Chapter 5
Bookkeeping Basics
In This Chapter
Setting up your chart of accounts
Understanding journal entries
Creating accounting periods
Using NetSuite to perform routine banking tasks
In this chapter, you find out how transactions work and how to set up your chart of accounts and accounting periods — features you may not be familiar with but that are affected every time your financials change! Fortunately, when you’re up and running, you probably won’t have to think about them every day.
Similarly, you don’t need to worry about understanding debits and credits unless you’re a serious accounting user, but it’s helpful to know how they affect your financials as you’re doing business.
After that, you get into the practical side of bookkeeping, and read a few tips and tricks for handling your day-to-day banking activities — from writing a check to reconciling your bank balance.
You must be logged in using the Accountant or Bookkeeper role to access financial information for your company in NetSuite. If you aren’t, you can’t follow the steps in this chapter.
Managing Your Chart of Accounts
Your bird’s eye view of the general ledger is known as the chart of accounts. As shown in Figure 5-1, the chart of accounts displays a list of names, account types, and balances of all your general ledger accounts.
Figure 5-1: The Chart of Accounts lists all the accounts that are set up, as well as their balances.
To view your chart of accounts, from the Financial tab menu, choose Lists⇒Accounts.
Your chart of accounts in NetSuite contains many account types. Each account type groups together similar accounts that represent an aspect of your financial activities. For example, income accounts track the value of sales to your customers, while bank accounts track the amount of money you have in the bank.
Creating and editing accounts
From the chart of accounts, you can create brand new accounts or modify characteristics of your existing accounts.
You must have the role of Accountant to create or edit general ledger accounts.
Creating a general ledger account
To create a new general ledger account:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Lists⇒Accounts⇒New.
2. Choose the type of account you want to create from the Type drop-down list.
If you select Bank from the Type drop-down list, you must also select a currency from the Currency drop-down list.
Currency must be specified for bank accounts because the bank may be in a different country (Switzerland or Nigeria perhaps) and therefore use a different currency from your main NetSuite account.
3. Enter a name for the account in the Name field.
If your company requires account numbers (a preference set at the company level in NetSuite), an account number is also required. See the later section “Assigning account numbers” for more information on account numbers.
4. Enter any other details desired for this account.
5. Click Save.
Editing an existing general ledger account
To edit an existing general ledger account, follow these steps:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Lists⇒Accounts.
2. In the Chart of Accounts list, click the Edit link next to the name of the account you want to edit.
3. Edit the text in the Name or Description fields.
Editing the text modifies account properties, such as the name or description.
4. Click Save.
Depending on which features you’ve turned on, you may be puzzled to see some accounts in your chart of accounts with a Non-Posting account type. Some types of transactions don’t affect your financials because they represent business activities with no immediate financial impact. These are non-posting transactions, which are tracked in non-posting accounts. Although non-posting accounts may appear in your chart of accounts alongside posting accounts, they don’t affect your general ledger.
For example, a sales order represents a commitment to sell goods or services, but it doesn’t represent collecting money, fulfilling the goods, or recording revenue earned. Those specific financial events are recorded by separate posting transactions later (in the case of a sales order, those events might be recorded by a cash sale or an invoice).
Examining account registers
From the chart of accounts, you can click the name of a particular account to view that account’s register, an example of which is shown in Figure 5-2. An account register gives you basic information about the transactions posted to that account, such as the posting date, the transaction number, and the amount.
Figure 5-2: View an account register.
The register, like many pages in NetSuite, uses footers to let you filter results on the page. The footer is what NetSuite calls the drop-down lists at the bottom of the page where you can change what data is displayed. On the footer for a register, you have several options for defining the data included and how the register displays:
To change the range of transactions displayed, enter different start and end dates in the From and To fields, and click the Refresh button. You can also click the calendar icon beside the From and To fields to select a date from a pop-up calendar.
To view more transactions at once, but with fewer details, select the 1-Line check box and then click the Refresh button.
To change how transactions sort, choose a different option in the Sort By drop-down list and then click the Refresh button. By default, registers sort by transaction date, then by transaction type, and finally by transaction number.
Assigning account numbers
You may identify accounts by number as well as by name. Account numbering is useful for grouping related accounts within your chart of accounts and financial reports.
For example, expense accounts track the cost of your company’s financial activities. You can assign each expense account a number between 6000–6999, and then create smaller groupings within that number range (such as numbering to identify certain types of expense accounts). Expense accounts that track utility costs can be assigned numbers between 6000–6499 and expense accounts that track travel costs can be assigned numbers from 6500–6999. You can also choose account numbers in drop-down lists or enter account numbers in data fields, for example, when you’re entering transactions.
