Reconcile Accounts: Do not automatically unreconcile transactions after edits

[Mike_James]

AR2012 will unreconcile a transaction if it is changed in various ways, including just changing the cheque number.

I recommend this is changed immediately. Ever since the program was first written, one of the commonest support issues has been around users 'accidentally' deleting transactions, and throwing reconciliations out of balance.

Users find the bank reconciliation process difficult at times, and imo there is NO reason for the status of a reconciled transaction to be automatically changed.

I would very reluctantly accept a prompted message "do you want to mark this transaction as unreconciled" following an edit, but only if a bank preference was added to allow/disallow status changes, so that users who want to continue v19 behaviour can do so.

"Do not automatically unreconcile transactions after edits"

[carmen]

Hi Mike,

I wish I'd known this before I worked on my client's  file A/R 2012.10 yesterday.  I cannot believe such a simple thing like changing the cheque number could unreconile the transactions.  I wasted MORE time having to unreconile and re-reconciling 6 months bank reconciliations.  I am truly over this upgrade I wish I'd never gone done that path.  It has cost my business a lot of time these past few weeks.

Carmen

[Roslyn_Little]

I have not experienced this as yet, but if it is so, then it is disastrous as far as I am concerned.  I suppose the only up-side is that it may generate more work for consultants in fixing the messes that will ensure.

Roslyn Little

[ASWatCR]

I have added my vote - this sounds exceptionally scary.

[jenniek]

I agree totally - most of my clients hate doing bank recs and struggle at the best of times. To have this happen would be distrastrous. This gets my vote!

[Kerry_Black]

This is really the MOST important change that needs to be made to the software, regardless of how many times clients are trained that if you open a spend money or the like just to view it, please cancel out rather than ok, but how many actually do that, we all know how easy it is when viewing something to accidentally hit a key on the keyboard and maybe it just adds a full stop to the address but you don't notice, then someone will OK on this and now this transaction is unreconciled, I believe that this point and this point alone may cause mass defection from MYOB.

[Dan_Moulton]

Hi all, thanks for the feedback. With AccountRight v19 it was possible to edit a reconciled transaction and cause the bank reconciliation to go out of balance. When transactions were edited in v19 they still remained marked as reconciled and it was very hard for a user to track down these errors as the transaction was not visible in the bank reconciliation screen ( due to it being “reconciled”). The design in AccountRight 2012 was intended to address this problem by making these transactions visible in the bank rec. However I do agree that taking this action when a non-financial change such as Cheque number changes is not needed as it is not a change that would cause an out of balance anyway. I’m not sure that going back to the v19 design is ideal but I suspect there is a middle ground between the 2 approaches – what do others think?

[Mike_James]

Hello Dan, thanks for the explanation of the thinking behind the change.

To support proper accounting procedires, transactions must not be unreconciled. I would suggest the following rules:

A reconciled transaction amount cannot be edited - it must be reversed and re-entered.

A reconciled transaction cannot be deleted - it must be reversed and re-entered.

The bank account of a reconciled transaction cannot be changed - the transaction must be reversed and re-entered.

Changing the date of a reconciled transaction is allowed provided the date is before the reconciled date; otherwise the transaction must be reversed and re-entered.

Any other part of the transaction (account coding, memo, job number, line memo, GST codes, card name) can be edited.

I wonder what others think?

[jenniek]

Hi all,

More often than not in V19 or prior, when a bank rec went out of balance it was because a transaction was deleted - hence there was no way to track the transaction, it just didn't exist anymore. I agree to a point with Mike about transactions must be reversed, however the non-financial parts of the transaction definately need to be able to be changed - eg; customers often forget to put the correct ref details in eg; it ends up being a chq number when it was paid by EFT, or the memo needs adding to, a job number needs to be entered. The amount and the bank account is good - don't allow them to be modified, but the rest of it.....?

[Maria_Giacosa]

Unreconciling an item creates also creates issues, adding further messages in the box that pops up advising that an item has been reconciled will add more confusion.

I like Mike's suggestions above, as long as the messages appear after the user tries to do one of the actions not allowed. Perhaps by having a reverse button pop up , when they try to delete?

It will then highlight the change which makes it easier to troubleshoot - BUT only if the entry is clearly identified in some way in the memo

[Mike_James]

In my post above I wrote: "Changing the date of a reconciled transaction is allowed provided the date is before the reconciled date; otherwise the transaction must be reversed and re-entered".

This should read: "Changing the date of a reconciled transaction is allowed provided the date is before the statement date; otherwise the transaction must be reversed and re-entered".