Manual Reconciliations

[Glenn2]

I find your product great and it does alot of what I want. I have to enter everything in manually and reconcile manually as well. This is no nig deal but when it comes to manually reconciling my statements you do not offer much to assist me as far as I can see. For each account I run the manual reconcile feature and though this gives me access to the data there is no way I can flag entries as reconciled or not. Because some transactions may not come through on a statement, I have exception amounts and there is no way of noting this for next time? Because of this shortcoming I am still having to use my old other sw package just to ensure I know where I stand. Is there some functionality I am not aware of or is there something coming?

[Mark]

Hi Glenn2,

I don't think you're missing anything on this feature. The manual reconcile just shows you the share balances in FM as of any date, and then you go through and compare with your statement. Once you're done, you can mark the account as reconciled.

Are you asking for a feature to put a check mark or something next to each line item as you go through the list?

Why do you have exception amounts that go to next time? Maybe you can explain this need a little more? What is the feature you'd like to see to help here?

[Glenn2]

Thanks for the response Mark. In response to your question, why does my bank statement not always reconcile with FM.

The reason is that FM has the transaction date whereas the bank statement has the cash settlement date. In Australia the settlement date can be 3 days after the transaction. Another example is when there is a Shareholder subscription offer whereby you pay upfront for more shares and later find out whether you have got them and how many you have gotten. In this situation the transaction date is actually after the settlement date. A final situation I have is where the fee for conditional trades can arrive a few days after the fee for the actual trade. I put them all down on the same date so I do not lose track of them but they come at different dates.

To help me with the above, I would like to have a "reconcile" flag next to each transaction. As I do the manual reconcilation I would tick off each transaction. The way my old other software package works is that you put in the statement end date and balance and then it prompts you for a list of all transactions not yet reconciled. You tick them off until the balances equal. It even allows an adjustment posting at the end for any differences.

[Mark]

Hi Glenn2,

Thanks for the help. I can see why you'd want this. Maybe we can have a new reconciliation type, where you reconcile like this. I believe many people will still want it the way it is today, so they can just check share balances, and not necessarily check off each transaction. Maybe the new reconciliation method would be something like "Manually Reconcile By Transaction".