Generate the bank reconciliation audit pack and sign the session off

Steps 9 and 10 of the bank reconciliation guide. The variance is named and anything that needed posting is posted (Step 8). Now you generate the three reports as the period’s evidence, check them against one of the two endings a correct reconciliation can have, and mark the session with the sign-off label your team uses. That label locks nothing, and this page says what does.

1. Step 9: generate Reports 1, 2 and 3 as the audit pack.
2. Step 10: mark the session approved, and know what that does not do.

Step 9: Generate Reports 1, 2 and 3 as the audit pack

Bank Reconciliation > (your session) > Report

You generated Reports 1 and 3 in Step 8 to work out what the variance was. Now that the fix is posted, generate all three again — these copies are the evidence, and they have to reflect the books as they now stand.

Open the Report tab. Three reports are available, each with its own Generate Report button:

• Report 1 starts from the cashbook closing balance stored on the session, takes off your own unmatched lines, adds the bank’s unmatched lines, allows for the lines matched against a previous or future period’s statement, and arrives at the expected cashbook closing and the variance. It is the report that tells you which side a variance sits on.
• Report 2 is the reconciling-items schedule — balance as per cash book, balance as per bank statement, the items between them, and the discrepancy — useful when an auditor asks you to walk through individual matches.
• Report 3 is the sectioned overview: cashbook and bank opening and closing balances, matched and unmatched balances on each side, cross-period matches, and the difference in opening balances. This is the one to keep as the period’s evidence.

Generate all three. Export each grid and save the files into your shared finance folder under 2026-03 Bank Recon / GS-KV-01 / together with the original bank statement file and the bank-charges payment voucher from Step 8.

Then check the reports against one of the two endings a correct reconciliation can have. They are different, and telling them apart is the point of Step 8.

The clean ending. Every line matched. On Report 3 the unmatched balance sections on both sides are zero, and on Report 1 the Variance / discrepancy line reads RM 0. Report 3’s cashbook closing is the stored figure, so it equals the bank’s RM 47,200 only when the stored figure agrees with the greyed Calculated line on Details. If it still reads RM 47,650 after the half-hour, Report 1 shows RM 450 and Report 3’s two closings differ by the same RM 450: that is the stale figure from the end of Step 8, and the pack carries whichever of those three choices you made. This is the month you are aiming for and the one most months give you.

The honest ending. Some lines are still open, and they are open for a reason you have named — a deposit the bank cleared in April, a charge the bank should never have taken. Report 3’s unmatched sections are then not zero, and that is correct. Report 1’s variance still reads RM 0, because every open line is one of the items it lists: the variance line measures what the list does not explain, not what is still open. Forcing them to zero with an Unmatched Adjustment would post nothing and hide a real difference behind a tidy number.

The test that applies to both endings is the same one: there is no line left on either side that you cannot name. Go down Report 3’s unmatched sections and say out loud what each line is. If you can do that, the pack is complete. If even one line makes you shrug, go back to Step 8’s table — and if the reports simply disagree with what is on screen, Auto Matching has probably not finished, so wait and regenerate.

When you finish on the honest ending, write the named exceptions on the pack — date, amount, what it is, what you are waiting for. A difference somebody can read is a much smaller problem than a difference that was made to disappear.

If Report 1 contradicts what you see on screen, Auto Matching probably has not finished its background work; wait, then regenerate.

Step 10: Mark the session approved — and know what that does not do

Bank Reconciliation > (your session) > Details > Status

Return to the Details tab. Status offers five labels: Processing, Ready for review, Pending amendment, Approved by HOD and Reviewed and Approved. None of them is CLOSE. They describe a sign-off, so pick the one that matches where March stands. Use Ready for review when you hand it to whoever checks your work, Pending amendment when they send it back, and Reviewed and Approved once they accept it. Then click Save. That label is how the rest of the team knows March is done for GS-KV-01.

April’s create form shows March’s closing balances as its openings whatever this label says. The pre-fill reads the cashbook’s most recent session that has not been deleted, and never looks at the label. What April stores is then worked out again from the cashbook lines at Create, and by the background job where it runs (Step 4).

Be clear about what the label does not do. Nothing in BigLedger reads it, so it locks nothing and enforces nothing. It also does not check who sets it: anyone who can save the session can pick any of the five, including Reviewed and Approved on their own work. If your team needs a preparer and a separate reviewer, keeping those two people apart is your own control, not something the product does. Links can still be undone in an approved session, and a voucher back-dated into March later changes March’s cashbook side and April’s opening. Where the background job runs it rewrites March’s stored figures too, so a March pack printed before the voucher no longer matches the screen; where it does not, April’s stored opening differs from March’s stored closing by that voucher. The one guard BigLedger does enforce is on the vouchers themselves — while a receipt or payment voucher’s cashbook line is linked in any session, the server refuses to change its amount or transfer details (Cashbook txn lines are bank-reconciled. Unreconcile them from the bank recon … before changing amounts). Voiding is not blocked, which is why Step 8 says unreconcile first.

So part of the controller’s job is to keep an eye on the GS-KV-01 cashbook for back-dated entries between now and April’s close, and to set the March fiscal period to LOCK_TXN in Chart of Account once the month is fully closed — a voucher dated into a LOCK_TXN month is refused at FINAL with The selected date falls within a locked fiscal period, so nothing new can land on March’s cashbook side. (Stock transfers are the one document type that lock does not check; they carry no cashbook line, so they cannot disturb a reconciliation.)

If you finished on the honest ending, the same labels apply and nothing about them changes. The status is a signal to your colleagues, not a validation, and BigLedger neither refuses it nor checks your variance first. What changes is what you have to say. Tell whoever signs off your month what is outstanding, in one line each, and say when you expect it to clear — a deposit that cleared on 2 April clears itself next month, a bank error does not clear until the bank agrees. Whether a month with an open exception can be marked Reviewed and Approved at all is your organisation’s rule, not BigLedger’s. The product will let you either way.

Send a short note to your finance manager confirming March 2026 GS-KV-01 is reconciled, naming any exception you left open, point them at the audit pack folder, and you are done.

If Save fails with a permission error, your user has read but not write permission on Bank Reconciliation; ask your administrator to adjust it through the Permission Wizard.

When you are done, run the whole task’s success check.

Common mistakes in this part

Related documentation

• Bank reconciliation guide, the whole task.
• Bank Reconciliation applet, for Reports 1, 2 and 3 and the session status.