Name: Optimizing Your Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT®: Fiscal Year Close & Reconciliation
Uploaded: 2025-09-25T18:30:04.813Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 4 s
Description: Optimizing Your Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT®: Fiscal Year Close & Reconciliation

Transcript for "Optimizing Your Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT®: Fiscal Year Close & Reconciliation": Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining today. We'll start in about a minute here, and get things underway. Alright, everyone. Thank you so much for joining our Optimizing Your Financial Agent XT webinar today. Today, we'll be focusing on fiscal year close and reconciliation. The reconciliation is gonna both be talking through bank reconciliation as well as sub ledger reconciliation. So couple housekeeping items. So I tried to send it in the chat, but for some reason, it didn't break it out appropriately. It's there, but it's a little messy. You will receive a link to this webinar recording by email. So generally, within about twenty four hours, you'll have that. You can also download the slides, by clicking on the docs tab on your right side of your screen, and you'll see the tabs the slides there to download. It should be in PDF, format there for you. Audio for this webinar is broadcast through your, computer speakers, so make sure that those are turned up, or headset if you're wearing a headset. If you are running into any audio, technical, video, any type of issues, things are not loading, refresh your browser. Generally, that's going to fix it. You'll be able to log right back in. For any questions, we have a a few, colleagues, in the backstage here kind of, to just answer some some q and a questions that you might have. If you do have some questions, please use the q and a, section and go ahead and ask those, questions, and they'll be able to answer those for you. Thank you so much. Alright. So my name is Orion Petrie. I'm a business analyst here at Blackbaud. I've been here for about thirteen years, and throughout those years, I've been, you know, really focused on on Financial Edge. So today, just a quick agenda. We'll talk through, talk through a few different things. First, why this topic? You know, why are we gonna be talking about these things? Then we're gonna jump into our, fiscal years, talk about fundamentals, talk about closing the years, and then talk through bank reconciliations. Those initial bank reconciliations, bank fees, best practices, those types of things with that. Sub ledger reconciliation, we'll talk through that, talk through some reports that we have on there, some recommendations on that as well. Alright. So why this topic? So we recently, in July, we had a, a webinar that we really kinda focused on, just optimizing financial aid as a whole. So we didn't really break it down into all these different topics. We we had a little bit more of a a, you know, holistic approach to that. In that webinar, we did have some some q and a, on there as well. We had some some polls where we kinda talk through some things, and these are some of our findings. So fiscal year closed, it was, identified as one of the most critical areas, in the q and a feedback during that first webinar. So we, you know, we really got a a lot of feedback about, fiscal year close, you know, kind of the how tos, the whys, kind of everything, around fiscal year. So that's there. Widespread confusion too around, hard and soft close, and and handling unposted items. That was something that we we did see a lot of confusion around, whether it was through some of those polls or some of the the q and a there as well. 70% of users, reported that they never even heard of closing a a fiscal year. So, again, just something else that we we really wanna talk through and and kinda talk through the importance of of of that. 26% of attendees are not using, Financial Edge NXT for bank reconciliation at all. So there we we did also have some other options of, you know, how long it's been, you know, how long what has it been since their last reconciliation? There have been some that were were, you know, a little while back. So, even though they may have used it, it's been a little while. So really wanna talk through that, and highlight that. And then just really wanna highlight some some major operational gaps and needs for for some some clear guidance on on, this and that was feedback we received as well. Alright. So fiscal years. So just some basic fundamentals about fiscal years. Fiscal years in Financial Logistics just allow you to define the periods used in the system. You can divide the you can divide those, fiscal years into a maximum of 13 periods. Each period acts as basically a container, which you can use to to track transactions. When you make a journal entry, the transactions appear in those periods of fiscal year determined, based on that that post date. So what does that mean? So, basically, in Financial Edge, you can set up the you can set up a fiscal year and have up to 13 periods. Generally speaking, most of the time, you're gonna have 12 periods. Those periods are gonna, you know, match your your month, and and that's how you'll you'll have those those fiscal years set up. But you can set up a thirteenth period in the system. That thirteenth period generally is gonna be where you can, you can put, you know, audit adjustments, things like that. One thing to keep in mind with that thirteenth period, it does have to be an actual day in the system. So say, for example, your your fiscal year end is 06:30. So that thirteenth period would have to be, you know, it would have to be 06:30. So you would have 06:30 as a start date, 06:30 for the end date. Period 12 would end on 06/29. So keep that in mind. It does have to be a specific period in the system, and that's why we usually see a little bit more often just 12 periods being used. Individual periods can be closed in order to temporarily prevent data entry, and we're gonna go into this a little bit more detail in the next slide talking about soft close and and and hard close. The individual periods, being closed is what we refer to as a soft close. Entire fiscal years can be closed to prevent, permanent data, entry. So so keep that in mind, or to permanently prevent data entry. Sorry. That is what we refer to as as a hard close, for those. So what are the different definitions that you can run into when when looking at at at your fiscal year? So first is open. That means, that can apply to either a period or a year. When we're looking at a period, that means that it's open for transactions. You can very easily go in there and, and, you know, create a transaction for that period and post to it. Soft close period is closed for data entry, and posting, but it can be reopened. That's the the key