Bank reconciliation: a tool for controlling your company’s treasury
Bank reconciliation is a common practice in accounting. It allows you to keep an eye on your bank accounts. It is a helping tool to control the treasury flow of a company. What exactly is bank reconciliation, why and how can you set it up?
What is bank reconciliation?
Bank reconciliation is an accounting action that acts as a check and control. It allows a company to ensure that its bank accounts correspond with its bank statements at a specific date. More precisely, it involves checking whether the transactions entered in account 512 in accounting match those recorded on the bank statement.
Useful information
Account 512 represents the asset bank account of a company, i.e. used for banking transactions (cheques, transfers, etc.)
In concrete terms, bank reconciliation allows you to check that your accounting entries are up to date and that your treasury state is correct.
Why establish a bank reconciliation statement?
To establish a bank reconciliation statement for your business is essential if you want to be able to detect potential anomalies in your bank account such as:
- Possible omissions or manual typing errors
- Missing invoices or unrecorded receivables
- Account errors during a transfer
- Simply check the accuracy of direct debits made by the bank
You can then update your accounting entries to regularize your treasury, or simply ensure the financial security of your company.
How to make your bank reconciliation?
Preparing a bank reconciliation is an action that should be done periodically. It is easier to detect errors over a short period of time, so it is recommended that you update it several times a year, for example quarterly.
To make a bank reconciliation statement, you need to list each transaction one by one, from date to date, by comparing the line of your bank statement with the line corresponding to your bank account (number 512) in accounting. The aim is to check line by line that everything matches and to regularize the entries when you notice discrepancies or differences.
Don’t forget to include in your tally the cheque deposit slips, bills of exchange, or cash entrusted to your bank.
If you are afraid of getting lost in time-consuming manipulations, you can turn to a bank management tool that offers a bank reconciliation module. This is the case with Cegid Exabanque, thanks to its specialized module, you can save time and carry out your bank reconciliation more easily and efficiently.
Cegid Exabanque bank reconciliation module
To make your bank reconciliation easier, Cegid Exabanque module automates the lettering of your bank entries (SEPA Credit Transferand SEPA Direct Debit: SCT and SDD) in order to make your accounting work more reliable.
Your bank statements are integrated into the software beforehand thanks to the bank management module, and your accounting entries can be imported manually or automatically (FTP-Bank module).
After automatic bank reconciliation, you can manually reconcile the remaining entries. The entries are displayed in 2 parallel tables: Bank / Accounting.
The Cegid Exabanque bank reconciliation module is provided with automatic reconciliation rules based on :
- Choosing a pre-established accounting nomenclature or a customized one
- Creating a correspondence table with your accounting entries
Once your bank reconciliation has been completed, the periods are closed and your accountant can follow up on his closures and edit the corresponding supporting documents.
Find out more about Cegid Exabanque bank reconciliation module.