Assign account numbers to identify particular types of accounts by a number range. You must be an Administrator or have similar permissions to enable account numbers in NetSuite.
Follow along to use account numbers in NetSuite:
1. From the Setup tab menu, choose Accounting⇒Accounting Preferences.
2. On the General tab, select the Use Account Numbers check box.
3. Click Save.
When this preference is on, you can assign account numbers by editing each account. See the earlier section, “Creating and editing accounts.”
When the Use Account Numbers preference is enabled, you must assign a number to any new accounts you create. You also have to assign a number to existing accounts if you edit them.
Running a general ledger report
Although an account register provides a detail of general ledger activity for a specific account, you can also get a report that shows the details for all accounts. Appropriately enough, this is the general ledger report.
To view the General Ledger report, as shown in Figure 5-3, choose Reports⇒Financial⇒General Ledger. You can change the date range that shows in the report by entering different start and end dates in the From and To fields in the footer of the report.
Figure 5-3: The General Ledger report shows the details for all accounts.
Debits, Credits, and Journal Entries
When you create a transaction in the general ledger, in the language of accounting, you’re also creating a journal entry. When someone refers to the journal entry aspect of a transaction, she means the financial impact — the debits and credits.
Debits and credits increase or decrease the balance of your accounts. That’s only part of the story, however. The account balances are posted to the general ledger. The type of account determines whether they increase or decrease the balance:
Debits increase the balance of an expense or asset account. They decrease the balance of an income, liability, or equity account.
Credits have the opposite effect. They increase the balance of an income, liability, or equity account, and decrease the balance of an expense or asset account.
Every transaction must be in balance; in other words, the total amount of debits must equal the total amount of credits. NetSuite doesn’t let you create a transaction where the credits and debits don’t balance.
Use the GL Impact page to see the debits and credits for any transaction, as shown in Figure 5-4. (You might guess, correctly, that the GL in GL Impact is general ledger.)
Figure 5-4: You can see the general ledger impact for a customer invoice.
Seeing the debits and credits
To see the debits and credits for a transaction:
1. View the transaction record in NetSuite by clicking the transaction name or number in a list.
Don’t click the Edit button, or the GL Impact feature won’t be available.
2. Click the GL Impact link in the upper-right corner of the page.
You can enter many different types of transactions in NetSuite. In accounting terms, all of these transactions post journal entries to your general ledger. Also, when you view an account register (see the earlier section, “Managing Your Chart of Accounts”), you can see the debits and credits posted to that account and the type of each transaction that posted to the journal entry.
However, keep in mind that a journal entry is the debits and credits for a transaction, such as a check or a cash sale; the journal entry isn’t a separate record from that transaction — it’s part of it.
You can also create a more general kind of journal entry that is not part of a transaction of another type. In this case, journal entry is the transaction type. You can create many different types of transactions in NetSuite, each of which has a specialized purpose. For example, a check is a type of transaction used to make a purchase or pay off a bill and always credits (decreases) your bank account balance.
The most generic transaction type in NetSuite is the journal entry, which may post debits and credits to any account. Journal entries have many possible uses; in particular, they’re handy for making adjustments between accounts.
For example, you might create a general journal entry at the end of a fiscal year to take the balance of a single expense account and split it across two expense accounts to categorize the costs in more detail. This would be much easier than trying to split that balance by editing the transactions that posted to the original expense account throughout the fiscal year.
Creating a new general journal entry
To create a new general journal entry, as shown in Figure 5-5, follow along:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Other⇒Make Journal Entries.
2. In the Date field, enter the date you want the journal entry to post.
3. Select or enter an account in the Account field.
4. Enter a debit or credit amount.
5. Click the Add button.
6. Click Save.
If your credits and debits aren’t balanced, you can’t save the journal entry. The Out of Balance By fields show whether you have a credit or debit amount out of balance.
Figure 5-5: A general journal entry.
Using Accounting Periods
Every transaction is assigned a posting date. When you search for or report on transactions, you look at a specific date range (for those transactions, even if that range is all dates). For example, if you run an income statement report for a particular month, it only includes transactions with posting dates during that month.
You may also assign an accounting period to your transactions, and search or report based on that accounting period instead of a date. Like a month, a period represents a certain range of dates. By default, new transactions are assigned to the period that contains their posting date, but you may choose to post them to a different period, without changing the date.
