Beginning balance - the amount of funds (available in your bank account or owed for credit card accounts) at the opening of a new month or financial period.You’ll want to know exactly what we’re talking about here, so it’s helpful to familiarize yourself with a few key terms. The advantage to that is if anything is off and you need to make a correction, you can do it quickly to prevent any other issues from arising. The best approach to reconciling your bank accounts is to make it a monthly habit as soon as you receive your bank statements. When should I reconcile my accounts in QuickBooks? After all, expert accountants and successful business owners know that the best time to start preparing for tax season is year-round. Moreover, filing your annual business taxes will be much easier if you get in the habit of reconciling your accounts on a regular basis. You want to be able to make the most informed decisions for your business, and having accurate, updated data will help you do that. Staying on top of your accounting by reconciling your accounts on a regular basis also helps protect you, as you’ll quickly know whether or not any fraudulent charges have been made using your bank or credit card information. The last report you reviewed showed enough credit available, but the data was incorrect. Say you go to make a big purchase-new laptops for your growing tech team-and your card is declined. We’ve already acknowledged that it’s important to make sure your bank and credit card accounts match up with what’s in QBO for spending reasons, and it’s not hard to imagine why. Why do I need to reconcile my bank accounts? Before you attempt to reconcile on your own, check out our step by step guide below! It’s a similar process to balancing your checkbook. In addition to being every amount of fun as it sounds, it’s a really helpful process to make sure that your bank accounts match up with your accounting system, and you’re not at risk of overspending based on what’s actually in the bank. A fundamental piece of good bookkeeping is routine account reconciliation, the process in which you match up your transactions in QuickBooks Online (QBO) with your bank statement and credit card statements. Trying to reconcile your accounts in QBO? Reconciling is the process of matching transactions into QBO against your bank or credit card statements.