Setting up Beginning Balances for Bank Reconciliation

How do I set up beginning balances for the Bank reconciliation?

When you migrate your books over to Xoro, for the first time you have to set a beginning bank statement balance and beginning account register balance in Xoro in order to start the reconciliation.

There are three steps to accomplish this per bank/Credit card account

1. Set up beginning Bank Statement balance in Xoro

2. Set up beginning register balance in Xoro

3. Reconcile the beginning bank statement balance with the beginning register balance in Xoro

Depending upon the number of distinct bank or credit card accounts you have, this procedure should be carried over for each bank or credit card account

Let’s discuss these three steps in detail.

1. Set up beginning Bank Statement balance in Xoro

Generally when you start the system, you’re beginning bank statement balance is Zero. This means that we have to upload the bank statement (one-line transaction) with the ending statement balance amount of your previous reconciliation.

It is important to note that this is the ending statement balance of your last reconciliation, not the Register balance of the bank account that shows on your balance sheet or trial balance.

For example: Say you are moving the books into Xoro as of January 1, 2021. Then in this case you will enter the bank statement balance as of December 31, 2020, into Xoro. How to do that?

Step 1: Go to the “Upload Bank Statement” Module

Column NameData TypeDescriptionExample
**DateMM-DD-YYYYStatement Ending Date12/31/2020
**AmountnumericStatement Ending Amount50000.00
DescriptionTextMemoOpening Balance Entry

2. Set up beginning register balance in Xoro

Register balance is the account balance shown on your balance sheet or trial balance. Generally, this balance is equal to the bank statement balance unless and until there are no outstanding checks and deposits.

If you have outstanding checks and deposits then, you need to create a Journal Entry (JE) in Xoro for ending bank Statement balance, outstanding checks, and outstanding deposits.  The combination of these JE’s will add up to the register balance in Xoro that will exactly match with the register balance in your previous system.

The offset account for the JE is usually the “Opening Balance Equity” account.

Here are the Examples of JE for ending statement balance, Outstanding checks, and outstanding deposits. Again the point to be noted here is that we are trying to get to the same register balance that is In your previous system. The common mistake made here Is that If you create a single journal entry to bring the registered balance into Xoro without considering the ending bank statement balance, outstanding deposits, and outstanding checks altogether.

Say your Ending Statement Balance is $50,000, Outstanding Checks that didn’t clear the bank: $6000, Outstanding Deposits that didn’t get deposited in the bank: $5000

Register Balance: $50,000 – $6000 + $5000 = $49,000

JE 1: Bank Statement Balance

Bank Account | Debit | $50,000

Opening Balance Equity | Credit  | $50,000

JE2: Outstanding Checks

Bank Account | Credit | $6,000

Opening Balance Equity | Debit  | $6,000

Note: The outstanding checks entry can also be done through the outgoing payment module in case you want to record the actual Payment method and associated check numbers.

JE3: Outstanding Deposits

Bank Account | Debit | $5,000

Opening Balance Equity | Credit  | $5,000

Note: The outstanding deposit entry can be done through the bank deposit module.

3. Reconcile the beginning bank statement balance with the beginning register balance in Xoro

Once the first two steps are done, then we are at the final step where we need to start the reconciliation process.

Here we will reconcile the Single line of bank statement upload to JE 1 in Xoro.

Here are the steps

Step 1: Go to “Reconcile Bank Account”

Step 2: Enter Statement Ending Date (example 12/31/2020) and Statement Ending Balance (example 50,000)

Step 3: Reconcile Bank with Xoro

Step 4: Click on “Finish” on the top right

Going forward, the beginning balance for this account will show the relevant balance (For example in this case it would show $50,000 as the beginning balance)

Important Note: The same procedure can be done for credit card accounts. The only difference between the bank account and credit card account balances is that as a credit card is a liability, the opening balance of a credit card will be entered as a negative balance both in case of bank statement upload (single line) and in case of Reconcile bank account where the ending statement balance is required.

Related Articles:

Was this article helpful?

Related Articles