there with with soft close. Basically, that's just marking that individual period as being closed. Hard close, is that means the entire fiscal year, is closed permanently. That is irreversible. So keep that in mind. You you wouldn't be able to make any transactions to that. You wouldn't be able to make any edits to anything in the system. In terms of our fiscal years, they do have a couple different different definitions that you would see on them. Like I mentioned, you would see open. That just means that one of these other statuses, so open optimized, pre closed, or closed, do not apply to those fiscal years. So open optimized means that that fiscal year is open, or it hasn't been hard closed, but it's optimized for better reporting processes that is reversible. So, basically, there's a process there, to to go in and optimize your fiscal years. You can optimize multiple years at once to, to make it a little bit easier, But that process is reversible. It does help speed up, report process and it kind of, you know, makes, create some back end tables to to allow the reports to to run a little bit quicker. Pre closed, that means that, there is a temporary mock close. Of course, a temporary mock close, to kinda help speed up reporting. That is reversible. So it's very similar to optimizing, but it gives you a it shows a slightly different status on there. Preclosed, there is a preclosed process that you would see in there, and that actually, you know, just just kinda gives you an idea of, okay, we're we've preclosed this, Now we're ready to to close this. Fiscal year, closed means that the fiscal year is completely closed for data entry. That that is, out of all these statuses, the only one that is irreversible. So keep that in mind. Once you hard close a year, you're not gonna be able to go in and make any changes to it. It is it is very, very important that you you close that year, you know, when when it's when when the time is is right. And we'll we're gonna talk through in a lot more detail, what these what this, entails. Alright. So now we got those kind of basic definitions, out of the way. If you're following along in the document, you can click on this, this link here to what steps should be taken before closing fiscal year in Financial Logistics state, and that'll take you to a knowledge base article that's going to cover most of these, items that you see here. It's also gonna give some some some great examples of of how to run reports. We're gonna touch on that as well. But that that, that link is is a great resource to keep and bookmark for for future use. So first thing you need to do before doing a year end close, before doing a hard close in the system is ensure that all transactions are posted. If you go in and you do a a close in the system, it's gonna tell you that if if you haven't posted everything, it's gonna tell you that there's unposted activity and you're not gonna be able to proceed. So make sure that everything is posted. As mentioned here, this includes journal entries, any subledgers that are being used, so accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets, cash management, as well as any connected system. So so keep that in mind. Make sure that everything is is posted. Reconcile all your subledgers. We're gonna go into that in a little bit more detail about, you know, kind of, a little bit later on talking about how to reconcile your subledgers. While we recommend doing that on a monthly basis, before your hard close, we wanna make sure that you kinda do that again just to make sure that that everything's in line and and and nothing's, changed here with that. Ensure that you have a fund balance account defined for, all of your funds in your in your, system. Generally speaking, if you've been using the system for a while, these are gonna be defined. But if you create a new funder or you're just kinda new to or the system's new to you, you know, it it may not be set up, in there. So you wanna make sure to do that. The instructions here to do that, you just go to settings, general ledger, deal setup funds, and you could edit a specific fund, and make sure that the net asset account, section is defined. The next thing to do, you wanna make sure that you've got a a fiscal year, your next fiscal year created in the system. To be able to hard close a year, one thing to keep in mind, is you do have to have two fiscal years, at least two fiscal years open in this, or created in the system, after that one that you're gonna close. So say, for example, hey. I'm, you know, I'm done with 2024. To be able to close 2024, you have to have twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six created in the system. So make sure you have multiple if you're doing your actual, hard close in the system. This talks about there how to very easily add a new, a new year to the system. Alright. So what are some recommended reports? I'm gonna talk through these. The next couple of slides go into more detail, and that knowledge base article that that I linked at the very beginning there also goes into more detail. So we're not gonna touch on every single set in there, but we're gonna kinda talk through the reports. So, what what reports should you be running? So trial balance report, income statement, balance sheet, general ledger report, and then your, you know, your your preclosed report when you when you preclose. You can you can include on there as well. So from those reports, what what type of information are you really trying to compare? So first off, comparing your net surplus, or deficit, should be done in your income statement, your balance sheets, the summary page of your trial balance. And generally speaking, when you run your trial balance report, it doesn't have a summary page. But in the sentence, or in the the instructions, we talk about how to add that summary page there to make it a little bit easier for you. And then also the grand, the grand total ending balance of the general ledger report. Again, that's gonna give you, the those instructions kinda talk through that. The other piece you really want to compare, is your fund balance between your income statement balance sheet and the total column, of the statement of activities reports. And sorry, statement of activities report should be listed on here as well. I'm not sure why it's not on reports there. So, those would be the the three areas that you you look at for that. So these next two pages, not gonna go into all the detail here, but these give great instructions on on how to run the individual reports to get the information that you need. One thing I do wanna point out with this though, these might not necessarily be your day to day income statement, trial balance, you know, whatever type of report, general ledger report that you're gonna be running on a regular basis. The suggested reports here, that