Assume, for example, that a vendor sends you a bill dated September 30, but you don’t get it in the mail until mid-October. By that time, you’ve already closed your books for September, so you don’t want this new bill to affect the September financials. With accounting periods, you can date the transaction September 30 but post it to the October accounting period, so that it affects the October financials instead.
Accounting periods also provide more control over closing your books. If you don’t use periods, you can only lock all transactions on or before a certain date. Accounting periods allow you to lock specific categories of transactions — Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, or All.
You can create one period at a time, but it’s more efficient to set up an entire fiscal year at once.
To create accounting periods you must have the role of Administrator:
1. From the Setup tab menu, choose Company⇒Enable Features.
2. On the Enable Features page, click the Accounting tab.
3. Select the Accounting Periods check box.
4. Click Save.
5. From the Setup tab menu, choose Accounting⇒Manage Accounting Periods.
6. Click a button depending on your preference:
• New Period creates an individual period.
• Set Up Year creates periods for an entire fiscal year at once.
7. Take the following steps based on what you chose in Step 6:
• If you’re creating an individual period, enter a name in the Period Name field, and enter dates in the Start Date and End Date fields.
• If you’re setting up a year, select a month from the First Fiscal Month drop-down list, and enter the fiscal year in the Fiscal Year End field.
8. From the Period Format drop-down list, choose the duration for each period within that fiscal year.
9. Click Save to create your accounting period(s).
When you create periods for an entire fiscal year at once, NetSuite automatically creates a period hierarchy with the fiscal year at the top level, then fiscal quarters, and finally the individual accounting periods.
You only assign transactions to the lowest-level periods, not to a fiscal year period or a quarter. You use the higher-level types of periods when reporting on or searching for transactions.
Banking on It
Although only one aspect of your general accounting system, tracking everything that affects your bank and credit card accounts is one of the most crucial bookkeeping activities. The main reason is probably obvious — you need to know how much money or credit you have available to spend.
Making a deposit
One of the happier moments among your responsibilities as a bookkeeper may be putting money in the bank. In NetSuite when you want to make a deposit, usually those funds have been received on another transaction and posted to an Undeposited Funds account.
For example, a cash sale transaction might represent a retail sale in your store, for which the customer paid cash. You already have that money in hand, but it’s not in the bank yet — hence the posting to the Undeposited Funds account.
When you’re ready to deposit this money, record it by using the Deposit page shown in Figure 5-6. On the Deposit page, you specify which transactions you’re depositing to transfer those funds from the Undeposited Funds account to your bank account.
Figure 5-6: The Deposit page is where money goes from Undeposited Funds to your bank account.
Recording a deposit
To record a deposit:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Make Deposits.
2. Enter the date of the deposit in the Date field.
The field defaults to today’s date.
3. On the Items tab on the bottom half of the screen, click the Payments tab, and then check the Deposit check box for each transaction to deposit.
As you select each check box, notice that the Amount field updates to reflect the current total amount of the deposit.
4. If some or all of the funds to deposit haven’t previously been recorded in NetSuite, click the Other Deposits tab.
These amounts aren’t in the Undeposited Funds account.
5. On the Other Deposits tab, enter the amount in the Amount field and select the account from the Account drop-down list for each deposit.
If appropriate, you can also enter such information as the payor and method of payment in the Name field and Payment Method fields, respectively.
6. If you’re getting cash back, click the Cash Back tab.
This may occur when you deposit a check and get part of it as cash back.
7. On the Cash Back tab, enter the amount in the Amount field and select the account from the Account drop-down list.
For example, you can select a bank account you set up to track cash.
8. Click Save.
To see a list of all the deposits you entered, from the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Make Deposits⇒List.
Printing deposit slips
You can print a deposit slip that shows the total amount of cash and checks you’re depositing. You can print your deposit slip in any of the following ways:
When entering a deposit, click the arrow on the right of the Save button and choose Save & Print.
When entering or editing a deposit, queue up a deposit slip to print later by selecting the To Be Printed check box and then clicking Save.
You can print a deposit slip from the Deposits list of your deposit transactions by clicking the Print link to the right of the Date column.
When you want to print deposit slips you’ve queued, follow these steps:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Print Checks & Forms.
The Print Checks & Forms page appears.
