Page 1 of 7 Bank Reconciliation Help File Bank Reconciliation: Basically this is your bank statement in Palace. It is highly recommended that the Trust Account is reconciled daily after the receipting is finished. This makes it much easier to find and correct mistakes. Contents Setting and Managing Batches for Payments and Receipts Page 1-2 Bank Reconciliation Page 3-4 Not Reconciling - Out of Balance Page 4-5 Bank Reconciliation Reports Page 6 System out of Balance Page 7 Batches for Payments and Receipts There are two settings in Palace to manage bulk payments and receipts i.e Generated Owner Payments or Import Bank Statement Receipts. You can have them showing on the unpresented screen one of one (Which is a lot of transactions if you have a large rent roll or you can put them together in a 'Batch" A Batch puts all the transactions into one line and gives one total. If the total does not agree with the total on your bank statement, then you can right click on the batch and look at all the payments that make up that batch and present or unpresent as you see fit. Go to the Reconciliation screen as normal. At the top of the screen you will see a selection that says "Use Batching for Unpresented Items - High Volume" Select it by ticking in the box This will now "Batch" together any payment or receipts that were done in a batch. Note: It will separate Generated Payments by Cheque and Direct. Cash banking will also be batched. Carry on with your reconciliation as normal. (Instructions below)
Page 2 of 7 If your batch amount does not match the total on your bank statement, click on the arrow next to the batch and a new screen will open up. This will show all the transactions in the batch and you can manage from there. You need a print out of your bank transactions from your bank for the day along with the closing bank balance. The ideal of a reconciliation is to match your bank statement with Palace to make sure they agree. Bank Reconciliation Click on Reconciliation - Left hand side menu A screen will open up, On the left hand side, enter in your closing balance from your bank statement Select your date. This area is very date driven - so be careful with your dates NOTE: As you normally are working on yesterday s bank statement you must make sure it is dated the same date. On the right hand side of the screen is the area for Presented and Unpresented Items Unpresented is the screen that shows first. All your transactions, receipts and payments will be sitting in the unreconciled part of the screen.
Page 3 of 7 NOTE: This will Depend on your setting, if you have auto present turned on or not. Auto Present means that any receipts that have come in by Import Bank Statement will auto present. Looking at the first transaction on your bank statement, find the matching transaction in the Unpresented area (as above) in Palace. Select the transaction by clicking on the tick box. You will see on the left hand side of the screen (in the totals area) the select transaction amount will appear next to the totals. Then click on PRESENT at the top of the screen. Note: You can present more than one at the same time. Just go through your bank statement and select each one that matches. Once you have them all selected, click on the Process screen. If you do select a whole selection, check on the side panel to check the amount adds to the same as what you need i.e Owner Payments: Highlight all the owner payments, then check the amount against the amount on your bank statement before presenting to make sure the amount is correct Once all your presenting has been completed, you should reconcile (both amounts are in green and the net difference will be zero) If you show a red amount it means that you do not balance and you need to work out why. See below for troubleshooting. When reconciled - Click on Reports (Top Right hand side)- Print out the Summary report to put with your bank statement, some people also print out the Presented Items Report.
Page 4 of 7 Reconciliation of Trust Account Not Balancing? You have finished your reconciliation but you do not reconcile. Check the bottom of the screen, How much are you out by? Do you have too much money in Palace or not enough For example And your Closing Balance (the bank) says $1,013,445.67 If your Current Balance (Palace) Says $975,011.97 The difference is $-38433.70 This means that the bank has more than Palace, If the Difference was $38433.70 then it would be the other way around. The best place to start looking is to check all the presented items that you have presented today. Sometimes the only way to do that is to print the Presented Items Report and tick them off your Bank Statement one by one. In the Bank Reconciliation Screen, Click on the Presented Tab, Select the line of the date you are presenting (This should be the one that you have just done) Click on the arrow to the right of the line. This will open the batch and all the items that you have presented today will show, check these off against your bank statement. If you prefer to look at a paper report, click on reports and click on Bank Recon Presented, choose the date you want and click on preview or print. If you find any transaction that does not belong there, you can tick the selected Transaction and then click on UNPRESENT up the top of the screen to unpresent selected transactions. This will put it back into the unpresented list. When finished click close Check your balance again. If you are still not balancing. Double check the unpresented items against your bank statement to make sure you have presented all items that show. If still not balancing, ask yourself the following questions: Have you made any corrections in the last 24 hours? Reversed any transactions? If the answer is yes to any of the above questions, go back and make sure you have presented both sides of the correction (the negative and the positive).
Page 5 of 7 Keeping in mind that a receipt with a payment type of "direct" will have automatically presented itself and you may still have the payment side to present. (This is a common If still at a loss: Get your folder of bank statements and going from the 1st reconciliation to the current one, check all the closing balances on the bank statements to the ones on screen. You may find one doesn t balance now, this could mean you have done a correction and forgot to change the date.
Page 6 of 7 Bank Reconciliation Reports Up on the top right hand side of the Bank Reconciliation Screen you will find the Reports Button Bank Recon Daily Summary: This gives you a daily summary of your reconciliation and is the best one to print daily and file with your bank statement. Bank Recon Presented: This will show a list of all presented items by the date or dates selected. Bank Recon Trust Account This is the actual report used for your end of month return for Auditors but you should check it daily see the notes below. Bank Recon Unpresented: This will show you a list of all the unpresented items left in your system.
Page 7 of 7 System out of Balance At the bottom of the Trust Account Reconciliation report, you may see the words "system out of balance" if you do, STOP This does NOT have anything to do with your bank balance, which may be fully in balance. What it means is that the trust account balance does not agree with the bank balance minus the unpresented total. 1. Run a System check by going to Monthend procedure and click on the first step. Then exit the monthend procedure, and check the REINZ again. 2. View the Archived properties and reinstate any that have a non-zero balance 3. View the Archived creditors and reinstate any that have a non-zero balance 4. View the historic reports and check the Institute return for each month to establish when the out of balance occurred. 5. In the month that is went out of balance, view the unpresented report from the previous month, and check that all entries show in the next month either in the Presented report OR in the Unpresented report. (So if an item was unpresented one month, by definition it must appear in the following month;s reports) 6. If it does not appear anywhere in the following month's presented or unpresented, but it was in the previous month's unpresented, locate the transaction in history and unpresent it. 7. In the month that it went out of balance, view the Presented report from the previous month, and check that NO entries show in the next month either in the Presented report OR in the Unpresented report. (So if an item was presented one month, by definition it cannot also appear in the following month;s reports) 6. If it DOES appear anywhere in the following month's presented or unpresented, but it ALSO was in the previous month's presented, then it can mean that the same entry was used to balance two different month's! The bank statements will need to be checked to see if that amount came in in both months, and a new transaction may need to be entered.