Hi All
I have watched this post for sometime, not replying, as people screamed blue murder that the 'software' doesn't work and threatening to vacate to another well known software 'where bank recs will work' - well I got news - not true ...... the other software ( that which will remain unmentioned) -whose reconciliation is strangely, only available on bank accounts, was just as susceptible to being wrong and going wrong after being reconciled and being correct.
Having now considerable experience in both MYOB's bank feeds and the unmentioned software bank feeds I can say to 2 commonest errors are not software related but incompetent professional staff who thought they knew what they were doing, or, just not quite understanding how the recs work - initially - something that could be levied at myself for both MYOB and the other software package.
Oh, I am not saying at all that when a rec goes wrong it is a bad operator - what I am saying is consistent belief that the bank feed rec process 'is always right' is incorrect ... .you just need to know why and fix.
However, having been called in to fix the mess left by each of the professional internally employed staff ( with considerable accounting/book keeping skills to their name and quals to match - 3x now gone) - the commonest error causing discrepancy ( and in my case for my own MYOB business bank feeds) was double ups and unreconciled entries created( duplicated at my behest) skewing the data .... once I realised that and deleted these duplications in MYOB things started to work well).
For the mess in the other software left by the 3 professionals - it was arrogance and that they knew better and failing to read the very obvious engine gauges for the business that showed reconciliation errors on the bank accounts - and under their watch they slowly and surely just got bigger and bigger...... all three professional staff members assumed the same and the results were identical.
The fix was relatively easy - lengthy, time consuming but manageable - download bank statements - go back to a point when the software matched the bank statement - and move forward fixing errors month by month - and in most cases these were unreconciled duplicate entries - it took weeks but suddenly when all fixed - bank feeds and reconciliations worked for both software packages.
The bottom line - it wasn't the software's fault - it was the operators, every time.
There is a saying that goes way back - 'a bad operator blames his tools' - and I am quite willing to do that to MYOB, if I think their software is causing the problem, but in this case it is not the software.
And no, just because a rec is now in error it doesn't mean a poor operator - what it means is the software is doing too much at your behest to automate things and sometimes this overzealous autonomous action 'is wrong'.
The Doc