This is helpful thank you! I shamefully opened a quickbooks account almost 2 years ago but have completely ignored it b/c I didn't have the time to learn. Welp now it's a mess! I have gone through and categorized everything but there are still large discrepancies. Is there any way to delete months from the record/reset the start date to avoid having to reconcile 33 months? I only need records from 2023.
You have a couple options to clear historical transactions. One option would be to contact customer service with QuickBooks and request to purge your account. That wipes the slate completely clean and gets rid of all of your data. If you've already categorized 2023 transactions, maybe you don't want to choose this option. Your second option would be to go into "Categorized" in the Banking/Transactions screen. You can undo the transactions you want to delete. Undo will only send those transactions back to the "For Review" section where you'll need to Exclude them. Once you've excluded everything prior to 2023, you'll want to go into the bank register and edit your Opening Balance to reflect what the balance was on 1/1/23. Let me know if you have any questions on that. Thank you!
Here are some possible reasons why those balances might not be equal after reconcilation. If you write checks, those affect the QB Balance immediately upon recording them in QBO, but won't change the bank balance until it clears the bank. Also, if you write checks in QBO, you'll need to match it to the check that clears in the bank feed. If they aren't matched, they will be duplicate transactions. If you use invoices, make sure you are matching the deposit to the payment and invoice to avoid duplicating income. When you reconcile your next month, look on the transaction list in the reconciliation screen to see if there are transactions that do not have a check mark. If you have a bunch of transactions with no check mark, those are not reconciled, but count towards your QB Balance.
Nice and helpful video. Thank you for sharing. I have a question. My checking account that was linked to quick books online was inadvertently deleted unlinked. When I tried re linking to QBO it says already linked. After research I notice the previous manager had the checking account linked to the credit card account which I do not want. Can I remove the credit card that has the linked checking account and then add back the actual checking account? Thank you.
Hi, thanks for the question and for watching. There could be many reasons for that. If you're looking at the $0 Bank balance on the transactions screen, that's the balance your bank has sent into QB as being the balance right now. You might also see a balance labeled "In QuickBooks", which is the starting balance you entered for the bank account plus all the transactions you've categorized. So if you reconciled through the end of September and categorized October transactions to-date, the "In QuickBooks" balance would include those October transactions. Check your Balance Sheet as of the date you reconciled through and see if the bank account balance matches your bank statement. If it does, you're good. If it doesn't, go through the bank register and look for any duplicate transactions. If you need any further help with that, let us know, we'd be happy to take a look with you.
I'm trying to perform a clean up and I have transactions in my client's QB bank account that are not in the actual bank statements. I can reconcile because everything in the bank is in QB but there are outstanding QB payments that my client entered and posted to the checking account in QB that are not seen on the bank for that period (or the next). What do I do with those transactions so that the QB balance matches the bank balance? Is it a matter of a journal entry backing those out? If so, where would I put the debit?
I would check a few things first. I just worked with a client who recorded payments using the wrong transaction date. He was off by many months, some more than 6 months from the real transaction date. I know you said you checked for that month and the next, but you might find it in a further away statement. Another thing to check is if they have multiple bank accounts for their business. I've seen people record everything correct for a payment except it's to the wrong bank account. If they are recorded to the correct bank account, one thing to check is if they make deposits consisting of multiple payments. For example, if they receive three separate payments of $500 each, then make a deposit of $1500. If that's the case, you want to undo the $1500 deposit, and Find Match in the banking screen, matching with all three $500 deposits. If none of those solve your issue, ask your client if they really received payment and if they ever deposited the payment. Maybe you'll be able to find out if it was deposited and where they made the deposit.
I recently took over the bookkeeping for a small business and they have been using QuickBooks online since 11/2020. A beginning bank balance was never put into QB. So needless to say, the books have never balanced with the bank. What would be the best way to correct that?
Hi Jo, if their bank account was open previous to 11/2020 when they started their QuickBooks online subscription, you can enter a manual deposit for the beginning balance. Thanks for the question!
@@worldwidebookkeeping I was told that their account was first opened with QB Desktop and then was transferred over to the online version 11/2020. But that doesn't explain why they started with a zero balance. Does that make any sense to you?
@@JoShelver Makes me wonder if the data migrated properly from QB Desktop to QB Online. I would check the chart of accounts to make sure they don't have a duplicate bank account set up. I've seen desktop users create a new bank account once they get started in QB Online and fail to enter a beginning balance. If they haven't created a duplicate checking account in the chart of accounts, check the bank register to see if transactions prior to 11/2020 made it from QB Desktop to QB Online. If they didn't, you could enter a beginning balance with a deposit to Opening Balance Equity.
