In preparation for loading Opening Balances, you might be asked to balance your bank account. If you've never balanced your bank account, you'll need to establish where the differences lie.
There are two ways to do this, one is very simple but will require you to open a new bank account, the other will take time and effort but will work eventually.
This article includes:
How does it work with a new bank account?
In this scenario, you open up a new bank account and all new tenancies are set up to pay directly into this account. Existing tenancies are provided with a new standing order mandate to pay into the new account, however not all tenants will action this. Rents that are received into the old bank account will need to be transferred across to the new bank account (some banks will offer to automatically divert funds, but there may be a cost involved to do this).
The money that already exists in the old bank account will need to be addressed, so any monies that you can identify should be transferred over to the new account i.e; rent in advance, deposits etc. The remaining balance sits in the old account until such time as it has been identified.
What if I don’t want to set up a new bank account?
If you don't want to set up a new bank account, you'll need to start a manual reconciliation process to identify what the actual balance difference is. To do this, you'll need to create a spreadsheet.
In one column, you'll have the balance on Jupix plus any credits, and less any debit items on the bank account that aren't on Jupix.
In a second column, you'll have the balance of the bank account plus any credits, and less any debits showing on Jupix that aren't on the bank account.
The difference between these two columns is how much the reconciliation is out by.
You may need to carry out this exercise for many days and in some cases weeks or months until you reach a consistent difference.
If you need to make the balance on Jupix higher to match the bank, a suspense balance can be added to increase the reconciliation figure.
For more information on how to Receipt monies from an unknown source into the suspense account, click here
However, if the bank account balance needs to increase to make it balance with Jupix, the funds will need to be transferred from the agency account to the rent account, to top it up.
Note
The only way of reducing the balance on Jupix is by paying out funds to either a landlord, tenant or supplier. Monies can't just be removed