To reconcile a bank statement in QuickBooks Desktop, open Banking > Reconcile, pick the account, confirm the beginning balance, enter the statement date and ending balance, then tick each deposit and payment that appears on the statement until the difference is $0.00. If last month changed, run the Reconciliation Discrepancy report before going further.
Entering statement figures in QuickBooks Desktop Begin Reconciliation
The Begin Reconciliation window in QuickBooks Desktop asks for five figures from the bank statement: the statement date, the beginning balance, the ending balance, any service charge and any interest earned. Every one of them comes from the paper or PDF statement, not from the register. Fill them in before clearing a single item.
Intuit's Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Desktop guide gives the order. Go to Banking > Reconcile and select the account. Check the Statement Date against the statement's end date, because QuickBooks prefills it about 30 to 31 days after the last reconciliation and a bank cycle that ends on the 25th will not line up. Then confirm the Beginning Balance, enter the Ending Balance, and select Continue.
The Beginning Balance is the one field you do not type. QuickBooks fills it from the last reconciliation, so it should equal the opening balance printed on the statement. When it does not, stop. Clearing items against a wrong starting point only hides the problem inside a new month. The section on why the beginning balance changed covers what moves it.
The Service Charge and Interest Earned fields are for amounts not yet in the books. Intuit's guide says to enter them only if they have not already been recorded. If the bank's monthly fee was entered as a check or downloaded through a bank feed, leave the field blank, or the fee lands twice. Each field also takes an account, so the fee goes to the expense account the client uses for bank charges and the interest goes to its interest income account.
Before you start, Intuit lists a few preparation steps worth following every month:
- Back up the company file.
- Have the statement's beginning balance, ending balance and end date in front of you.
- Enter every transaction for the statement period first.
- On a first reconciliation, review the account's opening balance.
The third point saves the most time. A reconciliation run while checks are still sitting in a drawer will never reach zero, and the search for the gap ends with the missing entries anyway.
Clearing deposits and checks in QuickBooks Desktop
Clearing in QuickBooks Desktop means marking each register entry that also appears on the bank statement. The Reconcile window shows money out and money in as separate lists. You tick an item when its amount and date match a line on the statement, and you leave it unticked when the bank has not processed it yet.
Start by narrowing the lists. Intuit's guide points to the "Hide transactions after the statement's end date" option, which removes entries dated after the statement period so a check written on the 3rd of next month does not tempt you. For an account connected to online banking, the Matched button auto-selects downloaded transactions up to the statement ending date you enter. A lightning bolt marks a matched item, and a checkmark replaces it once the reconciliation is saved.
Then work through one side at a time. Tick the deposits that the statement shows, then the checks and other payments. As you go, compare the count and total under "Items you've marked cleared" with the statement's own summary of deposits and withdrawals. If the statement shows 14 withdrawals totalling $8,412.60 and you have 15 ticked, you know to look for an extra item before you look anywhere else.
Two tools help when an item is wrong rather than missing. Select an entry and choose Go To, or double-click it, to open and correct the transaction without leaving the window. If you typed the statement figures wrong, Modify reopens the Begin Reconciliation fields. Both are safer than closing the window and starting again.
Mark only what the bank shows. A check the client wrote on the 29th that has not cleared stays unticked; it will appear on next month's statement and get cleared then. The same goes for a deposit made after the bank's cutoff. These outstanding items are the normal reason the register balance and the statement balance differ.
For a card account, the lists change names. Intuit's guide shows them as Charges and Cash Advances and Payments and Credits, and the post on how to reconcile credit card statements covers the card-specific steps.
Why did the QuickBooks Desktop beginning balance change?
A QuickBooks Desktop beginning balance changes when someone alters a transaction that was already reconciled. Intuit's Fix beginning balance issues in QuickBooks Desktop article lists the causes: a cleared item voided, deleted or changed, an account never given a correct opening balance, a file converted from another version, or a damaged file.
The edits that move the balance are the ones that touch a cleared amount. Changing the payee or memo on a reconciled check does not alter the total. Changing its amount, deleting it, voiding it, or moving it to a different bank account does, because the sum of cleared items no longer equals last month's ending balance.
These edits are rarely malicious. A client fixing what looks like a typo, a staff member voiding a check to reissue it, or a merge of duplicate vendors can each reach back into a closed month. Intuit's companion article, Fix issues when you're reconciling in QuickBooks Desktop, adds two more causes of a balance that will not tie: a journal entry that adjusted the last reconciliation, and transactions that are missing or duplicated.
The discrepancy is usually a single amount you can name. If the beginning balance is $270.00 lower than the statement's opening figure, look for one cleared item that changed by $270.00, not a scattering of small errors. A difference divisible by 9 often points to transposed digits; the post on transposition and slide errors in a bank reconciliation explains why.
Know the earlier statements before you blame the software. If the client's PDF statements themselves skip a month, the prior reconciliation may have been done against the wrong opening figure from the start. Schema CPA reads each statement in the client's file, rolls every ending balance into the next opening balance and calls out any month that is missing, which tells you whether the bank side is sound before you open QuickBooks.
Reading the QuickBooks Desktop discrepancy report
The Reconciliation Discrepancy report in QuickBooks Desktop lists reconciled transactions that changed after the last reconciliation. Run it from Reports > Banking > Reconciliation Discrepancy, select the account and select OK. Intuit says to note each transaction's date and its Entered/Last Modified value, which tells you when the change happened.