we have are a much more summarized version to give you a very quick picture of your total balances. So it's not necessarily gonna be, okay, let me set up this trial balance and this is how I'm gonna always run my trial balance, or my income statement. This is just kind of for that year end check. You know, you can very, very quickly get that information, and and be able to look at that. With that in mind, you can absolutely create these report parameters and, you know, tag them, you know, use the tag to to to label them as year end or put that in the description, say year end, you know, trial balance or whatever you, need to do with that to very easily be able to, very be able to to to run those at year end. You would just need to go in, update the year that you're running, and and be good to go with that. So, this page here covers our trial balance report and our income statement reports. Again, you'll get a recording, then you can actually download the the slides to be able to view all this information on here. So don't try to hurry and get those set up right now. This page is going to cover the balance sheet and general ledger report. As you can tell, these are a little bit more, involved just because that, does kind of, involve some some, columns and things like that. Alright. So what are some so now that you've done that, you've you've gone through the the process, everything looks good, what what are some some common issues, common errors that that might get ran into when when you're doing your your, end of year, closing? So first, probably the most common that we see are incorrect balances. You know, whether they're incorrect totals, incorrect whatever, you know, there there are quite a few different causes to to what can cause, incorrect balances. Using this knowledge base article here that that I, I linked, go ahead. You can take a look at that, and that really covers those. We're not gonna go into detail with those, but, you know, it could be anything from, you know, maybe the the chart organizer that you're using is not including all accounts. You're accidentally excluding some accounts, whether it be through filters or not including inactive accounts. Potentially, you accidentally selected the wrong date range, you know. So that so there are quite a few different things in that knowledge base article, really walks you through a step by step guide of of how to find those those differences, how to find what what's happening with those, those reports. And then the other biggest item is is really unposted activity. When you you look at the system, it might not be today. It might not be apparent that you have unposted activity, in in some modules. Especially if, say, for example, you've got, you know, ten, fifteen years open in the system, it might not be apparent that, hey, maybe there's this small transaction from, you know, ten years ago that never got posted for whatever reason. You come into your close, it's gonna say, hey. You've got a, you know, a, you know, accounts payable check that's that's not yet posted. You know, how do I find that? So easiest way to find that today, would be to run a general ledger report filtered only on not yet posted transactions. You can actually turn off the option to, when you go to filters, you can choose posted active or posted transactions, and you can set that to none. And then choose your not yet posted transactions and set that to all. So what that does is that will actually, that'll actually produce a general ledger report for you that only shows not yet posted transactions. So you can run that for, you know, hey. I'm pre closed in, you know, 2020. It's showing that I've got not yet posted transactions. What what's going on with that? You can very easily run the general ledger report, filter that way, and you'll be able to see what type of transactions it is. Now it's not gonna give you full blown detail if it's, you know, like an accounts payable check or something like that, But it can tell you, hey. On x date, you've got a unposted accounts payable check or an unposted accounts payable credit memo or whatever. So it gives you, it does give you some some information there for you to then drill down into that, into that sub ledger and get, get a little bit more detail. You can also run a post parameter, and validate that post parameter for a full year or however long that you're looking at, and see unposted, activity there. Now all that being said, we do, have some future enhancements coming soon, actually, to to really help with with identifying these these unposted transactions. It breaks it down. It gives you a very quick, hey. You've got unposted, you know, accounts payable information. You've got unposted accounts receivable information, what have you. And you can drill down into that. You can get that information, and you can really see, you know, what's out there, what needs to be posted, you know, and and where where can you go from there to to get that information. We will, as long as we have time at the end of the the the session, I will we will demo that pretty quickly. But just keep in mind that it's something that is that is coming in and is actually a direct result of some of the feedback that you guys have given, during, you know, the first webinar and some some additional webinars and, you know, through the idea bank of, you know, potentially having some some issues with being able to close with unposted activity, those types of things. So, direct feedback from from, all of you guys. Alright. So managing, historical years, you you've got there there's a couple of things to kinda keep in mind. Hard closing, your historical, years will ensure that you that your data integrity stays there. You're you you close a year, someone can't come in and, uh-oh, I, you know, I posted to, you know, 925-2020 on accident because I, you know, I'm I mistyped when I was, trying to enter a transaction, and I posted that. And now we've got completely changed financials going all the way back to 2020 because that year hasn't been closed, that period wasn't soft closed, any of that stuff. That can definitely cause some issues. But it can with hard closing, it stops that from being able to happen. But it can also help increase performance, while running reports. Like I mentioned with the the optimizing and the pre closing, it kinda does that same thing where it creates some back end information, to allow reports to run a little bit quicker, instead of having to look at a more detailed version of the information to to produce the reports. A couple, best or a couple things that that you definitely want to kinda consider, is to kinda determine those those best practices for your organization. While we can give a general recommendation of, you know, in here, like I mentioned, leaving no more than three fiscal years open in the system, That may not