QuickBooks 2013 For Dummies

Balancing a Bank Account

As I said, balancing a bank account is remarkably easy in QuickBooks. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if you have any problems, they stem from . . . well, sloppy record-keeping that preceded your use of QuickBooks.

Enough of this blather; I get started by describing how you reconcile an account.

Giving QuickBooks information from the bank statement

In a reconciliation, as you probably know, you compare your records of a bank account with the bank’s records of the same account. You should be able to explain any difference between the two accounts — usually by pointing to checks you wrote which haven’t yet cleared. (Sometimes deposits fall into the same category; you record a deposit and mail it, but the bank hasn’t yet credited your account.)

The first step, then, is to supply QuickBooks the bank’s account information. You get this information from your monthly statement. Supply QuickBooks the figures it needs, as follows:

1. Choose Banking⇒Reconcile or click the Reconcile icon on the Home screen.

QuickBooks displays the Begin Reconciliation dialog box, as shown in Figure 14-1.

Figure 14-1: The Begin Recon- ciliation dialog box.

If you have several bank accounts, you may have to select which account you want to reconcile.

2. If the bank account shown isn’t the one you want to reconcile, open the Account list and choose the correct account. ...