@@worldwidebookkeeping They have a Cash account and a Checking account set up. I'm confused on why some things run through the Cash account and some go through the Checking. Therefore they have different balances. I want to tell you thank you for all of your help. You have been wonderful and very helpful!
@@JoShelver Many new QBO subscriptions come with a Cash account in their Chart of Accounts template. It's meant to be used as a cash on hand account, like a Petty Cash account, if they had physical cash on hand in their office or store. Sometimes new users enter transactions and mistakenly indicate it was using the Cash account instead of their checking account. Or a transaction comes through the bank feed for the checking account and they categorize it to Cash because in their minds, they spent cash not credit. If you check the register for the Cash account, you can look at the individual transactions and see if that's what happened. Thanks for watching the video and asking the questions! I'm glad it's been helpful.
You make it so easy...but....my reconciliations are on point. I am still off and don't know where to start. By like thousands. Where can I go to see if there are duplicates or if I received payment twice, or what I'm doing wrong. I've been researching for weeks and your video has been the most helpful, but I still need guidance. Thanks!
Tim, I gotta agree with you that it used to be intuitive. Not sure if you started using QuickBooks desktop version like I did, but being able to work on the same version of QuickBooks where you knew where everything was made it much easier to learn. Now they just make so many changes so frequently in an effort to improve, but I think it just confuses so many people...many accountants included! Thanks for watching and commenting. If you have any specific questions, just comment and I'll answer it.
@@bobbiegonzalez9074 Only accountant users can unreconcile in QuickBooks Online. To answer your other question about if it matters if the bank balance and QuickBooks balance don't match after reconciling, it depends. If you have duplicated transactions, you can still reconcile, but those duplicates will affect your financial reports. If you wrote a check that hasn't cleared the bank yet or accepted a payment on an invoice that hasn't hit the bank account yet, those things will eventually work themselves out. If you have any more questions on that or need to unreconcile, you can book a call with me at Worldwidebookkeeping.com. Thank you!
Hi. I have reconciled my bank statements and it balanced .however my quickbooks balance and bank balance doesn't match even after categorizing all transactions. Bank is -£4500 yet quickbooks is -£124500,what would be the problem?
Hi Candice! It could be correct to not have a Beginning Balance if you opened the bank account and all the transactions for that bank account appear in QB. But if you're starting a QB file in January 2022 and already had that bank account prior to January 1, 2022, there should be a Beginning Balance. To add in a Beginning Balance, you can manually add deposit to that account for the beginning date you want to start tracking transactions in that account and enter the correct dollar amount that the balance was that day. Categorize that transaction to the Opening Balance account.
The problem that I see causing my QBO Balance to be different from my Bank Balance is my transactions. I have Sales receipts synced from my woocommerce website that show in QBO as deposits. The actual deposits from STRIPE, SQUARE, PAYPAL or Cash Deposits related to the same sale are also shown as deposits. So I am getting some duplicated sales in my QBO. How do I fix this?
Hi Olufemi! I haven't run into this before, so I don't have an answer for you off the top of my head. I'd be willing to jump on a zoom and take a look if you'd like to do that.
I'd be happy to take a look at it with you on a Google video call. If you go to our website, worldwidebookkeeping.com and book a free consultation on the home page, I could try to figure that out with you.
Unfortunately this did not help me :( all transactions categorized and still a difference of a whopping $40,000 in my quickbooks vs bank account. I believe this issue may be due to the way some loans were categorized. Still, can't find any solutions to this issue. UGH.
Hi Morgan, sorry your issue wasn't cleared up! Thank you for watching the video and commenting. Here are some possible reasons why those balances are different still. If you write checks, those affect the QB Balance immediately upon recording them in QBO, but won't change the bank balance until it clears the bank. Also, if you write checks in QBO, you'll need to match it to the check that clears in the bank feed. If they aren't matched, they will be duplicate transactions. If you use invoices, make sure you are matching the deposit to the payment and invoice to avoid duplicating income. When you reconcile your next month, look on the transaction list in the reconciliation screen to see if there are transactions that do not have a check mark. If you have a bunch of transactions with no check mark, those are not reconciled, but count towards your QB Balance. If you have any questions on those points, let me know. If you'd like for me to jump on a call with you to troubleshoot together, you can book a session at Worldwidebookkeeping.com
I HATE when my clients use QB’s online instead of desktop and ask me to do their bookkeeping. Online is SO slow and it takes so long to add a single transaction or to edit one. You would think it would be much faster than desktop, but it‘s not at all. Plus, there aren’t good keyboard shortcuts and there’s too too much point and click action required. I can move around desktop without touching my mouse hardly at all.
