not been cashed yet is outstanding, not wrong. Leave it unchecked and let the reconciliation difference carry it. That difference equals the outstanding amount, which is exactly what it should be. The item clears in a later month, and the following reconciliation absorbs it.
The mistake to avoid is checking something off just to force the balance. That makes this month look clean and makes next month wrong, because the bank has not seen the item yet.
Why does a deposit not match the statement?
Card processors such as Square deposit the net amount, the gross sales minus their fee. The deposit in QuickBooks has to be built the same way, with the gross sale and the fee on separate lines of one deposit. The total then equals the amount that actually reached the bank.
To enter it, select New and then Bank Deposit. On the first line, choose the account the sale sits in, such as Undeposited Funds, and enter the full gross amount. On the second line, choose the expense account you use for merchant fees and enter the fee as a negative number. The deposit now matches the net figure on the statement, and the fee lands in the right account instead of quietly shrinking your income.
What is safe to delete before you reconcile?
Cleaning up a register before a reconciliation is reasonable, especially in a file built from converted or manually entered data. Deletion still deserves care. A check that has never appeared on a statement is not necessarily wrong; it may simply be outstanding, and deleting it will distort the next beginning balance.
Delete only what you are certain is a mistake, such as a plain duplicate entry. If figures already used in a tax filing are involved, leave them in place and ask your accountant how to correct them. When a transaction is merely unexplained, leave it alone and let the reconciliation tell you whether it is a real problem.