Reconciliation with no old bank statements
HTC
Member Posts: 2
Total accounting rookie here. My bank only offers statements online for 2 years and my accounts and transactions prior to 2019 are an absolute mess with many missing for some reason. Account balances are off by thousands. Is there anything I can do to reconcile everything before Dec 31, 2018 and zero out my balances so my recent info is correct?
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Hi HTC, without the bank statements for that period, it would be very hard to reconcile as there are no records to actually try and match the transactions with. Even if all you had were the starting and ending balances for the months/years prior to Dec 31, 2018, it would still be practically impossible. Now, I wonder if it is possible to contact your bank and request those older statements from them? I do believe that, while some banks only have a certain number of statements available through their online banking platforms, if you actually contact them personally they will give you more. I have been in this situation with a client before. I do understand that you may have tried this already, however.
Since you mentioned that you are an accounting rookie (and forgive me for saying this), it may be not so much that there are missing transactions but that there have been many errors made over time in the use of the software that has resulted in this problem. Do you have bank feeds set up? If so, there is reasonable hope that the transactions are all there, but that they have not been dealt with correctly and are buried somewhere they shouldn't be.