What if my QuickBooks beginning balance doesn't match my statement's?

Reconciliation is a necessary step to ensure your books are accurate and to successfully reconcile an account, it's necessary for the beginning balance in QuickBooks to match the statement. Sometimes, very experienced bookkeepers can get around this rule, but we don't recommend it. Learn more about reconciliation.

Where does QuickBooks get the beginning balance?

QuickBooks gets an account's beginning balance from one of two places:

• For new accounts (or ones that have never been reconciled), QuickBooks uses the account's opening balance.
• For accounts that have been reconciled before, QuickBooks uses the ending balance of the previously reconciled period.

Fix an incorrect beginning balance

If the QuickBooks beginning balance doesn't match the statement's, it's important to find and resolve the problem so they do match.

For a new account (or an account that has never been reconciled), try the following:

• Check the account's opening balance.
  • If it's incorrect, you may need to edit it.
  • If there isn't one, you may need to enter it.
  • If the account is a bank feed account, look for downloaded transactions that cleared the bank before the statement's beginning date. You may need to delete those.

  For an account that has been reconciled before, consider the possibilities below.

  • In the register , someone mistakenly reconciled a transaction with a date in the current statement period by changing the reconciliation status to R. You may need to change it back to a C.
  • A previously reconciled transaction dated before the current statement period was changed or deleted between today and the last time you reconciled.

  If the account has been reconciled before, you can run a discrepancy report to see what's changed since you last reconciled.