work for you. You know, that that may not work for your organization. Hey. Maybe it makes a little bit more sense for, you know, for us to have four years open or for us to have five years open. That would probably be the high limit that I would recommend. But if that's what works for you, and and, you know, the the organization, by all means, that's, you know, that's not going to, you know, be be a concern. Where we we do see some concerns is where we run into, you know, some some organizations that have ten, fifteen, twenty years open in the system, and it just bogs down the system because it's having to look through so much information to be able to produce those reports. So making sure that you guys have an an you know, in your organization, have a, a a consistent basis to to how often you're closing fiscal years, is is definitely an important, piece of of managing those years. Couple considerations, when when hard closing, fiscal years. Previously, if you use database view and you try to hard close years, you know that, hard close was an exclusive process, which means, hey, if, you know, if I'm I'm working in the system and, you know, I'm I'm gonna hard close a year and, you know, my my buddy Joe is in the system as well doing some entering some invoices, I can't do the hard close because there's another user in the system. That is no longer the case in in Financial Edge and XD. That, exclusivity, has been removed. And if there are other users in the system, it it you you still have the ability to, to be able to to hard close in the system. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, today at 02:30, you decide that, you know what? I'm gonna go in and hard close years. You probably wanna plan this. You probably wanna talk through with your team, you know, and and kinda have a good understanding of, okay. We're gonna hard close the years at, you know, at the end of the day. While people can still be in the system depending on what they're doing, it may block them from being able to to continue where they're they're at. So, for example, you know, if they're if they're trying to run a report for that year that you're hard closing, it's it's probably going to, it's probably gonna stop that report from running. Again, if you're closing 2020, the chances of you running a report from 2020 are very little, but it's it's definitely a consideration. So it's something that you wanna talk to your team about. As I mentioned, once you close the fiscal year, all the information remains available for reporting. But again, you cannot post any, new activity to that closed period. You can't make any changes. You can't do anything to those closed periods. So so once you close that year, it's, it's it's in place and you can't do anything. At least two fiscal years must be open, in order to close a year. So, basically, you know, you can't close a fiscal year when there's only one one year, available. So keep that in mind. And then we definitely suggest to pre close your your fiscal year first. It's a mock closing. It can be undone if there's any issues that are observed after running this. Generally speaking, that that shouldn't be an issue there shouldn't be any issues, but it does kinda give you the exam the the the, opportunity to think of it as, okay. I'm posting. You can validate before you post to make sure everything looks good. So running that pre close before you actually close, it's gonna give you your pre close report. It's gonna give you, it's gonna give you some some information, to to kinda take from there. It's also gonna show if you've got unposted activity. So, hey. I've gotten unposted activity. I know I need to resolve that before I can before I can move on. So, those are just a couple, suggestions there. I'm not gonna go into to great detail, but hard closing the year, would be done in general ledger settings and then choose a fiscal year, and there's a close button there to to be able to do that. You'll be able to run through that, but those are just instructions on on doing that. Alright. So a lot about, a lot about fiscal years. So let's kinda jump on over to our bank reconciliation. So in Financial Edge, you've got the ability to to actually reconcile your bank accounts, And it ensures that your your accounts, you know, stay in balance, they start balanced, and they they they really, you know, the information that you're entering into your bank accounts, is transferring over to your to your general ledger. You know, you're posting you're posting on a consistent basis, those types of things. So it it can very easily you can very easily, you know, find potential issues when you're doing, when you're doing a bank reconciliation. You could find, you know, if there's some balance checks, some overdraft fees that weren't accounted for some incorrect entries. You know, hey. Maybe we we posted this, you know, we we created this check and we, you know, put in a future date on accident. You know what? You know? Oops. That's that's obviously not ideal. So you can kind of catch those, you know, today versus catching those, you know, two, three, four months from now when you you do your reconciliation. So, I would definitely suggest, you know, on a on a consistent basis, honestly, on a on a monthly basis, you should really be doing your bank reconciliation. Now it can be a little bit of a daunting task, to to kind of do your first bank reconciliation. But just kind of as a as a general rule, kinda what, what what can you do to to to work on your bank reconciliation. So if one has never been completed or it hasn't been completed in a long time, it's possible to kinda get, caught up in a few steps. Now these steps are very short in terms of explaining them, but they can take a little while to actually accomplish in the system. So first off, determine the point that you wanna start or continue reconciling to the system if you've if you've done in the past. Once you've done that, you're gonna have to create a quote, unquote, catch up reconciliation as of the the period prior to that date. In that catch up reconciliation, you're gonna clear all the transactions, up to that point except for currently outstanding items, or currently outstanding items as of the date that you wanna reconcile. So keep that in mind. It's very possible, probably even likely, that you're gonna need to create adjustments in that in that, catch up reconciliation. Those adjustments may be, you know, hey. Maybe we've missed some, you know, we've we've created some journal entries that we didn't post over to the bank account, or, you know, just some other things that have that have happened throughout the years and and some of those transactions have just been missed. So, it's very likely that there's gonna be a, adjustment or adjustments that that need to be made to kind of get everything in balance. But once those are