Incorrect Beginning Balance Issues in QuickBooks Reconciliation

If you are facing the incorrect beginning balance issues in QuickBooks reconciliation, you are at the right place. We will look at various ways to handle the issues. But before that we will try to understand what causes the incorrect beginning balances:

1. Deletion of previously reconciled items.
2. The amount of previously reconciled items got changed.
3. Incorrect balance or zero balance entered at the time of account set up.

Correction of Zero Balance Account

You can recreate the opening/beginning balance in this case by following the below process steps:

Step 1. You need to create a correct journal entry with the correct date and amount of the opening balance, which you will later see in the “Begin reconciliation window”.

Step 2. Now you need to perform a mini-reconciliation to correct the beginning/opening balance in the “Begin reconciliation screen”.

• For this you need to click on Banking > reconcile > choose the correct account from the Account dropdown. Now enter the statement date and balance that matches your journal entry and click on continue.
• After that click on “Deposit and Other credit section”; choose the corresponding journal entry and click on reconcile now.

Correction of an Incorrect Opening/Beginning Balance Account

Identification of Discrepancy

The below reports can help you out in finding the discrepancies.

Report 1. Reconcile Discrepancy Report

1. First of all, Go to the Reports > Banking > Reconciliation Discrepancy.
2. Now choose the correct Account > click on Ok. You will get the list of transactions that were entered, edited since the last reconciliation, you can complete your analysis work here.
3. Once you find the discrepancy, note the transaction date, amount, last modified details.

Report 2. Audit trail report

1. Click on reports > Banking > Previous reconciliation > choose the account being reconciled.
2. Choose the recent statement date> click on Transactions cleared at the time of reconciliation and then click on Display. Ensure to note down the statement ad creation date.
3. Now go to the Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Audit trail. Now set account filters by going to Customize report > filters > choose Account being reconciled.
4. Click on Display> enter statement date range > Ok > set enter/modified sorting filter as well.

For correction purposes, you may have to re-enter or edit the incorrect transaction. You can try a few other options as given below:

1. Undo a previous reconciliation and again do it: Start this process by backing up your company file and then go to the “Begin reconciliation window”> choose to Undo last reconciliation > click continue then OK.
2. QuickBooks entering offsetting adjustment: you can ignore the error for the time being and choose “Enter adjustment” to complete the reconciliation. This will lead to the posting of an automatic journal transferring the difference to the reconciliation discrepancy account.
3. You can try and fix the possible data damages issues if that is what causing the problem.

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