Read each line for three things: which transaction it is, what changed, and when. The transaction date tells you which closed month it belongs to. The Entered/Last Modified date tells you when the edit was made. Together they usually point to a person and a day, and Intuit's advice is to confirm the reason for each change with whoever made it before undoing anything.
When the discrepancy report is not enough, Intuit's beginning balance article describes a narrower search with the Audit Trail report:
- Run Reports > Banking > Previous Reconciliation for the most recent statement date and note when that reconciliation was created.
- Run Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Audit Trail.
- Under Customize Report > Filters, filter by the account.
- Under Display, set the date filter to end on the statement date.
- Set the Entered/Modified filter from the previous reconciliation's creation date to today.
That combination shows transactions dated in closed periods but edited since the books were last reconciled, which is exactly the set that moves a beginning balance. Intuit also notes that QuickBooks Pro keeps only the last reconciliation report, so saving each month's report as a PDF gives you the history later.
A worked month with an edited cleared check
This example is fictional. Alder Street Bakery (example client) keeps checking account XXXX-4821 at an example bank, and its bookkeeper reconciled March with an ending balance of $18,940.35. In early May, the bookkeeper begins the April reconciliation.
| Step | What the bookkeeper sees (example values) |
|---|---|
| April statement opening balance | $18,940.35 |
| QuickBooks Begin Reconciliation beginning balance | $18,670.35 |
| Difference | $270.00 |
| Reconciliation Discrepancy report line | Check 1042, dated Feb 14, cleared in February, amount now $1,520.00, Entered/Last Modified Apr 22 |
| February bank statement for check 1042 | Cleared for $1,250.00 |
| Cause | On Apr 22 the amount was retyped as $1,520.00, a transposition of $1,250.00 |
| Fix | Open check 1042 from the report and restore $1,250.00, the amount the bank paid |
| Beginning balance after the fix | $18,940.35, matching the April statement |
The $270.00 difference is divisible by 9, which is the first hint of a transposition. The report names the check and the edit date, and the February statement confirms what the bank actually paid. Once the amount matches the statement again, the beginning balance returns to the March ending figure and April can be reconciled normally. If the edit had been intentional, such as a check reissued for a different amount, the bookkeeper would record that change as its own transaction in the month it happened instead of rewriting February.
QuickBooks Desktop Leave versus Reconcile Now
Reconcile Now in QuickBooks Desktop saves the reconciliation and marks every ticked item as reconciled. Use it only when the difference shows $0.00. Leaving instead keeps your ticks without finishing, so you can hunt for a missing deposit or wait for a document and come back to the same half-cleared month later.
Intuit's guide describes what happens when you try to finish with a difference that is not zero. For a bank account, QuickBooks opens a window with three choices:
- Return to Reconcile sends you back to the list to check again.
- Leave Reconcile saves your progress so you can fix the issue and finish later.
- Enter Adjustment posts a balancing journal entry to a Reconciliation Discrepancies expense account.
Leave is the right choice whenever you know a specific item is unresolved. A deposit the client has not explained, a check whose amount you are confirming with the bank, or a statement page you do not have yet are all reasons to save and stop. The ticks stay in place, so tomorrow's session starts where today's ended.
Enter Adjustment is the choice to resist. Intuit's guide says to use it only when you are certain every transaction and entry is correct, and its reconciling article warns that adjustments do not fix errors and can cause problems later. A forced adjustment makes this month reach zero by moving the difference into an expense account, which leaves the real error in the books and shifts next month's starting point. If one was entered, Intuit says you can find it with Edit > Find, the Advanced tab and a Memo search for "Balance Adjustment."
Finish with Reconcile Now when the window shows zero, then save the reconciliation report. That report is your record of which items cleared in which month, and it is what you will compare against if a beginning balance moves later.
Is it safe to undo a QuickBooks Desktop reconciliation?
Undoing a QuickBooks Desktop reconciliation is safe if you back up the company file first and understand the reset. Undo Last Reconciliation returns the beginning balance to the previous reconciliation's figure and makes every item cleared in that reconciliation uncleared again. You then re-tick those items against the same statement.
The steps in Intuit's beginning balance article are short. Back up the company file. Go to Banking > Reconcile and select Undo Last Reconciliation. When prompted, select Continue, then OK. Close the reconcile window and open it again so the reset shows.
What the reset touches is the cleared status, not the statement. Your statement figures still live on paper or in the PDF, so redoing the month means repeating the Begin Reconciliation entries and ticking the same deposits and checks again. On a busy account that is real work, which is why correcting one changed transaction, such as a retyped check amount, is usually quicker than undoing a whole month.
Undo becomes the better path in two cases. The first is when several cleared items changed and the discrepancy report is long. The second is when you cannot find the change at all; Intuit's reconciling article says you may need to undo previous reconciliations until the opening balance is correct, and that an edit to a transaction from years ago may mean undoing reconciliations from past years.
Keep the saved PDF reports before you undo. On QuickBooks Pro, where only the last reconciliation report is kept, the PDF may be the only record of what cleared. The bank statements are the other half of that record, so make sure every month you are about to redo is actually in the client's file.
If you also keep books in Xero for some clients, the matching steps differ; the Xero reconcile bank statement workflow covers that side. For exports, file formats and how statement data moves between Excel and accounting software, browse the QuickBooks, Xero and Excel category. Schema CPA exports the statement data it reads to Excel or CSV and does not connect to QuickBooks Desktop; the homepage workflow section shows where the tie-out fits.