in balance, you can start doing your your next month's reconciliation. Once you've completed that rec that catch up reconciliation, you can then, do your next month's reconciliation. That knowledge based article that I linked there, it it has some great suggestions on preparing for a successful bank reconciliation. Take a look at that. By all means, you know, that that's gonna give you some some great starting points, some great tips to to be able to to do that bank reconciliation. We also have some some great, you know, some great BBU courses focused on bank reconciliation that's going to, really give you, a lot of information on there as well. If you do decide that a more hands on approach or assistance is needed, you can definitely reach out to your sales team for discussions on professional service engagements. You could work with me, you could work with one of my colleagues, and we'll we'll be able to help you, you know, get, get in a good starting point to be able to use your bank reconciliation moving forward. So now that you've done your bank first bank reconciliation, again, I know that's kinda very brief, but those are kind of the basic steps. Now you've done that, how can you continue to to more easily do your, do your bank reconciliations, in the system? One of the the the biggest pieces, that really help with bank reconciliations is is bank feeds. For those of you that don't know what bank feeds are, basically, they allow you to download transactions for your financial statement or financial institution, sorry, into your Financial Edge NXT, and it will automatically clear those transactions for you. It it's gonna make your month end reconciliation a much quicker process. You can't do this this reconciliation, or this bank feed matching, as often as as as you need. You know, you can do this on a daily basis. One thing to keep in mind with the bank feeds, depending on on how your bank, sends over information, it could be a few days delayed. So, you know, if you've got a transaction, you know, that just cleared today, it may not clear in the, in the actual bank feed until, you know, until a couple days from now. So it's just something to keep in mind with that. It does allow you to actually get up to date, bank account balances in the actual system in Financial Edge, so you can see those those bank account balances that actually exist in your bank. Like I mentioned, easy reconciliation, just increase transaction visibility, and and it does, it it is a secure connection, to to that. Another to to kinda build on the transaction visibility. So, generally, when you do a bank reconciliation in Financial Edge, if you're doing it manually, you're not necessarily saying, hey. This check cleared on, you know, this check cleared today on 09/25. When you do your bank reconciliation for September, you're just saying, hey. This bank or this check cleared the bank in September at some time. It's not it's not the actual date that it cleared. When you use your bank feed, it actually pulls that information in and it actually says, hey. This this transaction cleared on 09/25. So you can very easily go into, in Financial Edge, look at that that check, look at that check number, see what date it actually cleared, and and have a little bit more information. So you're not having to jump back to your your bank account to to see, okay, this cleared on, you know, if, you know, whoever calls, you know, Joe's loan service calls and says, hey, you know, when when did you know, I know you sent me this check. When did it clear? You could very easily go into the system and say, oh, look. It cleared on 09:15. So just gives you a little bit, a little bit more visibility into that. Setting up the bank feeds, is is a pretty simple process. You will need to have your, your bank account login information. So depending on who who has control of that, it may, you know, it may not be, the normal person that's that's, doing AP run. It may be someone who's a little bit more, doing your bank reconciliation. So just kinda dependent on on your the control of your organization, it may be a certain individual that that would need to actually go and connect that. This just kinda walks through some of, some of these, some of the setup here on on how to do this. One thing I do wanna note is that transactions download, as of the last reconciliation date or up to ninety days prior to when you, to when an online, account was added and linked. So we really wanna do that catch up, reconciliation first, and potentially, depending on when that catch up date was, we may need to do a few manual reconciliations before we can get bank feeds set up. So make sure that you you you have done that. You you're within ninety days. Doesn't have to be exactly ninety days out. Within ninety days of, you know, being able to, reconcile for that month before you you connect your bank feeds because then you're still gonna have to do some some manual reconciliation for some of those older transactions. Alright. So what are some best practices for for your your bank reconciliation? So first and foremost, like I mentioned with with bank feeds, use that download and clear all often. Use it daily, weekly. You know, use it use it as often as you can. Generally speaking, if you use it twice in one day, it's not gonna pull it's probably not gonna pull much more information. But, you know, if you're doing it daily, you're gonna have a much more up to date bank register. You're gonna be able to see that, hey. You know, these these are my outstanding checks as of today or, you know, potentially a couple days ago depending on how how often that the, the bank will will provide that information. So, it it gives you a a much more up to date, picture of of what your bank reconciliation looks like. On that note, make sure that you are reconciling on a on a, consistent basis. Make it part of your month end close. You know, you you go in you're not just going into, a fiscal year and or a fiscal period and and marking that period as closed. You're coming in and doing your bank reconciliation, wouldn't jump into it as well. You're gonna do your sub ledger reconciliation. So you re make it part of a a a closed process, in in your system. Something that you've kinda developed to to really make it, a much more seamless process. It's much easier to, you know, look through a month's worth of data to to, find where an issue was instead of the whole year's worth of data. So doing that that, bank reconciliation on a monthly basis is is definitely, an important important part of, you know, your monthly close. It's going to make sure that your financials are correct when they go out. So if your monthly close just involves creating your financials for the month and sending those out, how do you know that everything's accurate? If you haven't done your bank reconciliation, you haven't