I hear you and you aren't the only bookkeeper who has told me that. When I learned QuickBooks it was exclusively on desktop so I became really familiar with that and held off on the online version for a long time (mostly because the CPA I worked for always put down online vs. desktop). Unfortunately, I think it's all headed towards online and desktop being phased out currently. Some tips I would recommend to speed up adding and editing transactions: Use Google Chrome for QuickBooks and try an Incognito window so cookies and cache don't slow down QuickBooks. When adding transactions, use the batch actions tool so you can add multiple transactions without having to wait for the page to refresh in between each single transaction you add. If you need to edit transactions, use Reclassify Transactions in the Accountant Tools section whenever you can. I had one client who had a bunch of transactions from this one restaurant that got put into the Auto Expense category. Using the Reclassify Transactions tool, I was able to move all those transactions at the same time into the Meals category. Saved a ton of time compared to clicking each individual transaction, moving it to the Meals category, clicking save and waiting for the page to refresh. Hope these tips helped in some way. Thanks for watching and commenting!
What a crappy video. No one is searching this with uncategorized transactions still remaining. We want to know how to fix the wrongly categorized transactions which are causing the balance not to equal
Absolutely helpful, thank you!!
Thank you! You're awesome explaining!
Thank you so much for this information! You do a great job explaining!
Thank you for watching and the comment, Russell!
Extremely helpful Thank you!
How about if you have a negative number ? On the lower set. ?
Does it matter if you've reconciled and your bank balance and the record reconcile does not match?
This is helpful thank you! I shamefully opened a quickbooks account almost 2 years ago but have completely ignored it b/c I didn't have the time to learn. Welp now it's a mess! I have gone through and categorized everything but there are still large discrepancies. Is there any way to delete months from the record/reset the start date to avoid having to reconcile 33 months? I only need records from 2023.
You have a couple options to clear historical transactions. One option would be to contact customer service with QuickBooks and request to purge your account. That wipes the slate completely clean and gets rid of all of your data. If you've already categorized 2023 transactions, maybe you don't want to choose this option.
Your second option would be to go into "Categorized" in the Banking/Transactions screen. You can undo the transactions you want to delete. Undo will only send those transactions back to the "For Review" section where you'll need to Exclude them. Once you've excluded everything prior to 2023, you'll want to go into the bank register and edit your Opening Balance to reflect what the balance was on 1/1/23.
Let me know if you have any questions on that. Thank you!
Awesome, I was worried about that.
I have reconciled and still off by a large sum.All transactions are categorized and the beginning balances are correct.
Here are some possible reasons why those balances might not be equal after reconcilation.
If you write checks, those affect the QB Balance immediately upon recording them in QBO, but won't change the bank balance until it clears the bank. Also, if you write checks in QBO, you'll need to match it to the check that clears in the bank feed. If they aren't matched, they will be duplicate transactions.
If you use invoices, make sure you are matching the deposit to the payment and invoice to avoid duplicating income.
When you reconcile your next month, look on the transaction list in the reconciliation screen to see if there are transactions that do not have a check mark. If you have a bunch of transactions with no check mark, those are not reconciled, but count towards your QB Balance.
Nice and helpful video. Thank you for sharing. I have a question. My checking account that was linked to quick books online was inadvertently deleted unlinked. When I tried re linking to QBO it says already linked. After research I notice the previous manager had the checking account linked to the credit card account which I do not want. Can I remove the credit card that has the linked checking account and then add back the actual checking account? Thank you.
Hi thank you! Yes, you can disconnect the checking account from the credit card and re-connect it to the proper bank account.
Very good explanation! Thanks for your help!
Thank you! Very glad it was helpful.
thank you so much ! you made it clear.
Thank you for watching and commenting, Nowshin! I am glad it helped.
@@worldwidebookkeeping you're welcome
@@nowshinahmed8851 Please ask anytime you have a question about QuickBooks!
@@worldwidebookkeeping sure 😃
Hi. My bank balance is still zero although
i have done the reconcile. Why does that happen?