2. Choose the Deposits link from the list of options.
3. Select the bank account you’re depositing to in the Account drop-down list.
4. Select the Print check box for the appropriate deposit(s) in the list.
5. Click Print.
Transferring money between accounts
If your business has more than one bank account, you may need to move money from one account to another. The bank account type also tracks cash belonging to the company, sometimes referred to as petty cash. You can use this cash to pay for business expenses rather than writing a check or using a credit card.
Use the Transfer page when you transfer money between bank accounts or withdraw cash from a bank account; see Figure 5-7.
Figure 5-7: The Transfer page.
Record a transfer of money in NetSuite:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Transfer Funds.
2. In the From Account drop-down list, select the bank account from which you’re withdrawing money.
3. In the To Account drop-down list, select the bank account you’re transferring the money to.
4. In the Date field, enter the date you’re transferring the money.
5. In the Amount field, enter the amount of money you’re transferring.
6. (Optional) Enter a memo in the Memo field.
7. Click Save.
To see a list of all the transfers you’ve entered, from the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Transfer Funds⇒List.
Writing a check
A check is the most basic type of purchase transaction in NetSuite. When you write a check, the funds are deducted from your bank register balance and posted to an expense account or accounts.
Some of your purchases may be made on terms or credit, so you don’t pay for them immediately. In that case, you enter a bill when the purchase is made, and pay it off later by writing a bill payment check. See Chapter 6 for more information.
You create several types of checks in NetSuite — paychecks, tax liability checks, bill payments — but for now you see the steps for the kind you use most often: a regular purchase check.
To write a check:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Write Checks.
The Check page appears.
2. From the Account drop-down list, select the bank account you want to withdraw funds from.
3. Enter the name of the person or business you’re paying in the Payee field or select the name from the drop-down list.
4. Enter the address in the Address field.
5. Select the period in the Posting Period drop-down list, and in the Date field, enter the date you want the check to post.
6. If you need to print the check, select the To Be Printed check box.
7. Enter the amount in the Amount field.
8. (Optional) Enter the check number in the Check # field and a memo in the Memo field.
9. Enter the amount in the Amount field.
10. Record either the expense account or the items purchased:
• To record the purchase in an expense account, click the Expenses tab and choose an expense account appropriate for your purchase from the drop-down list.
For example, if you’re buying a desk chair, you may choose a Furniture or Office Supplies expense account.
• To record the items purchased, click the Items tab, select each item purchased, enter the quantity, and then click Add.
You can use the Items tab to track the purchase of any goods or services set up as item records in NetSuite.
Don’t record the same purchase on both the Expenses and Items tabs because the purchase will be counted twice.
11. Click Save.
To see a list of all the checks you have entered, from the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Write Checks⇒List.
You actually use the same Check page to record any kind of transaction (such as a wire transfer) that withdraws funds from your bank account. When you use a check this way, it’s a good idea to enter a code in the Check # field (such as WT for wire transfer) and make sure you don’t choose the To Be Printed check box.
Printing checks
When you record checks in NetSuite, you may want to print each one immediately, or enter a number of checks and print them all at once:
When entering a check, you can immediately print it by clicking the arrow on the right of the Save button and selecting Save & Print. The check is assigned the number specified in the Check # field.
When entering or editing a check, you can queue it to print later by selecting the To Be Printed check box and then clicking Save. In this case, the Check # field reads To Print until a check number is assigned when you print it.
You can queue checks to print from your bank register. Just select the Print check box to the left of each check you want to print later.
Printing checks in your print queue
To print checks in your print queue:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Print Checks and Forms.
NetSuite prints checks on blank check stock, which can be ordered from office supply vendors, including the supplier listed on the Print Checks and Forms page.
2. Click the Checks link.
The Print Checks screen appears.
3. Select the bank account from the Account drop-down list.
4. Select the Print check box for the appropriate check(s) in the list.
5. In the First Check Number field, enter the first check number you want to use.
You can select the Print Back to Front check box to print the checks in reverse order, finishing with the number you entered in the First Check Number field.
6. Select an option from the Check Type drop-down list:
• Standard prints three checks per page with no voucher.
• Voucher prints checks where the top third of each page is the check and the rest is used as a voucher.
7. Click Print.
You select the check type to use for a specific print job from the Checks print queue, as described in Step 5, but you can also set a company default to use unless you specify otherwise.
Setting the company default for printed check type
To set the company default for the printed check type, ask an administrator to set the preference in this way:
1. From the Setup tab menu, choose Company⇒Printing, Fax, and Email Preferences.
2. On the Printing tab, under Check Printing, select an option from the Default Check Type drop-down list:
• Standard
• Voucher
3. Click Save.
Putting it on plastic: Credit cards
Along with checks, another common way to purchase goods and services is to pay for them with a company credit card.