done your subletter reconciliation, make sure that you're doing that as part of that monthly close. One thing to keep in mind, just kind of similar to your your hard close, reconciliations are permanent. So once they're completed, it's not possible to undo that reconciliation, and then all adjustments, that would need to be made for that, potentially, for that period, or that that month related to the reconciliation would need to happen, in a future reconciliation. So just keep that in mind. It is it is a permanent process. You wanna make sure that that you've gone through and and done all the pieces. Alright. Sub ledger reconciliation. So sub sub ledger reconciliation is just as important as your bank reconciliation. If you're reconciling for, for the first time, find a find a reliable starting point, where the the reports balance are or are out of balance by a consistent amount. So if you're out of balance for three months in a row by, you know, $1,200, that probably leads to at some point there, there was a $1,200, mistake that that needs to be corrected. It's just gonna allow you to to make those appropriate corrections and more easily, reconcile moving forward. So so just keep that in mind. Probably one of the most important pieces, is really what's what reports, do we need to run, when when we're doing our reconciliation. For the reconciliation, I kinda put all the different pieces in here, to to kinda get a good picture. So for accounts payable, we recommend looking at the account distribution report, open invoice report, and general ledger report. A lot of times when I'm working with organizations, we usually get some feedback around, okay, you know, I'm I'm running my aged, you know, my my age AP report and it's out of balance. But when I run my open invoice report, it's it's in balance, to my to my general ledger. The reason being is our open invoice report, we can actually control how that or what date we're we're using, when when we run that report. An open invoice report, we can we can choose to run it based on the post date, whereas an aged AP report, that always runs based on the invoice date. That may not be an issue for your organization, but it it could very well be an issue if your, if your invoice date and your, post date are not always the same thing. That can cause some differences. In Financial Edge, General Ledger only cares about the post date, so keep that in mind. General Ledger doesn't really care what you have as the invoice date. You can have whatever you want. The the system's only gonna see that post date. So that's why we recommend running that, open invoice report. In a knowledge based article that that I'll share in the next, slide, actually kind of you can drill down into those reports and get a a better picture of how to run those reports. Probably won't touch on that today, but it gives you a good understanding of, you know, how how do I run my open invoice report? How do I how do I run my general ledger report? Those types of things. Purchase orders, if you're using purchase orders in the in the system, you also wanna reconcile that. When you're doing the the reconciliation for purchase orders, you wanna focus on your encumbrance report and your general ledger report. With the general ledger report, you want to make sure that you're obviously using the encumbrance status, not just the regular status for that. Accounts rec accounts receivable reconciliation. We recommend our, the the accounts, distribution report. So accounts receivable is a little different. You can use the aged AR report, but keep in mind, this is only if the agent information, defined in in the configuration setup, equals post date in your system. You can actually set that agent information to be either post date, or in or transaction date. And if it's transaction date, the HJP report or HJR report, sorry, is is not going to it could it could equal your general ledger report, but it may not, and that kinda goes back to the same as account, your your, aged AP report, because it's looking at the invoice date or the charge date, as opposed to the actual, the actual post date in the system. As long as you've got it defined to equal post date, though, then those will equal and and and you'll be good to go. You if you're not using post date, in the in the configuration for the agent information, you, you can use your open item report to to reconcile. And then, of course, your general ledger report. Cash receipts reconciliation, you can run your deposit list, account distribution reports, and then general ledger report to compare those and make sure everything's in balance. And then fixed assets reconciliation, account distribution, year to date depreciation report, general ledger report. I've also seen people be successful with, potentially setting up some queries or even just using the list view in the system to to produce a list of your assets along with the, the the book values to kinda get that information and compare that to to your general ledger as well. So so there are a couple a couple ways of of, reconciling with with fixed assets as well. Alright. So some recommendations. As I mentioned, how to reconcile a general ledger, that really gives you a little bit more detailed information, around some common, causes for discrepancies. It gives you a little bit more detailed information on how to run those reports, and can really kinda help with with doing your reconciliation to general ledger. So what are some some recommendations that that we have for this? As I mentioned before, with with your, bank reconciliation, make sure that you reconcile it for, frequently. We we we strongly recommend, you know, reconciling monthly at a minimum, to to ensure that you're you're staying in balance. If you wait a few months or till the end of the fiscal year, for example, you're gonna have to look through an entire year or a few months worth of of data to figure out, you know, where where did where did something go wrong? Where did, you know, I where did something not get posted correctly, or where did something get get, you know, miskeyed? It just gives you a a much broader, area to have to look through, versus each month. You reconcile each month. I'm only having to look at this one month's worth of data. I might have to look at, you know, a few months or a full year's worth of data. Posting information. You can definitely set up your posting information in these subledgers, in the configuration to to make it a little bit more easy to identify transactions. So for example, one thing that I I I see fairly often is that third bullet there. We'll we'll go through all of them. But the third bullet where, hey, I've I've reversed a transaction or, you know, I've made an adjustment to a an invoice. But I go to the general ledger and I see the invoice posted twice, because there is no indicator to