Which document wrote this cash book line — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This presentation is for whoever reconciles a bank account at GadgetSphere and has ever looked at a line on the Reconcile tab and wondered where the figure came from. In about ten minutes you will be able to read any cash book line back to the document that wrote it, and explain why its amount, its date and its reference are what they are.

Step 1 — Know that only the payment lines reach the cash book

After this step you will stop looking for the wrong thing on the document. When a receipt, a payment voucher or a cash bill reaches final, the posting chain hands it to a cash book subscriber, and that subscriber reads only the settlement lines — the payment lines at the foot of the document. Every goods line is ignored. One cash book line is written per payment line, so a bill settled half in cash and half by card writes two, into two different cash books. And if the payment lines happen to sum to zero, nothing is written at all and the document is still marked as posted.

Reference: Cashbook — Where a cashbook transaction line comes from, column by column

Step 2 — Know that the cash book was chosen by the method, not by anyone

After this step you will look in the right place when a line lands somewhere odd. Nobody picks a cash book on a receipt. The payment line names a settlement method, the settlement method is an item, and that item carries the cash book its money belongs in. The posting looks up the cash book from the item and nothing else. So a card payment that turned up in the wrong bank account is never a keying mistake on the document; it is the method pointing at the wrong cash book, and it has been doing that for every sale since somebody set it up. A method with no cash book at all stops the posting outright.

Reference: Payment Aggregators and Branch Settlement Methods — Where the money goes — the chain behind every payment button

Step 3 — Know that the amount is net of the acquirer’s charge

After this step one of the most common reconciliation surprises stops being a surprise. A settlement method can carry a charge — a percentage with an optional surcharge, or a flat amount — and that charge is taken off before the cash book line is written. Sell a laptop for four thousand ringgit on a card method charging one point eight per cent and the cash book line is three thousand nine hundred and twenty eight. That is deliberate, because three thousand nine hundred and twenty eight is what the card-acquiring bank will actually pay you. The charge is posted separately to its own account, so the ledger still balances against the full sale.

Reference: Cashbook — Fields

Step 4 — Know that the date is the document header’s, not the line’s

After this step you will know why a finished month can reopen. The cash book line takes the transaction date from the document header — not from the payment line, and not from the day somebody keyed it. Key a receipt in April and date it the twenty-fourth of March and the cash book line is a March line. Every reconciliation window is a date range over that column, so a back-dated document walks straight into a period you have already reconciled and signed off, moves its calculated balance, and tells nobody. If a difference appears from one month onwards and every earlier month is clean, this is almost always what happened.

Reference: Everything is matched to zero and the reconciliation still won’t tally — What actually happened

Step 5 — Know what the matcher actually has to work with

After this step you will stop blaming the auto-matcher for a blank column. The payee on a cash book line is taken from the document’s billing block, falling back to the customer’s own name, which is why a walk-in cash bill can show a payee the customer record has never heard of. The first reference column is filled from the tender’s own detail and it depends on the settlement type: a cheque number for a cheque, the transaction number for a bank transfer, the card number for a card, the wallet or voucher reference for the rest. A method whose type is none of those leaves that column empty, and the matcher then has only amount and date to score.

Reference: Bank Reconciliation — Auto matching

Step 6 — Read one line back to its document in thirty seconds

After this step you will have a routine. Take any line on the Reconcile tab. Its open amount is what is still unmatched; when the line was written it was equal to the full amount, and every match since has taken a bite out of it. Click the Document column to open the source document. Compare the header date with the line’s date — they should agree. Compare the payment line’s amount with the cash book amount: a gap is the method’s charge, and the Charges tab of that method will tell you the rate. Do this once and the column names stop being mysterious for good.

Reference: Bank Reconciliation — What a reconciliation link does

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Know that only the payment lines reach the cash book"]
  s2["Step 2 — Know that the cash book was chosen by the method, not by anyone"]
  s3["Step 3 — Know that the amount is net of the acquirer's charge"]
  s4["Step 4 — Know that the date is the document header's, not the line's"]
  s5["Step 5 — Know what the matcher actually has to work with"]
  s6["Step 6 — Read one line back to its document in thirty seconds"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next: Every save rewrites the line, and the one edit the books refuse · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation