reconcile to clear previous month info

[FischerCommCh]

I have had no problems reconciling until now. Last month entries were posted and reconciled; i was able to get a print-out of reconciled items.I check the view posted to see if the entries were duplicated, they were not. This month I entered and posted several entries, but when I went to reconcile this month entries, the reconcile cue included last month entries also, even though last month entries we posted okay. How do I clear out the last month entries so that I can reconcile this month (without all the duplication of last month entries included)?

[Eden Whitehead]

I have had no problems reconciling until now. Last month entries were posted and reconciled; i was able to get a print-out of reconciled items.I check the view posted to see if the entries were duplicated, they were not. This month I entered and posted several entries, but when I went to reconcile this month entries, the reconcile cue included last month entries also, even though last month entries we posted okay. How do I clear out the last month entries so that I can reconcile this month (without all the duplication of last month entries included)?

I'm not 100 percent certain I understand your question, and I can only speak to ver10.4, but if you are doing the task "Reconcile Bank Accounts" under Fund Accounting, then do you have the "Include" radio button checked for "Unreconciled" or "All data"? Selecting the "Unreconciled" button will keep previously reconciled entries from appearing.
I hope this helps.

Eden

[FischerCommCh]

Thank you Ms Eden for your response. I am working PC plus 10.4, in the acctg module under the reconcile cue and I have selected the radio button for unreconciled data; and the Oct. entries appear as though they were not reconciled even though i posted and reconciled and have my reconciled report to prove the same. In a year of using this program, i have never run across this and don't know what to do to clear out the old month. I don't want to mess up what's been smooth sailing so far. Should i try to reconcile and ignore these previous items, or will it throw me out of balance? Can anyone out there help?

[FischerCommCh]

I may have a solution to my reconciling problem; i went to the reconcile cue and just (re-)cleared the previous months entries leaving only the current month to reconcile. It seems to have worked out fine. I then reconciled the current month as usual. ( i hope it does cause any problem with system generated entries other than just providing a record of what was done). If anyone foresees a problem with what I've done; please let me know.

[JohnDMeyers]

Another thought is that you may not have clicked on "DONE" last month. You may have inadvertently clicked on "POSTPONE". POSTPONE would leave all the C's next to your entries for last month.

retta's suggestion will likely work, regardless

[rlcox]

Actually, I have had this happen to me three times. I am currently sitting with checks from last March and April that had previously been reconciled. They started showing up on my unreconciled lists about 4 months ago. It happened a year or so ago as well and when I posted the question asking why this happened and what I should do, the response was that someone unreconciled the item. I am the only person who has access to the accounting module. Our secretary records the contributions so she has access to contributions but no one else can access accounting. So that reasoning didn't make sense. I was able to mark it as reconciled again with no problems. However, this time around I don't think that will happen. I currently have a $45.78 remaining balance every month when I finish my reconciliation due to the new "unreconciled" items. I have chosen to do nothing at this point because I don't know what to do that won't mess with my true balance. I have seriously considered leaving PC+ altogether and going to a spreadsheet due to this. How can my books be audited properly when checks mysteriously unreconcile themselves?????

[JohnDMeyers]

Here's one obvious thing that needs to asked to be eliminated from the possible answers:

Does anyone else do backup/restores? It is possible that a restore could overwrite a reconciliation.

[rlcox]

Yes. She records the membership and contributions on the church computer. I do the accounting on my computer. So I backup my computer and instruct her when to restore. Then she backs up the database after processing each Sunday's offering and continues to back up until I take the CD home and restore it to my computer. I back up mine, take back the CD and have her restore it to hers and the cycle starts all over again. So that does happen. But I am not looking at an entire reconciliation cycle suddenly becoming unreconciled - if so, I would think the same thing. We are talking about one or two checks. The first time it was one check and I finally reconciled just that check and everything turned out okay. This time I have two checks that I can see on a previous reconciliation report have cleared once before but they show as unreconciled. And when I tried to reconcile just those checks, my bank balance was also adjusted. So I haven't tried to reclear them.

[NeilZ]

Yes. She records the membership and contributions on the church computer. I do the accounting on my computer. So I backup my computer and instruct her when to restore. Then she backs up the database after processing each Sunday's offering and continues to back up until I take the CD home and restore it to my computer. I back up mine, take back the CD and have her restore it to hers and the cycle starts all over again. So that does happen. But I am not looking at an entire reconciliation cycle suddenly becoming unreconciled - if so, I would think the same thing. We are talking about one or two checks. The first time it was one check and I finally reconciled just that check and everything turned out okay. This time I have two checks that I can see on a previous reconciliation report have cleared once before but they show as unreconciled. And when I tried to reconcile just those checks, my bank balance was also adjusted. So I haven't tried to reclear them.

FWIW ... I've seen major problems with this type of 'backup' and 'restore' between two separate computers.

Not only can membership get overwritten, but you could have fund accounting issues too. If you are going to do this, I would only backup and restore the funds accounting area. No one else should have access to the accounting functions, thus the only changes would be those that you do. In this manner, you wouldn't have to worry about any changes to any area outside of accounting, and the accounts of record would be maintained on your computer. Of course, that also means that you have to maintain a good setup of backups for the accounting area off site.

The Contributions should not be posted until just before you do a backup of Funds Accounting, this way the proper transactions are created in FA.

[NeilZ]

I was thinking about this overnight, and thought of something else.

If you do all the accounting on your machine at home, then there's a better way of doing the transfer.

When the Contributions are posted, post to a File. Take this back home on a USB thumb/flash drive to post to Funds Accounting. Backup your Funds Accounting data from the home machine, and only do restores of FA data to the church computer. Never use a backup from the church computer to restore to your home computer.

In this way you will never have to worry about accidentally restoring outdated information to the 'accounting database of record' on your computer, and the church wouldn't have to worry about restoring out-of-sync data to other areas of the Powerchurch database.