Bank reconciliation is a very important process that all churches should do for many reasons. First, it helps ensure that the balances of your books vs the bank match and helps identify why there may be differences. This will help improve the accuracy of your books. Secondly, it prevents editing of reconciled transactions thereby improving your internal security controls.

We recommend you reconcile your bank statement monthly, but needs may vary across organizations.

To get started with bank reconciliation, go to your banking website and download your monthly bank statement for the last unreconciled month in One Church. If this is the first reconciliation, get the statement for the first full calendar month of transactions.

Then go to Accounting > Banking > Reconciliations from the left-hand menu and click on the "New Reconciliation" button at the top.

A pop up will open requesting details of the period you are reconciling:

Account

Choose the Cash Account or Credit Card Account you are reconciling (i.e. checking account, credit card, etc.). If the account is not found in the list, you will need to add it to your chart of accounts first. This article details how.

If the account you've chosen currently has a pending bank reconciliation, you'll be notified this is the case and a button will appear that will take you to that reconciliation to finish it. You cannot have two reconciliations for the same bank account active at the same time.

Beginning balance

This field will contain the beginning balance for the selected account. If this is the first reconciliation, it will be the starting balance as set in the chart of accounts or $0.00 if you did not set a starting balance. See this article for more details on setting starting balances.

If you've done reconciliations previously, the beginning balance will the ending balance of the last reconciliation. This should match the beginning balance on the bank statement you are reconciling against. If it doesn't, there is a problem with past reconciliations and those should be reviewed for errors before continuing.

Ending balance

Required. The ending balance for the month you are reconciling. This can be found on the bank statement.

Ending date

Required. The ending date for the month you are reconciling. This can be found on the bank statement.

Once you've answered the fields above, click on the "Save" button to create the reconciliation. You'll be taken to the bank reconciliation screen afterwards.

Once you've created the bank reconciliation, you'll be taken to the reconciliation screen. You'll also be taken here if you click on an existing reconciliation to edit.

Note, that the date, payment, deposits, and total columns of a bank reconciliation are sortable.

This screen is split into multiple sections:

1. Entries Tab

This tab contains all unreconciled transactions in the system with a date prior to the ending date on this reconciliation. If you need to see transactions after the ending date, click on the "clear all filers" next to the Add New button near the top.

The table by default shows all transactions, but you can toggle between viewing payments only and deposits only by clicking on the buttons in the upper right as needed.

Go through each transaction on your bank statement and check the matching transaction in the table. Your payments and deposits should exactly match between One Church and your bank statement. If they don't, you will need to determine what the issue is (i.e. a missing or extra entry), and correct it.

Changes are saved immediately upon checking or unchecking an entry. No need to click on the Finish Later button.

If it is a missing entry, you can click on the "Add New" button at the top to create a new entry using the same information from the bank statement. If it is a duplicate entry, you can use the dropdown at the end of the row to delete it from the system. You can also use the Edit button on a row to change details on a transaction if you determined it was entered incorrectly.

2. Notes Tab

This tab lets you add notes to the reconciliation in case you need to jot down important information regarding this particular reconciliation report.

3. Details Box

This area contains informational details regarding the current reconciliation being worked on including:

The last two above only appear once the reconciliation has been completed. There is also a button that takes you to the associated account register in this box in case you need to go there quickly.

4. Overview Box

This area contains very important details on the current progress of the reconciliation. It contains:

Important: the bank reconciliation can only be marked as successfully completed if the Difference is $0.00.

Once the bank reconciliation report matches your bank statement exactly, the button in the upper right will change from "Finish Later" to "Finish Reconciling". Clicking on that will close the bank reconciliation report marking each included transaction as reconciled and preventing any edits to those transactions (unless you delete the associated reconciliation report).