Lack of understanding.

I'll give my .02 cents worth.  

I like it.  I do a daily bank rec because accurate cash flow is important to us.  

Even though bank rec is a fairly simple concept it does take a little study to get bank rec going.   YOu have to figure out ways to adapt it to your own business. Transactions can come and go from many different modules.  I'm not sure people want to take the time.  I see lots of people doing proofs of cash using a spreadsheet.  

Ok here is my 2 centavous.  Bank Rec is easy if you understand the basics of how transactions post to the bank code in MAS and how they post to your bank statement.  Now that AMEX has changed the way they take out fees it helps a lot when doing AMEX deposits. IMHO one of the points few seem to understand is that posting transactions in General Ledger General Journal Entry DOES NOT post to Bank Rec. This is the single greatest cause of issues with Bank Rec.

Lack of training/understanding.   The majority of what you one needs to know can be found in the help system, but I don't think a lot of people don't take the time to look there because at first glance bank rec appears very straightforward.   It really is once you have the basic concepts down.

I have picked up so many new clients (not new to Sage 100,  but new to my business) that didn't have any understanding of the basics of the bank rec module (one of them had 20 years of unpurged cleared transactions!).   Typically they were totally disgusted with bank rec until I sat down with them for a couple of hours worth of training.   After about three months of experience actually understanding the concepts,  they don't know how they lived without it.

Typically,  the first month is a lot of hand holding,  the second month the client is pretty much doing it on their own with a few calls for help,  by the third month they are off and running pretty much independent.

In my view, Bank Reconcilliation challenges stem from the fact that Bank Rec. is intended to help you find errors in other modules and localizing errors is extremely difficult in MAS in general.  Far, far too often in MAS you have to go elsewhere to find the information you need to localize a problem and even when you don't often you need to recognize the information in another format then it is elsewhere.  

Best fixes in my view would be:

1)Link every transation in bank rec. to the inquiry screen so you can get details of where stuff came from out of bank rec.

2)Link every transaction in bank rec. to the paperless office file that was generated when it was posted.  If that module posts two seperate files link to both of them.

3)Do something to force G/L and bank rec. to match, both in balances and in individual postings.  When they don't finding that error can be really hard.  Last time I was looking for why G/L and Bank Rec. didn't reconcile I had to export the G/L detail report for the relevant account to excel and then add up the postings there to find the error.  It should not be that hard.

Nicholas

One thing we run across again and again, with Bank Recs.  We do the bank rec, and then down the road one of the bookkeepers go back into the bank account and changes a transaction due to an error, ie date or detail in transaction needed to be changed.  Because the transaction had already been rec'd , two things now are happening.  1-Sometimes one half of the corrected transaction will show on the outstanding bank rec in the Reconciliation and Deposits module, and if you aren't on your toes and realize what is happening and click it cleared, you will be wasting time trying to balance.  2-On the account reconciliation report with outstanding transactions, all sides of the entry are showing and have an Asterick beside it.  It never disappears until you cancel all recs and start all over again from the beginning,. which is a major time consumer.  Why is this a problem with Sage.  To adjust a transaction after the bank rec has been down for the time period is not a rare occurrence.

EMaude

Are you talking about Sage 100 ERP/MAS 90/200 or some other product?

Your comments make it sound like something other than Sage 100.

Note: "EMaude in Sage 50 Accounting - Canadian Edition"

It appears EMaude, 99.9% of the time, is Posting in Sage 50 forum.