Hi, thanks for the question and for watching. There could be many reasons for that. If you're looking at the $0 Bank balance on the transactions screen, that's the balance your bank has sent into QB as being the balance right now. You might also see a balance labeled "In QuickBooks", which is the starting balance you entered for the bank account plus all the transactions you've categorized. So if you reconciled through the end of September and categorized October transactions to-date, the "In QuickBooks" balance would include those October transactions. Check your Balance Sheet as of the date you reconciled through and see if the bank account balance matches your bank statement. If it does, you're good. If it doesn't, go through the bank register and look for any duplicate transactions. If you need any further help with that, let us know, we'd be happy to take a look with you.
I'm trying to perform a clean up and I have transactions in my client's QB bank account that are not in the actual bank statements. I can reconcile because everything in the bank is in QB but there are outstanding QB payments that my client entered and posted to the checking account in QB that are not seen on the bank for that period (or the next). What do I do with those transactions so that the QB balance matches the bank balance? Is it a matter of a journal entry backing those out? If so, where would I put the debit?
I would check a few things first.
I just worked with a client who recorded payments using the wrong transaction date. He was off by many months, some more than 6 months from the real transaction date. I know you said you checked for that month and the next, but you might find it in a further away statement.
Another thing to check is if they have multiple bank accounts for their business. I've seen people record everything correct for a payment except it's to the wrong bank account.
If they are recorded to the correct bank account, one thing to check is if they make deposits consisting of multiple payments. For example, if they receive three separate payments of $500 each, then make a deposit of $1500. If that's the case, you want to undo the $1500 deposit, and Find Match in the banking screen, matching with all three $500 deposits.
If none of those solve your issue, ask your client if they really received payment and if they ever deposited the payment. Maybe you'll be able to find out if it was deposited and where they made the deposit.
I recently took over the bookkeeping for a small business and they have been using QuickBooks online since 11/2020. A beginning bank balance was never put into QB. So needless to say, the books have never balanced with the bank. What would be the best way to correct that?
Hi Jo, if their bank account was open previous to 11/2020 when they started their QuickBooks online subscription, you can enter a manual deposit for the beginning balance. Thanks for the question!
@@worldwidebookkeeping I was told that their account was first opened with QB Desktop and then was transferred over to the online version 11/2020. But that doesn't explain why they started with a zero balance. Does that make any sense to you?
@@JoShelver Makes me wonder if the data migrated properly from QB Desktop to QB Online. I would check the chart of accounts to make sure they don't have a duplicate bank account set up. I've seen desktop users create a new bank account once they get started in QB Online and fail to enter a beginning balance. If they haven't created a duplicate checking account in the chart of accounts, check the bank register to see if transactions prior to 11/2020 made it from QB Desktop to QB Online. If they didn't, you could enter a beginning balance with a deposit to Opening Balance Equity.
@@worldwidebookkeeping They have a Cash account and a Checking account set up. I'm confused on why some things run through the Cash account and some go through the Checking. Therefore they have different balances. I want to tell you thank you for all of your help. You have been wonderful and very helpful!
@@JoShelver Many new QBO subscriptions come with a Cash account in their Chart of Accounts template. It's meant to be used as a cash on hand account, like a Petty Cash account, if they had physical cash on hand in their office or store. Sometimes new users enter transactions and mistakenly indicate it was using the Cash account instead of their checking account. Or a transaction comes through the bank feed for the checking account and they categorize it to Cash because in their minds, they spent cash not credit. If you check the register for the Cash account, you can look at the individual transactions and see if that's what happened. Thanks for watching the video and asking the questions! I'm glad it's been helpful.
You make it so easy...but....my reconciliations are on point. I am still off and don't know where to start. By like thousands. Where can I go to see if there are duplicates or if I received payment twice, or what I'm doing wrong. I've been researching for weeks and your video has been the most helpful, but I still need guidance. Thanks!
You have miscategorized transactions. This video was crap and didnt explain anything anyone needed to know
So did they make this thing confusing to keep accountants busy. It used to be intuitive. Thus the name.
Tim, I gotta agree with you that it used to be intuitive. Not sure if you started using QuickBooks desktop version like I did, but being able to work on the same version of QuickBooks where you knew where everything was made it much easier to learn. Now they just make so many changes so frequently in an effort to improve, but I think it just confuses so many people...many accountants included! Thanks for watching and commenting. If you have any specific questions, just comment and I'll answer it.
How do unreconcile
@@bobbiegonzalez9074 Only accountant users can unreconcile in QuickBooks Online. To answer your other question about if it matters if the bank balance and QuickBooks balance don't match after reconciling, it depends. If you have duplicated transactions, you can still reconcile, but those duplicates will affect your financial reports. If you wrote a check that hasn't cleared the bank yet or accepted a payment on an invoice that hasn't hit the bank account yet, those things will eventually work themselves out. If you have any more questions on that or need to unreconcile, you can book a call with me at Worldwidebookkeeping.com. Thank you!