Create a separate credit card general ledger account for each company credit card, so that you accurately track your balances and reconcile them to the credit card statements from the bank or credit card vendor.
Making a purchase
Recording a credit card purchase in NetSuite is simple. The Credit Card page shown in Figure 5-8 is almost identical to the Check page.
To enter a purchase made with your company credit card:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Use Credit Card.
2. From the Account drop-down list, select the credit card account you’re using to pay for the purchase.
3. In the Vendor drop-down list, enter or choose the name of the vendor you’re buying from.
4. (Optional) Select the period from the Posting Period drop-down list.
5. Enter the date of the purchase in the Date field.
6. Enter the amount of the purchase in the Amount field.
7. (Optional) Enter a number in the Reference No. field and a note about the purchase in the Memo field.
8. If you’re recording the purchase on the Expenses tab, go to Step 10. If you’re recording the purchase on the Items tab, go to Step 11.
9. Click the Expenses tab and choose an expense account appropriate for your purchase from the drop-down list.
For example, if you’re buying a desk chair, you may choose Furniture or Office Supplies from the drop-down list.
10. Click the Items tab, select each item to purchase from the Item drop-down list, enter the quantity in the Quantity field, select a tax code from the Tax Code drop-down list, choose a Location from the Location drop-down list, and then click Add.
You can use the Items tab to track the purchase of any goods or services set up as Item records in NetSuite.
Don’t record the same purchase under both the Expenses and Items tabs because — yep — you’ll count the same purchase twice.
11. Click Save.
To see a list of all the credit card transactions you’ve entered, from the Financial tab menu, Banking⇒Use Credit Card⇒List.
The same Credit Card page used for charges also records returns or credits on your company credit card. To record a credit, simply select the Credit radio button at the top of the page instead of Charge, and follow the same steps as if you were entering a purchase.
You don’t need to create a credit card account to track reimbursable purchases an employee makes with a personal credit card. These should be entered as expense reports, and the payment method doesn’t really matter for your bookkeeping purposes.
Paying down your balance
You use the Write Check feature to pay down the balance of a company credit card. To write a check against your credit card balance, you have to enable the Expand Account List preference.
Figure 5-8: The Credit Card page is similar to the Check page.
To turn on the Expand Account List preference, follow these steps:
1. From the Setup tab menu, choose Accounting⇒Accounting Preferences.
2. Click the General tab.
3. Select the Expand Account List check box.
4. Click Save.
To make a payment against your credit card balance, follow the steps in the earlier section, “Writing a check.” When you reach Step 9, click the Expenses tab and select the credit card account from the drop-down list. To print the check, follow the instructions in the earlier section, “Printing checks.”
The credit card statement you get each month isn’t a bill, though it may seem like one because you have to make a payment on a specific date. A bill represents a specific purchase from a single vendor; a credit card statement may represent multiple purchases that occurred on different dates and from different vendors.
Enter your individual purchases with the Credit Card page; don’t enter a bill in NetSuite for the whole statement — the accounting will be incorrect if you do.
Exploring bank and credit card registers
Each bank account has a bank register, in which you can view transactions posted to that account. See the earlier section, “Examining account registers,” for general information about account registers.
Bank and credit card account registers include a couple of features not found in other account registers. Figure 5-9 shows a sample bank register.
Bank registers allow you to send checks to the print queue. Choose the Print check box to the left of each check you want to print later.
Bank registers allow you to see whether transactions are cleared and reconciled. If a transaction is cleared, you see a check mark in the Clr column in the register. If a transaction is reconciled, you see the reconciliation date in the Reconciled Date column of the register. (We discuss more about what this actually means in the upcoming “Reconciling accounts” section.)
Figure 5-9: A bank account register reveals reconciled dates and clearance, Clarence.
Reconciling accounts
For each of your bank or credit card accounts, you usually get some sort of account statement periodically from the bank or financial institution. Most commonly, statements are mailed to you on a monthly basis, but the frequency may vary. You may also just get an e-mail notification and view your statement through online banking.
Reconciling your information in NetSuite with your bank statement is important to help ensure that the transactions you’ve entered accurately reflect the available funds in your bank account.
Reconciling can be a slightly tedious process, especially if you have many transactions every month, but in the long run, you have fewer errors if you stay on top of it. You never want to arrive at the end of a year or be in the middle of an audit and find that your reconciliations are wrong or incomplete!
