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If you have difficulty answering the following questions, learn more about this topic by reading our Bank Reconciliation (Explanation). Outstanding checks. Bank service charge. Interest credited to bank account. Interest charged to bank account. Deposit in transit. Bank inadvertently charged your bank account for another company's bank fees. Bank erred by posting another company's credit memo to your company's bank account. Fee charged by bank for returned check. A company wrote a check for $76 and it cleared the bank for $76. However, the company recorded the check in its Cash account as $67. How is the difference of $9 handled on the bank reconciliation? A company had a receipt of $989 and correctly prepared its bank deposit slip for $989. However, the company recorded the receipt in its Cash account as $998. How is the difference of $9 handled on the bank reconciliation? The bank collected a Note Receivable for the company and credited the company's bank account for $1,000. A company deposited a check from a customer into its checking account. A few days later the check was returned with the notation "Account Closed" and the bank deducted the amount on the bank statement. __________ . Which of the following items will require a journal entry to the company's books? Which of the following will NOT require a journal entry to the company's books? A company recorded its check #2754 in its accounting records as $98. However, check #2754 was actually written for $89 and it cleared the bank as $89. What adjustment is needed to the Cash balance per books? A company recorded its August 15 receipts on its books as $165. However, the receipts were actually $156. The deposit slip for the bank was prepared correctly as $156. What adjustment is needed to the Cash balance per books? Want more practice questions? What is a Bank Reconciliation?A bank reconciliation is the process of matching the balances in an entity's accounting records for a cash account to the corresponding information on a bank statement. The goal of this process is to ascertain the differences between the two, and to book changes to the accounting records as appropriate. The information on the bank statement is the bank's record of all transactions impacting the entity's bank account during the past month. A bank reconciliation should be completed at regular intervals for all bank accounts, to ensure that a company's cash records are correct. Otherwise, it may find that cash balances are much lower than expected, resulting in bounced checks or overdraft fees. A bank reconciliation will also detect some types of fraud after the fact; this information can be used to design better controls over the receipt and payment of cash. If there is so little activity in a bank account that there really is no need for a periodic bank reconciliation, you should question why the account even exists. It may be better to terminate the account and roll any residual funds into a more active account. By doing so, it may be easier to invest the residual funds, as well as to monitor the status of the investment. At a minimum, conduct a bank reconciliation shortly after the end of each month, when the bank sends the company a bank statement containing the bank's beginning cash balance, transactions during the month, and ending cash balance. It is even better to conduct a bank reconciliation every day, based on the bank's month-to-date information, which should be accessible on the bank's web site. By completing a bank reconciliation every day, you can spot and correct problems immediately. In particular, a daily reconciliation will highlight any ACH debits from the account that you did not authorize; you can then install a debit block on the account to prevent these ACH debits from being used to withdraw funds from the account without your permission. It is extremely unlikely that a company's ending cash balance and the bank's ending cash balance will be identical, since there are probably multiple payments and deposits in transit at all times, as well as bank service fees (for accepting checks, recording deposits, and so forth), penalties (usually for overdrafts), and not sufficient funds deposits that the company has not yet recorded. Bank Reconciliation Process FlowThe essential process flow for a bank reconciliation is to start with the bank's ending cash balance, add to it any deposits in transit from the company to the bank, subtract any checks that have not yet cleared the bank, and either add or deduct any other items. Then, go to the company's ending cash balance and deduct from it any bank service fees, NSF checks and penalties, and add to it any interest earned. At the end of this process, the adjusted bank balance should equal the company's ending adjusted cash balance. Bank Reconciliation TerminologyThe key terms to be aware of when dealing with a bank reconciliation are:
Bank Reconciliation ProcedureThe following bank reconciliation procedure assumes that you are creating the bank reconciliation in an accounting software package, which makes the reconciliation process easier:
Problems with Bank ReconciliationsThere are several problems that continually arise as part of the bank reconciliation, and which you should be aware of. They are:
Another possibility that may be causing problems is that the dates covered by the bank statement have changed, so that some items are included or excluded. This situation should only arise if someone at the company requested the bank to alter the closing date for the company's bank account. Example of a Bank ReconciliationABC International is closing its books for the month ended April 30. ABC's controller must prepare a bank reconciliation based on the following issues:
The controller creates the following reconciliation: Bank Reconciliation StatementWhen the bank reconciliation process is complete, you should be able to print a report through your accounting software that shows the bank and book balances, the identified differences between the two (mostly uncleared checks), and any remaining unreconciled difference. Retain a copy of this report for each month. The auditors will want to see it as part of their year-end audit. The format of the report will vary by software package; a simplistic layout is: Bank Reconciliation Record KeepingIf you complete the bank reconciliation at month-end, then print the bank reconciliation report and file it in the monthly journal entries binder. This gives the auditors ready access to the information if they want to examine the reconciliations at a later date. Which of the following would be deducted from the balance per bank statement in a bank reconciliation?[Items that are subtracted from the balance per bank on the bank reconciliation include outstanding checks, and bank errors that when corrected will reduce the bank balance.]
Which would be added to the balance per bank statement to arrive at the correct cash balance?Deposits in transit would be added to the balance per bank statement in a bank reconciliation.
Which of the following would be subtracted from the balance per the bank?The correct answer is d.
Bank service charges should be subtracted from the balance on a bank reconciliation.
Which of the following must be deducted from the bank statement balance in preparing a bank?Outstanding checks must be DEDUCTED from the balance per the bank statement.
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