Period Close Checklists - Bank Reconciliation alerts - QuickBooks clients

Updated: 15 October 2024

Tips on using Bank Reconciliation alerts
1. Code bank feed transactions alert
2. Unreconciled Register transactions alert
3. Reconciled cleared balances with Bank Statements alert
Troubleshooting

Tips on using Bank Reconciliation alerts

Making sure your client’s QuickBooks bank and credit card accounts’ Register records match their bank and credit card statements is the first step to ensuring the data for a period is complete and accurate. Aider’s Period Close Checklist and Dashboard help you monitor the reconciliation status for all of your QuickBooks clients’ active bank and credit card accounts at a glance.

Aider’s Bank Reconciliation alerts show the reconciliation status for the bank / credit card transactions up to the end of the period you selected.
When working on a period close, get these alerts to green before working on the rest of the Period Close checklist. This ensures that the rest of the checklist takes all relevant transactions into account.
If some transactions can legitimately be left unreconciled, add a comment for reviewers or as a reminder in case you need to follow up in the future. Then manually check off the alert as reviewed.

1. Code bank feed transactions alert

This step ensures transactions that have cleared bank processing appear in the QuickBooks account Register, ready for reconciliation. You won’t be able to complete reconciliation in QuickBooks if transactions are missing in the account Register.

“Bank transactions” in QuickBooks are created by automated bank feeds that your client had set up by connecting to online banking systems, or by digital bank statements that your client manually uploaded. They are in lieu of paper bank statements that you might otherwise cross-reference and reconcile the QuickBooks bank / credit card accounts with.

This step also makes bank feed / uploaded data available to Aider for analysis - QuickBooks does not share bank feed data that has not been coded to a category yet. So it’s important that you or your client do this step regularly - e.g. weekly, every other week, or at least monthly. The categorization does not have to be perfect at this point.

To complete this task:

Click the “Bank transactions” link to go to QuickBooks and check the “For Review” tab for bank feed transactions waiting to be coded.
Assign the listed bank feed item to a category or accept the match suggested by QuickBooks.
TIP: If there are any items that require client clarification, temporarily assign them to the “Uncategorised Expense” and “Uncategorised Income” accounts until you get the feedback you need to properly categorize them.
Check off this task at the end of the period when all “For Review” items have been coded. Remember to chase up any uncategorized expenses and income and reassign them to the correct categories or match them to the correct sales or expense records.

Useful QuickBooks help articles:

2. Unreconciled Register transactions alert

Period-Close--QB-Unreconciled-Account-Transactions

This alert gives you a summary of the Register transactions (up to the end of the selected period) that are waiting to be reconciled. QuickBooks “Register transactions” are created during the bank feed coding process, or added manually - e.g. in advance when the transaction happened, rather than waiting for bank feed coding.

What to look for:

Resync the client once all “For Review” transactions have been coded (see above).

Check the “Not cleared counts”:

They should ideally be 0. This means all transactions in QuickBooks (up to the end of the selected period) have cleared the bank, and you are ready to reconcile the balances against actual statement balances (next alert).

If they are not 0, check which transactions they are and why they have not been matched to a bank feed line item.

Click on the account name to go to the QuickBooks account Register.
Set the filters to:
Reconciled Status = No Status
Date - To = last day of the selected period
Check for missing bank transactions. This might be caused by problems with bank feed, missing statement uploads, or clients only having paper statements. If you are sure the transaction is not a duplicate and has cleared the bank, you can manually mark the account transaction as cleared in the Register.
Check for duplicate transactions. This might be caused by…
1. “For Review” items being added as new Register transactions during coding, rather than matched to relevant existing Register transactions, or sales and expense records. Watch out for transactions that might have been combined into a single transaction on the bank side - e.g. multiple payments deposited as a single bank transaction.
2. Bank transactions being imported multiple times. This can occur if someone uploaded bank statements when automated bank feed is already set up.
Check with the client why a transaction has not cleared the bank. E.g.
Was it recorded with the wrong date?
Did your client not go through with the deposit or payment?
Did their vendor not deposit a check payment?

Useful QuickBooks help articles:

Fix issues at the end of a reconciliation in QuickBooks Online (intuit.com)

3. Reconciled cleared balances with Bank Statements alert

The final step of reconciliation is to confirm that the cleared balances in QuickBooks match actual bank / credit card statement balances. If they don’t match, then there may be bank transactions missing or duplicated in QuickBooks.

This alert gives you at a glance the status for all selected active bank / credit card accounts:

Cleared account balances (expected Bank Statement balance). This is calculated by removing any Register transactions that have not cleared the bank (alert 2 above) from the QuickBooks Register’s ending balance (sum of all Register transactions), giving you only the total for all cleared or reconciled transactions. This balance should be the same as the actual bank statement’s balance.
Actual bank statement balances. Use the input fields to enter the actual balance amounts. Please get this information from your client - e.g. via screenshots or a copy of their actual bank / credit card statements.
The differences between cleared balances vs actual balances. This will be calculated automatically once you enter the actual bank statement balances.

If the differences are not $0, then check for missing or duplicated “cleared” or “reconciled” Register transactions, or any changes to previously reconciled transactions.
Click the account name to go to QuickBooks and complete the reconciliation process. Then resync Aider, ensure the balance difference is $0, then check off this task.

Useful QuickBooks help articles:

Troubleshooting:

Q: Why is there no bank feed summary for QuickBooks clients?

A: QuickBooks do not share any bank feed data with partners, citing security concerns. Data imported into QuickBooks via bank feed and bank statements uploads are only available to Aider once they have been added to the QuickBooks’ bank / credit card account’s Register. Simply process the “For Review” items regularly to allow Aider access to bank transactions data.

Q: Why does the data not match QuickBooks’ screens?

A: Here are some common reasons why the Bank Reconciliation alerts in Aider may not match what you see in QuickBooks:

New data since last resync: Have there been additional activities in QuickBooks recently? You can check when the data in Aider was updated by the date and time shown under the "Bank Reconciliation" heading. Use the "Quick Resync" link to update the "Bank Reconciliation" data.
Very old unreconciled Register transactions: When a client is first added and activated, Aider only imports transactions for the current year + 3 previous years. Any transactions older than this will not be synced. If any such transactions are still unreconciled, we recommend you clean up these transactions - e.g. delete duplicates, manually mark them as reconciled. This ensures the client’s QuickBooks data is complete and accurate going forward.

If you still find the data are not matching, please report the problem to our friendly Customer Success Team.