QuickBooks Reconcile

What R, C and blank mean in the register

Every transaction in a reconcilable account has a status in the checkmark column of its register. Intuit describes the cycle as going “from R (Reconciled) to C (Cleared) to Blank (Uncleared).”

R is the one that matters most. A transaction gets it when you tick it during a reconciliation and finish. From then on it is part of the history that the next beginning balance is built from. Intuit’s own phrasing is that “each transaction is locked in with a reconciled status in your register.” Locked does not mean frozen. A reconciled transaction can still be edited, deleted or voided, and that is the root of most reconciliation trouble.

C means the transaction has cleared but has not been through a finished reconciliation. Blank means it has not cleared yet. A deposit you recorded on March 30 that the bank posted on April 2 stays unticked in the March reconciliation and gets its tick in April.

You can take a single transaction out of a reconciliation from the register by clicking its R until the box is blank. Intuit’s warning comes with it: “Removing a cleared transaction changes the beginning balance for your next reconciliation.”

When the difference will not reach zero

Intuit lists three common causes when the two ending balances disagree. “Someone entered an incorrect ending balance at the start of the reconciliation.” “Someone entered transactions into QuickBooks that haven’t cleared your bank yet.” And “there are missing or duplicate transactions in QuickBooks.”

The first is the cheapest to rule out, so check it first. Open the reconciliation’s details and compare the ending balance and date against the statement. On a credit card account, check the sign as well as the amount.

If you finish anyway, QuickBooks will create a journal entry for the amount of the difference so the reconciliation closes. That makes the screen say zero. It does not find the missing transaction, and the entry stays in your books until someone works out what it was standing in for. Intuit’s guidance is to talk to your accountant before you do it.

Why a month you already reconciled can come undone

Reconcile only checks the period in front of it. It cannot stop someone from changing a transaction in a period that was finished months ago, and that is exactly how a beginning balance goes wrong.

Intuit lists four causes: an incorrect opening balance when the account was created; a reconciled transaction that was “edited, deleted, voided, moved, or unreconciled”; a categorized bank feed transaction that was undone and sent back to pending; and a transaction dated before the last reconciliation’s ending date that was reconciled manually.

When QuickBooks notices, it offers the Reconcile Discrepancy Report, which Intuit says “lists what changed, how it affected your balance, and what you can do to fix each item.” Intuit’s advice on each item is to “only fix a change that was made in error.”

The heavier tool is undoing a whole reconciliation. Intuit says you can do that if you are the primary admin, an accountant user or an in-house accountant. Two warnings come with it. Undoing one reconciliation also undoes every reconciliation after it. And “undoing a reconciliation is irreversible. It also permanently deletes associated reports and attachments,” so download the reports first.

Reconciling the accounts a Stripe business uses

A Stripe business usually touches two kinds of account when it reconciles, and they do not get reconciled the same way.

The bank account is the ordinary case. Stripe payouts arrive in it, the bank sends a statement, and Reconcile compares the two. A payout recorded for the wrong amount or the wrong date shows up here as a difference.

The account in between is the harder one. Between a sale and the payout that settles it, the money sits in your Stripe balance, and in QuickBooks that balance is represented by a holding account: either Undeposited Funds or a clearing account you create as an asset. No bank sends a statement for it. Whether it can be reconciled at all, and what you compare it to, depends on which of the two you use.

A clearing account has a natural counterpart, which is the Stripe balance at the same cutoff. Undeposited Funds is different. Its job is to hold payments until a deposit sweeps them out, so its balance at any moment depends on which payouts have been recorded, not just on what Stripe holds.