5 Common Account Reconciliation Problems and How To Avoid Them

21st February 2019 | By Jan Cahill

Reconciling your business accounts is a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, you need all the pieces in one place in order to spot the missing or wrong ones. A timely and often frustrating task, account reconciliation is a necessary process, but weaknesses and inefficiencies often lead to inaccuracies and mistakes.   We have identified five of the more common problems associated with account reconciliation:

1. Untimely Or Missed Reconciliations

Reconciliations should be done on a regular basis to ensure that all account balances agree and to give you a clear view of your financial position.  It becomes much more difficult to recall details should problems arise when you haven’t reconciled on a consistent basis.

2. Oversights 

Occasionally transactions (e.g. an expense or the sale of a product/service) may be forgotten about and never added into your ledger.  This could be due to invoices getting lost or mislaid. Such omissions can be very hard to detect.

3. Errors of Reversal

This can  happen when a transaction is accidentally posted as a debit instead of a credit e.g. an invoice is entered as a payment or refund.

4. Duplicate payments

Duplicates arise when you pay a supplier twice.  

5. Questionable timing 

Deposits not yet showing on bank statements or cheques not cashed that were sent a while ago.

But is there a solution that will save you time whilst allowing you to reconcile your accounts more efficiently and effectively?  A solution that will check your bank statements against your general ledger, check for duplicates and validate payments on accounts?

The answer is YES.  

Let us introduce you to Robocloud, our Robotic Process Automation Software that can transform the way you work. 

Providing you with your own cloud-based digital workforce, our robots can perform manual Account Reconciliation tasks for you including:

  • Month End Account Reconciliation
  • Reconciling your general ledger software e.g. Sage, Oracle, Xero or Quickbooks
  • Checking line items on your bank statement against general ledger
  • Money going out e.g. Expenses, Wages or Bills
  • Checking for any duplication in payments
  • Validate payments on account
  • Check money coming in from customers or other sources
  • Match Receipts for debit or credit card transactions
  • Check Loans coming into the business

Working to your rules, Robocloud can: Reconcile Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable against your Accounting Ledger for:-

  • Supplier Statements 
  • Customer Statements

Reconcile outstanding invoices, credits and payments by:

  • Checking your ledger for matching invoice/credit/payment
  • Checking EDM (Electronic Document Management System) for receipt of invoice/credit
  • Checking dates, amounts and other information match between statement and ledger
  • Sending automated emails to suppliers/customers to request copies of invoices/credits etc. not received
  • 2-way or more matching e.g.:
    • 2-way: statement to ledger, ledger to statement
    • 3-way: PO to statement to ledger
  • Be customised to check GRNI (Goods received).

Want to know more?  Then call our Robocloud team today on 0800 046 8086 or contact us.