Five ways a cash book line leaves, and only one of them is a void — 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 signs off a bank reconciliation at GadgetSphere and has had a finished month come apart. In about eleven minutes you will know every way a cash book line can leave after you have matched it, what each one does to the bank statement line on the other side, and how to tell which one happened.

Step 1 — Know that a void deletes the cash book line; it does not reverse it

After this step you will stop looking for a reversing entry that was never written. Voiding a document does different things in different subsystems: the journal gets a second, opposite journal and both stay visible; the stock ledger gets a negated copy of every movement. The cash book gets neither. Its line is simply marked deleted and vanishes from every listing, every balance and every reconciliation grid. There is no minus line to find and no audit trail on the reconciliation screen. The only record that the line ever existed is the document, and the document now reads void.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — What actually happens when you press it

Step 2 — Know what that deletion does to the bank side

After this step you will recognise the symptom from the other end. Before the line is deleted, every reconciliation link on it is unwound: the amount each link had matched is added back onto the bank statement line’s open amount, and the link itself is marked deleted. So the bank statement line you had cleared reappears on the unmatched list carrying its full amount again, as though you had never matched it. Both sides move at once: the cash book side loses a line and its calculated balance drops, and the bank side gains an unmatched item. Nothing on the reconciliation screen says why.

Reference: Bank Reconciliation — Effect on other documents

Step 3 — Meet the one that leaves the document looking untouched

After this step you will know the case that is hardest to diagnose. A settlement adjustment — the right way to fix a payment taken by the wrong method — deletes the old cash book lines in exactly the way a void does, hands the matched amounts back, marks the links deleted, and then writes fresh lines for the new method. The journal is treated the same way: marked deleted and re-posted rather than reversed. And the document stays final throughout. So the reconciliation moves, the document looks entirely normal, and nothing refused anything.

Reference: Payment Aggregators and Branch Settlement Methods — Changing the method after the sale

Step 4 — Know the remaining three, and why you will rarely meet them

After this step you will have the complete list. A cash transfer or cash adjustment is a different kind of document with its own posting, and voiding one removes its cash book lines and any post-dated cheque queue rows it created. Beyond that there is an interface that writes a negating pair of lines instead of deleting, and a bulk repair that permanently removes the cash book lines of already-voided documents together with their links. Neither of those last two is offered by any screen you can open; they are back-office operations, run deliberately, by request.

Reference: Cashbook — Lifecycle and effects

Step 5 — Know how often this actually happens

After this step you will keep it in proportion. Across every tenant database, the overwhelming majority of removed reconciliation matches are undos that somebody chose on the Unreconcile tab — the cash book line is still there, still live, deliberately unmatched. Matches whose cash book line went away underneath them are a small residue on a handful of tenants. So this is rare. It is also the only cause on the list that leaves no trace on the reconciliation, which is why it costs far more time per occurrence than anything else in this area.

Reference: Everything is matched to zero and the reconciliation still won’t tally — Two related traps on the same screen

Step 6 — Tell the two apart in a minute

After this step you will have a routine for a month that has come apart. Open the reconciliation and press Refresh calculated balance, then look at the unmatched bank statement lines. A bank line you remember clearing, back at its full amount, is the signature: something removed the cash book line it was matched to. Open the source document from the period listing. If it reads void, a void did it. If it reads final and its payment method is not the one you remember, a settlement adjustment did it, and the replacement line is sitting unmatched a few rows away.

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

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Know that a void deletes the cash book line; it does not reverse it"]
  s2["Step 2 — Know what that deletion does to the bank side"]
  s3["Step 3 — Meet the one that leaves the document looking untouched"]
  s4["Step 4 — Know the remaining three, and why you will rarely meet them"]
  s5["Step 5 — Know how often this actually happens"]
  s6["Step 6 — Tell the two apart in a minute"]
  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.

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