Reconciling a Balance Sheet

Pauladavid

Can someone explain exactly what reconciling a balance sheet consists of?.

Monsoon

I've no idea.
Can you put it in context?

A balance sheet should balance, it's already reconciled.

A reconciliation is checking something to see that it matches (eg a bank reconciliation).

It could be something like sanity-checking the numbers (eg. it says debtors of 100k when the business only turns over 10k a year!).

Sorry, never heard this term before.

Claire321

I would explain it as reconciling the control / nominal ledger accounts to the amounts on the balance sheet.

e.g. Reconcile the amount on creditors & debtors to the aged creditors / debtors reports.

Reconcile cash accounts to bank statements.

Reconcile fixed assets with the fixed asset register & physical counts.

Reconcile sundry creditors & sundy debtors with the company records i.e. I keep a spreedsheet which details all the transactions which go through these accounts and then reconcile these to the nominal ledger & hence balance sheet to ensure they reconcile.

I would do the same for accruals and prepayments - reconcile the balance to spreadsheets tracking these transactions.

Hope this helps

Claire

Gem7321

Do you mean checking to see the balance sheet balances? As in top half = bottom half

Richard

Claire321 wrote: »

I would explain it as reconciling the control / nominal ledger accounts to the amounts on the balance sheet.

e.g. Reconcile the amount on creditors & debtors to the aged creditors / debtors reports.

Reconcile cash accounts to bank statements.

Reconcile fixed assets with the fixed asset register & physical counts.

Reconcile sundry creditors & sundy debtors with the company records i.e. I keep a spreedsheet which details all the transactions which go through these accounts and then reconcile these to the nominal ledger & hence balance sheet to ensure they reconcile.

I would do the same for accruals and prepayments - reconcile the balance to spreadsheets tracking these transactions.

Hope this helps

Claire

I would agree with this post.

At the end of each month I produce a spreadsheet that lists all of the control account balances as per my working papers, and compare this to the balance sheet that the accounting software produces, I then investigate any differences.