Account reconciliation is a bookkeeping process by which you compare the transactions in your ledger to an external source of truth to catch clerical errors and check for incorrect transactions. A bank reconciliation is the most common type of reconciliation, where you compare a statement provided by your bank to the same account in Ambrook over a shared time period.
Ambrook connects directly with your financial accounts to reduce manual entry, which should go a long way towards preventing your internal ledger from getting out of sync with your bank’s records. Many bookkeepers and producers use reconciliation to ensure their books are accurate and that neither the bank software, the connecting software, or Ambrook’s software has made an error.
Our built-in reconciliation feature makes the process quick and easy.
Initiate a Reconciliation Session
From the ledger tab, click the “Reconcile” button in the top right corner to initiate an account reconciliation.
You will be brought to a list of all of your connected accounts and their current balances. Select the account you wish to reconcile from the list.
Enter the date range and ending balance from the bank statement (or other external source of truth) that you want to reconcile against in the screen that pops up.
Note: It is important that these values are entered correctly, as your statements may not reconcile if they span different dates or calculate from a different ending balance.
The Reconciliation Screen
Next, you will be brought to a pre-filtered and populated Reconciliation screen where you can compare your bank statement transactions to those on the Ambrook ledger.
The list of transactions shown contains only transactions from the selected account during the statement period specified. Compare the list to your bank statement and use the “Reconciled” checkbox on the right to check off transactions that match. As you do so, the equation above the transaction list will show your progress towards the Statement Ending Balance.
When you have checked off all of the transactions in your bank statement, there should be no transactions left to reconcile in Ambrook, the Ending Balance shown in the equation should match your Statement Ending Balance. The “Difference” figure should also be at zero. When this is the case, you are done; the Save button will turn into a Finish button and you can click that to return to the ledger.
If you don’t finish reconciling in a single sitting, just click the Save button to return to the ledger. Any transactions that you reconcile will remain checked so you can pick the work back up when you return. The next time you go to reconcile an account, we’ll tell you the last date it was reconciled up to.
Dealing with Discrepancies
Three categories of discrepancies may occur:
There’s a transaction on your statement that isn’t in Ambrook (or vice versa). This can happen very rarely due to connection errors between Ambrook and your bank's systems. Click the “Adjust” button where you can describe the discrepancy to Ambrook Support and we can help you fix the error or make an entry that will resolve the discrepancy.
There’s a transaction on both your statement and in Ambrook, but the amount or direction is different in each. As above, the best option is to click the “Adjust” button where you can describe the discrepancy to Ambrook Support and we can help you fix the error or make an entry that will resolve the discrepancy.
The statement’s beginning balance doesn’t match the Ambrook beginning balance. Ambrook calculates the account’s starting balance based on previous transactions in the account. This should match the starting balance on your bank statement, especially if you reconcile your accounts regularly.
If it does not match, it is likely due to a reconciliation error in the past. We suggest going backwards month-by-month until you find a month where the Beginning Balance does match and then reconcile each month going forward until you find the error. When you identify the error, click the “Adjust” button and Ambrook Support will help you resolve it at the source.