How do you Reconcile within QuickBooks?

Seems like a simple enough question, but many of the people I meet are intimidated by reconciling, so they just flat out don't do it.  I ask them, "how are you sure your cash is correct?" 

Then I show them how easy it is to reconcile within the QuickBooks program.  Here are the steps:

• On your home page, click reconcile. 
• Now take your bank statement, enter the ending balance and any service charge (enter bank service charge for the acct. to apply this cost) or interest income (enter interest income acct. for the acct. to apply this cost) and then click continue. 
• Next check off all checks and debits (matching your bank statement); do the same for your deposits.  At the bottom, you will see a total of the check/debit side and the deposit side, including how many transactions were checked off.
• Then when the difference says zero, click reconcile now and you will have cleared your checks.
• Don't forget to print your report or save as a PDF for future reference (only necessary for the Pro version, Premier saves it for you).

If you are stuck and cannot find a particular check or deposit, you can sort by the column headings.  The sort feature allows for sorting by payee, check amount, deposit amount, cleared or uncleared*, and date.

*Watch out when sorting by cleared or uncleared acct.  If you try to click on a transaction to look at it, it clears it and places it with the cleared items below.  I used this sort column only for viewing and re-sort by amount or payee before viewing an entry.

And that is how easy it is to reconcile in QuickBooks!

Lynda

Check out my website www.artesanibookkeeping.com