Email me and I will send you my external data checker.  

Hello Fish,

I would recommend comparing your General Ledger to your bank statement, rather than Account Reconciliation if you're unable to find where the unreconciled difference is coming from. This could assist in finding errors such as entries that debit and credit the same account.

There was also an error with the Copy Transactions feature in 2012 SR2 dealing with General Journal Entries that were copied, but had been cleared in Account Reconciliation before copying. These entries would properly copy, but not show up in the Account Reconciliation screen because they were already marked as "cleared" in the background. It is possible that if there was such an entry, because it wasn't showing in Account Reconciliation it was entered again, now making a double entry. Using your General Ledger would assist you in finding if this were the case as well.

Kathleen:

Does this mean SR3 did not correct the error in SR2?

We use a payroll service (not an issue here), and enter payroll and payroll taxes via Journal Entry. Both are Recurring Entries; two employees are salaried so only the memo changes, two are hourly so the memo and details change. The journal entries appear in the GL, but not on the Reconciliation. This sounds like your description, "... but not show up in the Account Reconciliation screen because they were already marked as "cleared" in the background." What is "'cleared' in the background?"

The total of the payroll and payroll tax entries does not equal the discrepancy in the reconciliation.

Once I deleted the existing Recurring Entries for both payroll & taxes then re-entered them with a change in the Reference the Reconciliation works.

We experienced the same problem in June/July 2013; again, eventually the problem seemed to solve itself.

Two years in a row is not reassuring.

Thanks.

PS: I've been using Peachtree/Sage since the DOS days in 1992, so I'm not a rookie.

The Copy transactions feature is not the same as recurring entries. The error within it was not fixed in the 2012 product. Copy transactions is when you go into a Journal Entry and select Copy to duplicate it. When you export files there is a field that indicates the date that it was cleared in account rec. When using the Copy transactions feature that field is also copied over, causing the transaction to never show up in account reconciliation, but it is then marked as cleared and accounted for in the balance.

If they are recurring entries that do show up in the General Ledger to be cleared, and deleting them and entering with a new reference number, this is an entirely different situation. Are you using the same reference number on your recurring transactions, such as month and date? If there is a possibility that the reference number had been used in the past, that could be causing the problems you are experiancing.

Kathleen:

It seems we're experiencing two separate problems, which may or may not be related.

The second problem has to do with the journal entries that appear in the G/L but not the Reconciliation. The first problem is at the end of this post.

We do not use the Copy function. The drop-down under Copy has both "Create Recurring" and "Memorize for future use." The entries I described are all Recurring.

What do you mean when you say, "...you export files...?" What files am I exporting? The account reconciliation process has always felt like an "add-on." Is the main software "exporting" to the account reconciliation software?

I don't understand what you mean by, "...recurring entries that do show up in the General Ledger to be cleared..." Sage50's G/L does not indicate if a transaction has been cleared.

An example: EE#1's recurring entry uses an initial Reference of Dir Dep #001, which corresponds to the reference # provided by the payroll service. The entry consists of a debit to the payroll expense, a debit to the company's payroll tax expense, a credit to the 403(b) liability, a credit to the payroll tax liability and a credit to the bank account. The memo is "EE#1: Payroll P/E 01/03/14." It is a biweekly entry. Thus, when I created this recurring entry in January it posted every two weeks through year-end. Thus, it there are 26 transactions with the same Reference, but a different month & date. As each payroll occurs I edit the Reference (Dir Dep #005, #009, etc for EE#1) and the memo (EE#1: Payroll P/E 01/17/14, etc). An example is copied below.

This process has worked perfectly since I began working here in Jun 2001, until we encountered the problem in Jun/Jul 2012 and again in Feb/Mar 2013.

Has the problem been fixed in subsequent products? 2013 or 2014?

None of which really deals with the issue of why a bank rec that worked correctly on Feb 28 is out of balance on Mar 1, using the Feb 28 bank balance and not clearing any transactions; this was the first paragraph of my initial post (first problem).

Thanks.

If you are using the same reference number, even initally, for the entry, it can cause data problems. We recommend different reference numbers for each transaction.

There is nothing that you HAVE to export. However any time you clear a transaction, it makes an entry into the data, behind the scenes, which can be seen in an exported file.

An additional thought, if these entries are changed after they've been posted as recurring entries, recurring may not be the right transaction type for your business. You may want to consider using memorized transactions so that you can have your General Ledger account numbers there, but not have a posted transaction until you're ready to go in and enter the amounts and post it.

Kathleen:

If the Recurring Entry maintains the same Reference, yet you say this could cause data problems, isn't this a programming/design flaw?

Again, this has worked well for twelve years (Jun 2001 to Jun 2013) before we first encountered this problem. Yes, I understand your suggestion for using Memorized Transactions, but that seems like a lot of extra work.

Nor does it answer the question about the bank rec working on Feb 28, but not on Mar 1.

Kathleen adds some interesting possibilities to this situation.  To be honest, I have all of the above,  memorized transactions, I use the copy feature, recurring entries.  I do use unique reference numbers.  Sometime the program demand this and I comply.  

So with that said,  If I open my period to January and only change the reconciliation date throughout the year, the unreconciled balance does remain the same.   When I change the date to the correct  date and reconcile, the balances also remain the same.  That is in my Sage 50 2014  

I also went back to my 2012 program and opened the reconciliations and it was exactly the same.  No issues.   Quantum 2012 SR-3

So just a thought,  did you try reindexing the bank rec items in integrity check?  

We do offer data repair, If you interested in an evaluation, please advise.

Shirley