QuickBooks 2014 For Dummies

Chapter 14

The Balancing Act

In This Chapter

Balancing your bank account

Troubleshooting when your account doesn’t balance

I want to start this chapter with an important point: Balancing a bank account in QuickBooks is easy and quick.

I’m not just trying to get you pumped up about an otherwise painfully boring topic. I don’t think that balancing a bank account is any more exciting than you do.

My point is simply this: Because bank account balancing can be tedious and boring, use QuickBooks to reduce the drudgery.

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.) ...