Dealing with clearing down unreconciled bank transactions (from 2014/15 accounts) in SAGE 50

Hi,

I wonder if anyone could advise me,

I have recently taken over a small companies bookkeeping since late August.
at which point 2015's accounts year end was Dec but the accounts were only finalised and submitted in September.

Now there had been some kaos prior to me joining the company in terms of the way in which the bookkeeping was being done from 2014 - early 2016 and it turns out our Accountants had to do a great deal of work to unravel the issues, however the long and short of it is that although I started in August, I have recorded (most of) this years transactions and I have reconciled ALL of this years transactions (to todays date) from the 1st January as 70 % of the years entries weren't in and no bank reconciliations had been done.

The situation at present is that my bank is reconciled up to date, but there remain some unreconciled items (about 30 transactions) dated 2014 and 2015still sitting on the bank rec and unreconciled items report.

I was told when i began the role that the accountants would deal with these transactions prior to the year end, but they weren't dealt with so I have now been told I have to deal with them.

Our accountant advised that given that the 2014, 2015 accounts are all dealt with and considering the banks were obviously all reconciled, these unreconciled items now remaining are to be 'assumed' erroneous or to be assumed to be duplicates or mistakes (which is likely the case, given the disarray from my predessesors)

I've been advised to clear down any figures less than £500, anything above this amount the accountant can deal with at our 2016 year end as some individual amounts are around 2.5K and this will make a significant difference to the accounts.

So essentially this is what i understand i need to do:
I have to reverse any Bank Payments, by posting Bank Receipts,
Reverse Purchase Payments by posting Purchase receipts to the ledger and the same with Sales Receipts, I would need to post Customer Refunds to reverse this.

Journal debits need a Journal credit to reverse and vice versa

My question is, is the above what i have explained the correct way to clear down the unredconciled items, (pressuming the entries are all duplicates or errors?)

I feel like there have been misallocations in the past hence why some of the entries remain unreconciled, as the wrong entry was probably reconciled in 2014, but theres nothing i can do about that now and the accounts are been and gone. So i just want to make sure that giventhe situation, this sounds like the right course of action.

I also need to run the Quarterly VAT return for October and hence I want to post the reversal of the unreconciled items asap in order to do that.

Please advise if you think there is anything else i may be missing or if i have explained the right way to erase these unreconciled transactions off the 'unreconciled transactions report'/ Bank Rec?

Also can i have a brief explanation of how it effects the Vat returns?
I assume i do need to 'include all unreconciled ites'
and I assume that if im reversing a transaction which was never Vat returned the contra will net off the figure, whilst if it has beeen reconciled in a previous return, it will just be captured in the current return.

Sorry for the essay, any advice would be appreciated!