Reconciling the company's bank books with the banker's statement is a regular task of accounting. In Tally.ERP 9, Reconciliation of Bank Books facilitates the following:
Tally.ERP 9 uses Bank Date to mark the voucher. For instance, if a cheque is issued on 8th April and the bank clears it on 19th April, the Bank Date for the voucher can be set to 19th April. This means that when there is a need to check back later, whether the entry made is correct or not, the bank statement of 19th April needs to be viewed for verification.
This is of crucial importance in Auditing. The Bank Reconciliation is one of the pre-requisites of auditing and verification of the correctness of accounts at the year end. However, it is not a real-time task, meaning auditors do not do it on the first day of the next year.
Note: For e.g., a reconciliation made on 31st March, should be viewable even in August, by when almost all the cheques would have subsequently been marked Reconciled. The Bank Reconciliation feature provides facilitates this also.
Bank accounts may have a different Starting Date for reconciliation purposes. When a bank account is created, user is prompted to give an Effective Date for Reconciliation. Normally, this would be the Books Beginning from date itself.
If the data is imported from a previous version of Tally or from any other system (where the reconciliation process was not available or was different), the reconciliation of bank account with the bank statements need to be done from the very beginning. To reconcile, give the date from which the reconciliation is to be done. Once this is done, entries made earlier than this date will not appear for reconciliation, but appears as a reconciled Opening Balance.
A quick experiment with Reconciliation will show what it all means.
Bring up the monthly summary of any bank book.
(Choose a bank book from any of the following: Balance Sheet, Trial Balance or Display > Account Books > Cash/Bank Books)
Bring the cursor to the first month (typically April), and press Enter. This brings up the vouchers for the month of April. Since this is a bank account, there is an additional button F5: Reconcile on the button bar, press to the right. Press F5 to reconcile.
The display goes to the Reconciliation mode, which can be edited. The primary component of the current screen is the column for Bank Date.
The Reconciliation found at the bottom of the screen shows:
Balance as per Company Books
Amounts not reflected in Bank
Amount not reflected in Company Books
Balance as per Bank
Balance as per Imported Bank Statement
Difference
The Balance as per Company Books reflects the balance as on the last date (in the example, it is 30th April).
The Amounts not reflected in Bank are the debit and credit sums of all those vouchers, whose Bank Date is either BLANK, or LATER than 30-Apr (i.e. these vouchers have not yet been reflected in the bank statement).
The Amount not reflected in Company Books are entries which are present in the bank statement but are not recorded in company's books.
The Balance as per Bank is the net effect of the Book Balance offset by the amounts not reflected in the Bank – which must be equal to the balance in the bank statement.
The Balance as per Imported Bank Statement refers to the balance displayed on importing the bank statement for reconciliation.
The difference in Bank Balance (difference in Balance as per Bank and Balance as per Imported Bank Statement) will be shown here.
Note: Some discrepancies may persist due to entries made in the bank statement, which may not have been entered in the books of accounts.
As the individual vouchers are marked for reconciliation by setting the Bank Date, the Reconciled value at the bottom of the screen keeps updating the changes. Once this process is complete, press Ctrl + A or Enter as many times as necessary to skip over the unmarked vouchers and accept the screen.
The next time user opts for reconciliation, the screen displays only those vouchers that remain un-reconciled. However, the vouchers reconciled already can be viewed to edit the marking if required, by using F12: Configure
Set Show Reconciled Vouchers also to Yes to see the reconciled vouchers.
Note: Reconciliation can be done only for available physical transactions. It is not possible to reconcile opening balance.
Set Allow back dated Reconciliation to Yes to enter bank dates which are lesser than the Voucher date.
Press Alt+P or click on the Print button to print your reconciliation report.
The print preview screen is displayed as shown:
For banks enabled with the feature of auto reconciliation in ledger master, the buttons:
B: Bank Statement and R: Reconcile Unlinked appear on the right side button bar
D: Delete Unlinked button appears on the button bar above Info Panel.
Since e-Banking is enabled for many banks, Import and View Bank Statements options will get enabled only if these banks are predefined for auto reconciliation while creating or altering the Bank Ledger.
Note: Download the bank statement and save it in a separate folder. In case where the savings/current accounts are maintained in multiple banks, the downloaded bank statement have to be saved in separate folders. This will ensure proper import of data in the supported format for reconciliation of data present in bank statement and the company's books of accounts.
The Excel, MT940 or .CSV files can be imported using B: Bank Statement button (Alt+B). On pressing this button, the Bank Statement File screen displays the Directory which was specified as the Location of Bank Statements in F12: Configuration > Banking Configuration. Select the File Type as per the bank statement format.
By setting the option Show Imported Bank Statement to Yes in F12: Configuration, the bank statement which is already imported can be selected again for import. The files will be listed in alphabetical order with details of file type and import status (showing whether it is already imported or not).
The Bank Statement which would be imported can be previewed using I: With View button (Alt+I) and then imported using I: Import button (Alt+I). It can also be imported even before generating the preview. Users must ensure that the bank statements being imported haven’t been edited or altered in any way. If any changes are made, the error message - Not a valid format will be displayed while importing the statement.
During import, the Import progress bar gets displayed followed by the Success message with Count of Total Entries in bank Statement, transactions Reconciled and Additional Bank Entries. The imported statements can be hidden from the list of files displayed for selection using
After import, bank dates will get filled in Bank Dates field automatically in Bank Reconciliation statement.
The transactions which have been executed at the bank’s end (example, bank charges, interest credit etc.) but not yet reflected in the books of accounts will appear under the Amount Not Reflected in Company Books.
The unlinked transactions can be reconciled to existing transactions or new vouchers can be created to link it (to create vouchers click on C: Create Vouchers button or press Alt+C) using this information or delete them.
Note: It is suggested to save the Bank Reconciliation before reconciling the Unlinked Transactions to avoid mistakes.
For complete information on Auto Reconciliation click here.