At some point you will need to reconcile your bank account, although how regularly depends upon the needs of your business. When your Sage program has accumulated many transactions it is often desirable to clear old transactions, usually from an old financial year, from the system. This is achieved via the Clear Audit Trail routine. This routine will only remove transactions from the program that have been reconciled with the bank. Therefore even if you do not usually use the bank reconciliation option there will come a time when the reconciliation routine must be followed unless you have disabled the bank reconciliation previously.

Yes. Choose the Bank option, select the bank account you do not want to reconcile and then choose the Record option. At the bottom left hand corner of the screen there is a check box to enable/disable the bank reconciliation for this bank account only. This will prevent any transactions processed through this bank account from appearing on the bank reconciliation window.

The program will remove all the transactions from the bank reconciliation window that were processed through the bank account that you have disabled. It also changes the reconciliation flag on the Audit Trail to a æ-æ.

The audit trail is the central report to the whole of your Sage Line 50 accounts program. Every field of information on every transaction is listed on this report. If you print your Audit Trail you will see a column headed æBÆ for bank. This shows the reconciled status of every transaction on your system. The entry in this column is referred to as a æflagÆ and is set to either æRÆ for reconciled, æNÆ for not reconciled, or æ-æ for not applicable.

You need to find out why there is a discrepancy and make the necessary adjustments. We recommend you view or print this bankÆs transaction history from within the nominal ledger or bank ledger. This report lists all of the transactions that have been made to and from the bank for both reconciled and unreconciled transactions, you can even specify a date range if you want to. Compare the transactions listed in these reports with those from your last few bank statements to find any missed transactions, incorrect values or transactions that should or should not have been reconciled. For example, if you forgot to adjust for bank charges last month then your bank balance will be incorrect by this amount and you will need to post an adjustment to allow for it.

You can use the Swap and Clear buttons at the bottom of the Bank Reconciliation window to select and de-select all of the transactions. However be aware that if you have a lot of transactions it may take a while before the transactions are highlighted. Also make sure that you really do want to reconcile all transactions. If you use the Swap button and then press the Save button to reconcile all of the transactions, there is no way of reversing this procedure automatically unless you have previously backed up your data. The only alternative is to individually unreconcile each transaction.

Only unreconciled transactions appear on the bank reconciliation list box. Once the transactions have been reconciled they will then be removed from this screen and appear on the bank statement. To print out the required transactions you must choose Bank and then Reports and then print both the Unreconciled Payments and Unreconciled Receipts reports.

You can record this transaction in your program straight away without closing the Bank Reconciliation option. Use the following procedure:
To record bank charges using Sage Line 50
1. From the Bank Reconciliation window click Adjustments.
 The Adjustment window appears.
2. Enter your nominal code. If the adjustment is for bank charges use the bank charges nominal code 7901. Otherwise select the nominal code most suitable for the adjustment e.g. 4900 Miscellaneous Income, etc.
3. Enter the rest of the details for the transaction i.e. date, reference, details, tax code, and either the payment or receipt value.
 In nearly all instances no VAT will be added to bank adjustments so use Tax Code T9.
4. To post your adjustment, click Save.
 The adjustment appears as either a BP (Bank Payment) or BR (Bank Receipt) at the bottom of the bank reconciliation list box. This will also need to be reconciled in the normal way.

To pick up the opening balance for a bank account the details for the journal entry, bank payment or bank receipt must be as follows: Capital O and B for the beginning of the words and lower case letters for the rest of the words i.e. Opening Balance.
If you have entered this incorrectly and this is the first time you have used the bank reconciliation utility, the opening balance field on the bank reconciliation list box might be 0. If it is not the first time, the opening balance field will show the closing figure from the last time you reconciled the bank.
If you have entered the opening balance incorrectly, use File Maintenance, and change the details to Opening Balance.

If you have reconciled a transaction by mistake it can be corrected as follows.
To unreconcile a transaction using Sage Line 50
1. Open the File menu and choose Maintenance.
2. Click Correct.
 A list of your existing transactions appears.
3. Select the transaction that you wish to unreconcile and click Edit.
4. Clear the check box for the field Bank Reconciled. Click Save to save the changes that you have made.
 The next time you select Bank Reconciliation the transaction will appear on the bank reconciliation list box.

The cheque should still be logged on your Sage program but should be removed from your bank account. You will need to post a correction to cancel the cheque on your Sage program. If you are using the VAT cash accounting system see section To Record A Returned Cheque On Your Customer Ledger. If you are on the standard VAT scheme you can post the corrections now by following the steps outlined below.
To remove a bounced cheque
1. Open the Settings menu and choose Change Program.
2. Change this to the date of the cheque you want to cancel.
3. Click OK.
4. Open the Tools menu and choose Write Off, Refund And Return.
5. Select to make adjustments to the sales ledger and follow the on screen wizard. If you now return to the bank reconciliation window you will see that the program has added a BP to the 9999 mispostings nominal code. This will need to be reconciled in the normal way.

This time the cheque will be appearing in your Sage program but not on your bank statement.
You will need to cancel the cheque using the routine outlined in the above question.

Your recurring entries (which can be used to process standing orders on your Sage program) have probably not been processed for this month. Therefore, although the transactions have been processed through your bank account, nothing appears on the bank reconciliation list box. For details see the To Process Your Monthly Recurring Entries procedure in this help system.