End of Month Bank Reconciliation - Date Selection and Inputting Adjustments

Modified on Fri, 9 Feb at 1:33 AM

LawMaster accounting periods run from 1 July to 30 June with July being period 1 and June being period 12. Each month you must perform the end of month roll over to separate the accounting periods. Say it’s October (period 4), but you haven’t rolled over, so you were still in period 3 (Sept) any transactions i.e. receipts, cheques, cost transactions (WIP & Disbursements) entered would be recorded against period 3 not period 4.

Step-by-step guide

There are a few steps required to ensure a successful end of month Bank Reconciliation.

Monthly Bank Reconciliation

Go to: Main Menu > Accounting > Bank reconciliation > Present Items.

Type in bank number. At the bottom of the screen, select the "Reconcile Items in Bulk” tab.

Compare LawMaster system to your bank statement:

For missing receipts add a cash receipt – This can be done via Cash Receipts Input (Main Menu > Accounting > Cash Receipting > Enquiry > Receipt Enquiry > Right-click > Add Receipt) or Printing Bank deposit listing (Main Menu > Accounting > Reports > Bank Deposit Listing)
For missing payments add as Input payment voucher. (Transactions > Input Payment Vouchers) Bank Merchant Fees have GST so these are entered as a payment voucher.
For missing GST exclusive items, (e.g. bank fees and interest charges) use the “Add Items” tab on the Present Items screen. (NB: Entries entered using the “Add Items” tab do not show the GST in the BAS reports so do not use this method of input for anything with GST) (NB You cannot do a search on entries that are made as “Add items”, whereas, you can do a voucher enquiry for other payment methods.)
For unidentified transactions e.g. unidentified deposits, use the “Adjustments” tab at the bottom of the Present Items screen. Once identified (hopefully the following month), these entries need to be reversed by doing an adjustment with the opposite sign.
Print a copy of these adjustments for audit trail purposes

Reconcile Items

To reconcile items on the Reconcile Items in Bulk tab, right click and select “Reconcile Items”. You can select multiple entries by holding down the Ctrl key and selecting. Do not reconcile unpresented cheques.

Print the Bank reconciliation report

Main Menu > Accounting > Bank reconciliation > Print Bank Reconciliation Report

Run report for the bank you are reconciling. Leave the “Date To” as the day you run the report. Check it.

You can un-reconcile items even if you have printed the report and then print the report again. Proceed only once your report looks correct.
If you need to change the “date reconciled to” you can do this on the report once it has generated in MSWord format. It is advisable to save this as a PDF and name it for easy identification.

Audit Reconciled Items

Select the “refresh” icon to see the changes.
Clear adjustments If you have made an adjustment and entered its reversal so the net entry has a 0 value, you will need to select clear adjustments.
Do not do this if you have only entered one part of the transaction.
We advise printing the bank reconciliation report with adjustments before clearing them.
Run End of Day
Check the System Control Report
Go to: Periodic Processing > View System Control Report in Grid
If you have any *** messages above the message about “Costing for WIP…” these will need to be addressed before you run end of month.
If you have any *** messages below the message about “Costing for WIP…” these will not prevent you from running end of month but should be addressed.

Reconcile your bank accounts;
Print your Bank Reconciliation Report. Note in the 'Date To' field, this is the date you run the report. So if you are reconciling April's transactions on 1 May, leave the date as 1 May 2018. The reason for this is that the system will pick up all transactions. If you back date the reconciliation report, the system will still pick up all transactions that have been entered to date and will show a figure in the Difference field. As the report merges in Word and automatically saves to the Subject Files in LawMaster, after the document is created, you can modify the 'Date Reconciled To' to be a different date e.g. 30 April 2018.
List Reconciled Items (if required).
Audit Reconciled Items.
Print Trust Trial Balance (not published report). This is where you can check that the trust trial balance and bank reconciliation report balance to each other.
Print Trust Ledger. This allows you to check the trust ledger, trust trial balance and bank reconciliation report all balance to each other.
Once you are happy that the 3 reports do in fact balance, you can then run the 4 Trust reports under Reports for Publication (Publish Trust Trial Balance, Publish Trust Ledger, Publish Trust Receipts Cash book, Publish Trust Payments Cash book). These reports are sequentially numbered, so it is best that all four are printed at the each time they are run for ease of reference e.g. Trust Trial Balance #1 will balance with Trust Ledger #1 etc.
You should not enter any transactions for the new month until trust reports have been generated and balance to the bank reconciliation and end of month rolled. If you are not ready to roll the database at the beginning of the month ie. there is a delay in a couple of days; try and get your trust bank reconciled as close as possible to the first business day of the month.
To work out what is showing in the system where you have not run the report at month end:
Review the bank reconciliation report already generated (eg report generated on 3rd May for 30th April)
Total the transactions entered in the subsequent month (eg sum all of the May transactions)
Subtract this figure from the GL Bank Balance total, this balance should match the trust trial balance. (subtract the May transactions from the balance to show the April balance matching the April Trust Trial Balance)
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