say that, hey. This is a reversal. This is an adjustment because that that wasn't set up in the system. So we wanna make sure all that's set up. Ensure that that it's, you know, the post in information includes more than just the name of a record. We'll take a look at the post in information, because it looks like we'll probably have a little bit of time to kinda talk through that. But make sure that that, post in information has more than just the name of the record. It's it's, you know, transaction number. So invoice number, check number, those types of things. So you can very easily pay. What is this that I see something that posted on this day, especially if it's a common amount. It's, you know, a thousand dollar transaction. Okay. That's not giving you much information if you now have to go into, you know, you have to go into, AP and find a a thousand dollar transaction. There's probably gonna be a few of those. So kinda having the the transaction number is gonna be a much easier process to to be able to find that detailed information. Make sure that you're you're changing the, posted information for both the debit and credit sides if you are updating that, because you can do you can have a a, you know, you can't set up one side and potentially forget to set up the other. But we'll we'll take a quick look at that as well. Like I mentioned with, reversal and and adjust references, make sure that you've got that to to to make it a little bit easier for that. You can use custom fields too, to to really give you a better understanding of what's posted. So for example, if you've got applications in in accounts receivable that are posted, you can you can add just a very simple APP to say, hey. These are my applications or my interfund entries. So you can see on a a much quicker basis of how of what type of transaction that that is that's posted. Because if you've got your application, posting information to be the same as your invoice posting information, it's gonna be very difficult to kinda distinguish one versus the other. Make sure that you do, you know, use unique, journals when you're posting, you know, to in in from a subledger, you're posting from accounts payable. It's ideal to have, like, a payables or accounts payable, journal to to to post to. It makes your, it makes things a little bit neater on the financial on the general ledger side. Sorry. You can very easily filter on those those journals and see that, hey. This is from accounts payable. Alright. Some other recommendations. Post in frequency. So not just your your, reconciliation frequency, but your post in frequency. Make sure that you're you're posted as as, you know, as often as makes sense. For example, you know, if you've got a check run every single week, post after that check run. You know? You can post more often than that, obviously. But at minimum, we generally recommend posting posting weekly. You know, if you've got a a, you know, hey. Maybe, you know, September or August is a very high volume month for us, push more frequently. There's not gonna be an issue if you, you know, if you've got three or four, batches in the system for one week versus just having one. It's gonna make sure that, you know, when you do the posting, you're gonna you you can do validation, make sure everything that looks good before you post it, and then post it. It's gonna be a a quick check, you know, prior to prior to actually doing the post ins. Summary accounts. So when you're reconciling your sub ledger ledgers, subsidiary ledgers to general ledger, make sure that your, subsidiary ledger reports show all transactions with, without regard to fund because that can make things, a little bit more difficult. If you've got summary accounts and multiple funds, and you're only so say, for example, in accounts payable, you you use, you know, fund one, fund two, and fund three, and when you post, it's gonna have fund one, AP summary, fund two AP summary, fund three AP summary. But when you do your reconciliation, you're only looking at fund one AP reconcile your AP summary account. You're not gonna you're not gonna be able to reconcile. You wanna make sure that that when you're doing the, the reconciliation, when you're looking at the general ledger report that you're filtering on, on the appropriate accounts, if there are multiple, so you can get a a accurate picture, versus just looking at one individual account. One thing to kinda keep in mind as well is unapplied, accounts. So you got unapplied cash, and accounts receivable, for example, or discount accounts and accounts receivable or accounts payable. Make sure that those are established as separate separate accounts rather than part of your summary account. It's just gonna make it that much more difficult to to reconcile that account. You're gonna now be looking at okay. Well, here is you know, I've got a discount here that's gonna be reducing my my summary balance, but then it's not. So it's gonna just make it a a much more difficult process if you don't have it be a separate, separate account altogether. And then last but not least, this is something that that I feel like we we harp on in a lot of on a lot of our, webinars is is having an having an actual policies and procedures guide. Creating that and having the kind of an internal policies and procedures guide, is really gonna make sure that that your staff, any future staff, current staff, what have you, they understand, and and make a make a have a full process, that that they're gonna complete at the end of the month. Not just a, hey. Here's my financials. We're done for the month. A full reconciliation process. What does that look like? It's also gonna give, you know, give them some some examples of, you know, hey. This is this is how we handle these specific situations, you know, and and it's going to just make your reconciliation a a much easier process. So keep that in mind. You know, policies and procedures guide can be something that that is very time consuming to to build out, but the the amount of effort that it takes to do that is is definitely worth it at the end. So that's definitely something that we we like to, make sure that that everyone is, is working through. Alright. I'm going to stop sharing this, and I'm gonna share my screen here for just a moment. We're gonna take a quick look at a couple things here. If I can choose the appropriate screen here. There we go. So, like, in here, this is something that some of you may see. It's it's been rolled out, it's been rolled out ways, but something that some of you may see, but, probably probably not everyone. If you come into general ledger, there's this overview section here. So when you click on that, you're gonna come to this page here. That kind of is it's a one stop shop to kinda get, a quick overview, just that, of of whatever section that you're looking at. Right