Hi. I have reconciled my bank statements and it balanced .however my quickbooks balance and bank balance doesn't match even after categorizing all transactions. Bank is -£4500 yet quickbooks is -£124500,what would be the problem?
What if my account doesn't show a "Starting Balance" line? I went all the way back to opening.
Hi Candice! It could be correct to not have a Beginning Balance if you opened the bank account and all the transactions for that bank account appear in QB. But if you're starting a QB file in January 2022 and already had that bank account prior to January 1, 2022, there should be a Beginning Balance.
To add in a Beginning Balance, you can manually add deposit to that account for the beginning date you want to start tracking transactions in that account and enter the correct dollar amount that the balance was that day. Categorize that transaction to the Opening Balance account.
The problem that I see causing my QBO Balance to be different from my Bank Balance is my transactions. I have Sales receipts synced from my woocommerce website that show in QBO as deposits. The actual deposits from STRIPE, SQUARE, PAYPAL or Cash Deposits related to the same sale are also shown as deposits. So I am getting some duplicated sales in my QBO. How do I fix this?
Hi Olufemi! I haven't run into this before, so I don't have an answer for you off the top of my head. I'd be willing to jump on a zoom and take a look if you'd like to do that.
After reconciling I discovered that about 7 transactions weren't imported from my bank. What do I do about that?
Hi, Virginia! Thank you for the question. How did you reconcile without those 7 transactions? Did you manually enter those transactions?
It didn't help. I am reconciled. Bank balance is off from Quickbooks balance, no clue why.
I'd be happy to take a look at it with you on a Google video call. If you go to our website, worldwidebookkeeping.com and book a free consultation on the home page, I could try to figure that out with you.
Unfortunately this did not help me :( all transactions categorized and still a difference of a whopping $40,000 in my quickbooks vs bank account. I believe this issue may be due to the way some loans were categorized. Still, can't find any solutions to this issue. UGH.
Hi Morgan, sorry your issue wasn't cleared up! Thank you for watching the video and commenting.
Here are some possible reasons why those balances are different still.
If you write checks, those affect the QB Balance immediately upon recording them in QBO, but won't change the bank balance until it clears the bank. Also, if you write checks in QBO, you'll need to match it to the check that clears in the bank feed. If they aren't matched, they will be duplicate transactions.
If you use invoices, make sure you are matching the deposit to the payment and invoice to avoid duplicating income.
When you reconcile your next month, look on the transaction list in the reconciliation screen to see if there are transactions that do not have a check mark. If you have a bunch of transactions with no check mark, those are not reconciled, but count towards your QB Balance.
If you have any questions on those points, let me know. If you'd like for me to jump on a call with you to troubleshoot together, you can book a session at Worldwidebookkeeping.com
I HATE when my clients use QB’s online instead of desktop and ask me to do their bookkeeping. Online is SO slow and it takes so long to add a single transaction or to edit one. You would think it would be much faster than desktop, but it‘s not at all. Plus, there aren’t good keyboard shortcuts and there’s too too much point and click action required. I can move around desktop without touching my mouse hardly at all.
I hear you and you aren't the only bookkeeper who has told me that. When I learned QuickBooks it was exclusively on desktop so I became really familiar with that and held off on the online version for a long time (mostly because the CPA I worked for always put down online vs. desktop). Unfortunately, I think it's all headed towards online and desktop being phased out currently. Some tips I would recommend to speed up adding and editing transactions: Use Google Chrome for QuickBooks and try an Incognito window so cookies and cache don't slow down QuickBooks. When adding transactions, use the batch actions tool so you can add multiple transactions without having to wait for the page to refresh in between each single transaction you add. If you need to edit transactions, use Reclassify Transactions in the Accountant Tools section whenever you can. I had one client who had a bunch of transactions from this one restaurant that got put into the Auto Expense category. Using the Reclassify Transactions tool, I was able to move all those transactions at the same time into the Meals category. Saved a ton of time compared to clicking each individual transaction, moving it to the Meals category, clicking save and waiting for the page to refresh. Hope these tips helped in some way. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@worldwidebookkeeping this was very helpful, thank you!!!
What a crappy video. No one is searching this with uncategorized transactions still remaining. We want to know how to fix the wrongly categorized transactions which are causing the balance not to equal
Thanks for the feedback, Randy! Incorrectly categorized transactions will not cause the QuickBooks balance to fail to match the bank balance.