Reconciling the statement with the register
Before you begin reconciling, do the obvious — look over your records and receipts to make sure you’ve entered all the bank and credit card transactions you know about.
To reconcile a statement with the register:
1. From the Financial tab menu, choose Banking⇒Reconcile Bank Statement or Reconcile Credit Card Statement from the navigation menus.
The Reconcile Bank Statement page appears, as shown in Figure 5-11. If you’re reconciling a credit card, the Reconcile Credit Card page appears instead.
2. Choose the account you’re reconciling from the Account drop-down list.
3. Enter the date on the bank statement in the Statement Date field.
4. Enter information in the Ending Statement Balance field.
5. Make sure the Last Reconciled Balance field matches the starting balance on your bank statement.
The Last Reconciled Balance field shows the (you guessed it) ending balance from the last reconciliation on that account. If all went well during that the prior reconciliation, your Last Reconciled Balance matches the starting balance on your current statement.
Note that if you haven’t reconciled that account before, the Last Reconciled Balance is 0.
6. Click the Deposits and Credits tab and make sure each transaction on the tab matches your bank statement.
If your statement shows transactions that don’t appear, and you’re certain they weren’t accidentally reconciled with another statement or posted to the wrong date, you can enter them on the fly. Enter transactions that decrease your bank account on the New Charges tab, and enter transactions that increase your bank account on the New Deposits tab. These are automatically reconciled with that statement when you click Save.
7. Click the Checks and Payments tab and make sure each transaction matches the bank statement.
Now you’re ready to get to the real work of reconciliation. As shown in Figure 5-10, transactions appear on the Deposits and Credits tab and the Checks and Payments tab. (They appear on the Payments and Credits tab and the Charges and Cash Advances tab if you’re reconciling a credit card account.)
These are all the unreconciled transactions in the account that have a posting date on or before the current statement date.
You can’t reconcile a transaction on a particular statement if its posting date is after the statement date.
8. To reconcile a transaction on the statement, select the Reconcile check box on the transaction’s row.
When you add transactions to the reconciliation, their values are added to the amount in the Reconciled This Statement field.
When you’ve selected all the transactions on your statement, the amount in the Difference field should be 0. If so, the reconciliation is complete and successful, and the numbers in the Last Reconciled Balance plus the Reconciled This Statement fields equal the number in the Ending Statement Balance field.
9. Congratulate yourself and click Save.
Figure 5-10: A bank reconciliation.
If you save a reconciliation with a mistake on it, don’t panic. You can come back and fix it. Just return to the Reconcile Bank Statement page and enter the date of the statement you need to edit in the Statement Date field. Make your changes, and then click Save.
In your bank or credit card account register, you can see whether a transaction has been reconciled by whether a date appears in the Reconciled Date column. From the register, you can take a couple of actions related to reconciliation:
Click a date in the Reconciled Date column to view that particular reconciliation statement.
If a transaction has not yet been reconciled, click the Reconcile link to start a new reconciliation statement.
Reconciliation can be a long process and may take more than one session. Click the Hold button to save your progress on a particular statement without committing the reconciliation. In other words (drum roll . . .), the Hold button places the reconciliation process (drum roll . . .) on hold.
When you return, the reconciliation page loads the statement that was on hold, and you can continue. You can also access the on-hold statement by entering the date of the reconciliation in the Statement Date field on the Reconcile Bank Statement page.
Reporting on reconciliation
Use the three reports explained in Table 5-1 to examine reconciliations. These reports are only available if you have reconciled your bank account in NetSuite.
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Table 5-1 Reconciliation Reports |
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Type |
Explanation |
To Run |
|
Reconciliation Summary |
A summary-level description of a particular reconciliation statement. It shows the total amount of transactions you reconciled, any difference between that total and the statement ending balance, and the total of unreconciled transactions as of that statement date. |
From the Reports tab menu, choose Banking/Budgeting⇒Reconciliation. |
|
Reconciliation Detail |
Provides more details, including all of the information on the Reconciliation Summary report, plus a list of the actual transactions. |
From the Reports tab menu, choose Banking/Budgeting⇒Reconciliation⇒Detail. |
|
Reconciliation History |
Shows a list of your reconciliations with the statement balance, the total of the transactions reconciled, the previous statement balance, and the difference. It’s a handy way to see all the reconciliations you’ve done for that bank or credit card account and whether they were successful. |
Go to either the Reconcile Bank Statement page or the Reconcile Credit Card Statement page, and then click the History button. |