now, the only one that's been built out is the general ledger one, but it gives you some some quick pieces of, information for you to look at. So, for example, needs attention. Uh-oh. I've got a out of balance batch. What's going on with that? You can quickly click on that, take a look at your, your bal your batches that are out of balance. Okay. That one looks like it looks like there's just $500 in debits. What's going on with that? You can either come in and make changes to it. You can delete it, you know, or whatever you need to with that. There's also gonna be, you know, some some some things like, hey. You've got some periods that are open. But then down here, this is kinda what I was referring to. So you've got where you can look at at more recent periods. So you can very easily come in here and see, you know, okay. These are my open periods. So let me come back here to 2025 period two. Oh, awesome. Everything. Don't have any unposted transactions and payables, receivables, nothing like that. Okay. Cool. Let me come in here. Let me close that period. Period's closed. Checklist is done. But if we were to come in here and look at period of nope. It was period nine. Sorry. Period nine, probably, we don't wanna close because that's this month. But you can very easily see, okay, I've got one unposted transaction in in receivables. Let me take a look at that. You can click on that. It's gonna come in here. It's gonna tell you that transaction that needs to post, or that needs to be posted. You may or may not want to post it depending on what what's going on. You you've got a post button up here. You can drill down into that transaction and take a take a look and see what that, looks like. But it's gonna be a great tool to really allow you to come in here and and get a good picture of of what's outstanding in the system. You also see over here where there'll be some, some quick lists here of, what your your current fiscal year looks like. You know, do I have open periods? You know, do I not? Are are put are are all of my periods closed? Those types of things. But it just gives you a quick overview here of of what that information looks like. Allows you to to very easily see, you know, what what is outstanding, what needs to be posted. I think it's gonna be a great tool that that we're really working on, to to to kinda give you a little bit more insight into your into your reconciliation, and just allow it to be a little bit easier, make sure that you've got everything, you know, set set up and and and good to go. So the other piece that I mentioned was really kinda looking at our posted information. So if you come over to, settings general ledger, does this posted information section down here. So if you click on that, general is going to be, kind of what we're referring to about, having a, a default prefix for your journal reference, adjustments or reversals. If these are blank, for you, I would suggest, maybe not right this moment, but if you do it right this moment, I wouldn't be mad as well, going in there and and updating these settings. Put, you know, if you just wanna do, you know, ADT, what whatever you want, just something that that's very, very easy to to see that, hey. This is an adjustment. This is a reversal. So when you do post either an adjustment or reversal in the system, it's going to pull that that, that prefix in there and and allow it to, to a little bit more easily be recognizable. And then also, as we were we, suggested to have different, journal values for all your subledgers, down here is where you can define those. You can very easily say, okay. Payables, the defaults accounts payable, purgures, so on and so forth, and and you're good to go with that. But the other piece that we referenced were the actual journal references themselves. So in here, while this looks like it can be a little daunting sorry. It's actually filtered. 25 records, so there might be a bunch of records in here. It gives you a way of really digging in and saying, hey. How are these different types of transactions or different, you know, pieces of the system posted over to my general ledger? And I can very easily recognize that in the general ledger when I run a general ledger report versus, okay, I've got a, you know, accumulated depreciation transaction and I just put asset number. What does that mean? You know, what type of transaction is that? We don't know. So kinda given a little bit more a little bit more detail here to what those journal references look like. You can filter here on the the, the subledgers that you have, you know, payables, for example, here. You know, this could be a very good one. Credit card, applications. So sometimes with credit card, applications, if you don't have detailed inform or if you don't have the, something to indicate that's an application, you might there might be a little bit of confusion of, okay, was this the actual credit memo that posted? Was this the application that posted? What what does that look like? So you can very easily come in here and edit this, and you can you you can notice here that there's a debit section and a credit section. Just keep that in mind. You can choose certain options that you have here or as we we suggested, if you wanna create a new field, you can come in here, say manage fields, and, you know, we want this to be called application. Sure. That's gonna actually add that word application to to the system. So, when I go ahead and post, it's gonna be vendor number I'm sorry. This is a sample that people play with. Vendor number, invoice number, credit memo number, two hyphens that's probably not needed. Application. It's gonna actually say the word application. So you can very easily when you look at your general ledger report, you can see that this is an application versus this is a this is the actual credit memo posted. As we suggested though, you wanna make sure to do that on both the debit and credit side. So if you wanna come in here and I don't think those are exactly the same. Oh, no. They are now. Both my credit and debit side are now gonna show the word application on there. And I say that when I do any post going forward, keep that in mind, that post going forward, it will it will, put that information in there. It's not gonna update any anything that's been previously posted, though. Alright. So it looks like we're hitting right at, time. So I really appreciate you guys' time today. If you, you know, if there are any, questions outstanding, we're gonna do our best to get those answered here in the next couple of minutes. But, appreciate you guys' time. You will get this recording, like I mentioned at the beginning, in about twenty four hours, or within twenty four hours, via email, and make sure that you download that, that document as well. I appreciate you guys' time today. You guys have a wonderful day.