For reconciling an account correctly, your beginning balance in QuickBooks Online should match with the beginning balance on your bank statement. So if you want to know more about how you can beginning balance is calculated and why it is needed for your business, let us discuss everything.
The last opening balance can be affected if the reconciled transactions were deleted, added, or changed. So it is very important to identify and resolve discrepancies with the help of various reports available in QuickBooks Online to help you.
How QuickBooks Online calculates the beginning balance
The opening balance of your account record tells about the sum or total amount your bank has been recorded regarding each and every transaction of your bank account at the beginning period of the record.
The method of QuickBooks Online in order to calculate the beginning balance for your account is totally dependent on if your account has been reconciled in the past:
- For previously reconciled accounts: Beginning balance is the total amount of each and every reconciled transaction, in any case of date.
- For new or previously unreconciled accounts: The beginning balance is the initial balance of your account.
What is the beginning balance discrepancy?
If you are in a situation where your beginning balance in QuickBooks Online is not matching with your bank statement, this is something known as the beginning balance discrepancy.
In this condition Whenever you try to open the Begin Reconciliation page and click on a specific account in order to reconcile it, your displayed opening balance will not match with the ending balance from the past reconciliation.
What are the causes of beginning balance discrepancy?
A lot of possible condition is there that causes this error while we have listed some most common causes for a beginning balance discrepancy:
- In case your amount or account of the past reconciled transaction has been changed.
- When your previously reconciled transaction has been removed.
- If you have deleted or changed your amount or account of a transaction that was combined with the previously reconciled transaction. For example, in case you reconcile the statement of your credit card, with the payments of last month from the checking account, however, from your checking account, you mistakenly remove or delete the payment of your credit card, in future when you reconcile the statement of your credit card, the beginning balance becomes off by the amount of the payment.
- when the reconciliation status of the transaction has been modified from the register. This situation happens while the reconciliation status of your previously reconciled transaction has been modified from reconciled to cleared or if it is blank (neither), even this cause while the status of an unreconciled transaction has been modified to reconciled.
- If your opening balance of the accounts is not correct.
Make it easy…..
In case this is the first time that you are reconciling the account, we recommend you to search the opening balance transaction of your account from the register, normally you can get your first deposit transaction. You can even find “Opening Bal Equity” from the Account section in the register. Keeping in mind what your original balances have been entered, you will have to correct the dollar amount and date in order to match with your beginning bank balance.
How to correct discrepancies in QuickBooks Online
We will discuss some quick fixes to make corrections for any identified discrepancies you face in QuickBooks online. Look at the following steps:
- Fill out the missing or deleted transactions and then remove them again.
- Alter previously cleared transactions in order to again match the amount it was at the time of beginning reconciliation.
- At the last time, normally undo past reconciliations until you get a perfect beginning balance for that specific date, after that re-reconcile for every month as needed.
Conclusion
We hope that the above mentioned topic of this article will surely be helpful for you to know about Beginning Balance discrepancies in QuickBooks online. However, there might be situations when you feel like nothing to fix the beginning or opening balances issue because of lots of transactions. For those situations, we recommend you connect with any of our QuickBooks online experts by dialing the toll-free QuickBooks Online Support Phone Number +1-877-898-0542 and get instant QuickBooks online support.