Tip of the Week - Reconciliation Tips

Hello all, attached is a tip of the week that will be sent to clerks and leaders this weekend. It deals with reconciling a unit that has not been properly reconciled in several months. It contains several steps that can be taken to clear out any old outstanding differences and bring the reconcile current.

This is great. As an auditor and stake clerk I often provide instructions to ward financial clerks verbally but have never written down the procedures. This will be a good resource for financial clerks and auditors as well.

Thank you for posting this. I had the experience of having to do this very thing a couple of years ago when one of our units had a severely out of balance account. The stake auditor gave up trying to make heads or tails out of it and reported it to the Stake Presidency. I became involved and spent the better part of three weeks trying to figure out what had gone wrong. It would have been nice to have these instructions then, but essentially I did all these steps and finally worked everything out.

I just wish units when they have problems with the reconcilliations would call as I don't mind in the least going out and giving a helping hand. And, now if not readily available I can at least send them a copy of this if they don't already have it.

Jim

This has been drafted into a Wiki article for your use found here. Thanks for the feedback, it's great to know that we are helping everyone out.

CzechRM wrote:Hello all, attached is a tip of the week that will be sent to clerks and leaders this weekend. It deals with reconciling a unit that has not been properly reconciled in several months. It contains several steps that can be taken to clear out any old outstanding differences and bring the reconcile current.

I was delighted to receive this instruction in the messages last Sunday, because our accounts have not been reconciled since before I became finance clerk. The instructions are clear and concise and bid fair to help me solve our problems, BUT

I can't find a starting place.

The last printed reconciliation report is for March of 2007, so I thought to start from there. However, when I followed the instruction and looked at the report online, I found there is an out-of-balance amount. So I went back month by month into late 2006 and still find out-of-balance reports, even though there are printed reports for those months showing the accounts as reconciled.

So my question is, how do I break into the chain and create a secure starting place to begin catching up with this horrendous backlog?

Thanks for your help.

hstocks wrote:I was delighted to receive this instruction in the messages last Sunday, because our accounts have not been reconciled since before I became finance clerk. The instructions are clear and concise and bid fair to help me solve our problems, BUT

I can't find a starting place.

The last printed reconciliation report is for March of 2007, so I thought to start from there. However, when I followed the instruction and looked at the report online, I found there is an out-of-balance amount. So I went back month by month into late 2006 and still find out-of-balance reports, even though there are printed reports for those months showing the accounts as reconciled.

So my question is, how do I break into the chain and create a secure starting place to begin catching up with this horrendous backlog?

Thanks for your help.

You might find some helpful information on the thread Recociliation mess.

The reason you are finding out of balance amounts when you go back to reconcile past months is explained in one of the posts of that thread:

Alan_Brown wrote:The one thing to be aware of is that any corrections that have been subsequently made to the checks or donations are dated with the date of the original check or donation, not the date of the correction. But they show up on the Church Unit Financial Statement with the date of the correction. So you may need to have some temporary adjustment items that you carry forward until the month they show up on the statement as you work through these reconciliations.

I know this can be challenging (I've had to do it myself, and also to help a couple of clerks work through the process), but if you understand the point above about pre-dated corrections, and you work systematically through the process, you should be able to start in March 2007 and get it done. Don't hesitate to call on stake clerks or auditors who are usually very helpful in such situations.

hstocks wrote:I can't find a starting place.

The last printed reconciliation report is for March of 2007, so I thought to start from there. However, when I followed the instruction and looked at the report online, I found there is an out-of-balance amount. So I went back month by month into late 2006 and still find out-of-balance reports, even though there are printed reports for those months showing the accounts as reconciled.

So my question is, how do I break into the chain and create a secure starting place to begin catching up with this horrendous backlog?

The instructions in the MLS message and in the PDF file attached to CzechRM's post gives you a good starting point.

Find the Last Month That Reconciled to Zero
To find your starting point, locate within MLS the last month where the reconciliation was completed, all categories had NO unreconciled differences, and no TEMPORARY ITEMS were used.

The important point is to find the reconciliation that not only has no unreconciled differences but also no Temporary Statement Adjustments. So if you find that March 2008 is the first reconciliation that has no unreconciled differences and no temporary statement adjustments then the month to start working forward from is April 2008. As Russell points out there may be some corrections to checks or donations that will cause temporary adjustments to be carried forward until the month in which the corrections were made.

If March 2007 is the last printed reconciliation report then start looking farther in the past from that reconciliation for the reconciliation that has no unreconciled differences and no temporary statement adjustments. Be sure to use the printed reconciliation reports to do this search for the reasons just given above. You may find that as you work forward from the first good reconciliation that even though there are months that have temporary statement adjustments these may also be good reconciliations.

hstocks wrote:I can't find a starting place.

The last printed reconciliation report is for March of 2007, so I thought to start from there. However, when I followed the instruction and looked at the report online, I found there is an out-of-balance amount. So I went back month by month into late 2006 and still find out-of-balance reports, even though there are printed reports for those months showing the accounts as reconciled.

So my question is, how do I break into the chain and create a secure starting place to begin catching up with this horrendous backlog?

If you've gone all the way back to January 2006 and cannot find a good starting point, it's best to call Church headquarters and speak with the reconcilers in the local unit support group. They can either help you through the process of forcing the balances in 2006, or set an appointment if the fix will take more time.