Internal Reconciliation within GL Accounts

Hi,

I would like to suggest a feature, where we can internally allocate/reconcile transactions within a GL account. This is feature in SAP, and is very useful. I am not trying to compare these two softwares, but just proposing an idea which will be helpful to users.

Example:

  1. We have an “Advance to Employees” account in our B/S Assets. This is where we enter all the advances given to our employees against salaries. We have over 50 employees, and we usually have 15-20 advances given out each month (sometimes a single employee takes twice or thrice a month). When we generate the payslip, we use this same account in the ‘Deductions’ tab to knock-off/match off the advances.
    So now, we have an entry for advance and a entry coming into this account from the payslip. I would like to internally allocate/reconcile transactions of a particular employee (debit & credit transactions which have 0 balance). This would also serve as a double-check to confirm accurate entry. This would help to reduce clutter in the GL account, and only show us “Open” transactions, rather than exporting it to excel and reconciling it every month.

  2. We also have a “Pre-Payments - Office Rent” account in our B/S Assets. This is where we enter our quarterly cheque payments for our office rent. We have 4 offices in total and we have cheque payments made every other month for each office. Once a payment is posted in this GL, at the month end we pass a JV to allocate this month’s rent expense to the “Office Rent” expense account.
    So, if we have paid 9000 rent for the next 3 months, 9000 will be paid by bank and be parked under “Pre-Payments - Office Rent” account in our B/S Assets. at the month end we pass a JV of 3000 debiting “Office Rent” expense account and crediting “Pre-Payments - Office Rent” account. This will be done for the 2 more months. Once this is complete, I would wish to reconcile the debits & credits in the “Pre-Payments - Office Rent” account (9000 Dr. with 3000 Cr. + 3000 Cr. + 3000 Cr.)

I would like to recommend :

  1. a feature where we can allocate these entries against each other, so the data in these GL accounts are not filled with details for over a year. A simple example can be seen below.

  1. you can have 2 options - Reconciled View & Un-Reconciled View. Reconciled View will only shows transactions which have not been matched-off. Un-Reconciled View can show the entire ledger.
2 Likes

A simple search for the employee’s name, just as you have illustrated, resolves your issue. (The totals are equal, showing everything has matched up.) Likewise, a search for the landlord’s name or the phrase office rent could do the same.

Furthermore, the type of transactions you are concerned about are not associated with one another in Manager. They debit or credit an account; they do not apply to some other specific transaction.

This would be a great addition to the software, specially for Balance Sheet accounts with a large amount of clearing transactions throughout the year.

Can someone please add this to the ideas category?

@Tut gave already an answer that would help with this, so why would you ask for more?

He did not.

He’s not considering alternative cases as I’m suggesting that would be a larger amount of transactions.

The proposal here is to design a matching mechanism to reconcile transactions within the ledger so the balance can breakdown to the actual items that forms it, without having to export it to a spreadsheet and do it manually or needing to keep record of it in external files.

There are other programs that already have this feature available (so, it’s something that we’re are used to see and use).

Every accounting program has its limits and good features.

No one program can satisfy everyone, so it is a question of accepting the limitations if they rest of the program works for you.

If a different program has a feature that you deem necessary, them you should use this program.

The ideas topic is full of ideas that users have requested - some of them available in other programs. It is likely that most of them will never be implemented, at least not in the near future

The solution I gave you works for any number of transactions. There is never a need to export to a spreadsheet or do anything manually. And what you refer to as “reconciling transactions” is actually a total restructuring of the way Manager works.

It seems that you may have been doing something on a spreadsheet and want a feature that duplicates that tedious process. But it isn’t necessary. What you propose would require additional steps whenever these transactions are entered, with a high likelihood people will forget to make the edits. The solution I gave you is available without additional action and is foolproof.

What you propose require to do the same process any time you what to reconcile the account, and don’t leave record of what you have done before. In order to do that, you need to export it if you want to keep the history of what you already have reconciled. Unless, you have a perfect recall of anything you do.

I’ve been working as an accountant since I’m 18, so I’m well aware how tedious it is the process. I also have work as an auditor half of that time and I can tell you it is standard practice (and a good one, I must say) to do so.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not something that would help ME, but many users.

Why?

Please, tell us how is that method “foolproof”.

That’s why it’s and idea, a proposal to the developer to consider.

I too am facing the problem of reconciling employee clearing account. For now the solution is to use the search feature.

However, there’s already an idea that would be helpful in our case:

Also, the developer have hinted the possibility of internal “reconciliation” by means of “pairing up” once before so I don’t believe that this is something completely out of question:

So, I believe the term pairing should be used instead of reconciliation or matching. Idk if this will help, but at least it’s been proposed by the developer.

I believe this pairing process should apply by default for all clearing accounts since they should normally balance out and any unpaired transactions should stick out like a sore thumb.

I also propose that yet another class of balance sheet accounts be introduced and that is: clearing accounts.

This is what I was trying to explain. The data in these accounts are huge and some transactions take 3-6 months to complete. Till then a lot more entries come into these accounts. It would be nice to see just the open transactions.

Expense Claims, Employee Clearing A/c, etc. have similar issues too.

The History file provides that record.

I already answered that question:

It requires only searching a list when you want the information. Your approach requires the discipline of remembering to edit transactions every time you make a corresponding one.

That can’t be a thing because the feature doesn’t exist.

But then you need to run over the same transactions every time you need to update the breakdown of the account balance.

It’s absolutely the opposite. What I say is to keep track of the reconciliation within the program (like a field that stores the crossed-reference for those transactions that match, it could be the value from the Reference field).

That way, in future reconciliations the only transactions you can see are the ones that aren’t matched, the ones from previous reconciliation and the new ones introduced since then.

Apparently, you misunderstand the History file. You claimed there is no record of what has been done before. On the contrary, the History file records every transaction creation, edit, deletion, etc.

I understood that. But it would require someone to remember to manually enter the reconciliation action—however it is entered—on every transaction. Where that is done is irrelevant. The point is, if you want an active reconciliation process you must keep it up to date or it is useless.

Think about what you wrote logically. You have just described the entire transaction list. Everything fits into one of those three categories.

Of course, just like a bank reconciliation, it must be done regularly.

Not at all. Once you started the reconciliation process, the list you obtain are those that are not match. Think about it like a bank reconciliation, the first month you have a lot of records that once completed are reduced to a few or none; the next month you will have a list of records with those not reconciled previously and the new ones you introduced since the last reconciliation.

Yes, but what it changes is the way these are displayed when you list them.