back to basic account balance

Welcome to SloBooks.

You menti> We are using the accrual method for keeping track of our records. I have

My first sentence reads "We are using the accrual method"

Are you recording any transactions to the balance sheet such as loan payments or inventory purchases? It sounds like your cash is being used for more than just ordinary expenses.

Meebers wrote:

What "Cash Balance?"

Something simple like an outstanding credit card receipt? Something more complex like inventory valuation? I assume but you didn't say you included the items to deposit account. Also any transfers to or from balance sheet accounts?

\ Print out a trial balance report. If the total debits equal the total credits then your books are in balance.

Some more detail might help. The files that are maintained are for real estate, more specifically CAM management. (Common Area Maintenance). The common areas have expenses and are shared among the tenants. i.e. grass cutting, window washing, trash, repairs etc. So there is no inventory, loans etc. Simple stuff, a budget is made up for a calendar year, billed monthly, collected monthly all going to/from one checking account. As expected, the budget amount and the actual expense amount differ from a few dollars to several thousands. (roof repair, re-soding, power consumption etc). The variance is tracked for adjustments to the budget and if necessary we have a seperate reserve account if things are way out of line. Our fee is part of the expenses, there is no company "profit", overages are credited back to the tenants, shortages are billed to the tennant on the ending budget year. My original question describes the method I used in this some what "simple" chore. TX for any suggestions.

"Laura" wrote in message news:hlsq4j$2f6$ snipped-for-privacy@optima5.xanadu-bbs.net...

Sounds like you want the statement of cash flows report under reports/company&financial

If your version does not have that report you need to analyze the income statement for the period and a comparative balance sheet as of the beginning and end of the period to create one -it is a basic financial statement

One thing comes to mind. Are you sure when you pull the reports that the filters are set to catch all the transactions and no extras? Check the total of debits and total of credits matches your hand calculations. Pull reports for all the properties and see if they total to match the company wide P&L.

Remember that your reserve account might have written a check or gotten a payment for a property and that may be the discrepancy amount.

Basic in the sense that it is almost always included with published financial statements. For the user who is not an accountant quite difficult to create correctly.

Thanks to all for the input. I am working on it in spite of the phones ringing off the wal :-)

First of all, you do not balance "accounts". The books in their entirety must be balanced. That means when you run a trial balance or balance sheet report, the total debits equal the total credits. This will be obvious when you view the reports.

Go to Reports, Company and Financial, and in the 2nd section below Profit & Loss reports is the Balance Sheet report. Select Balance Sheet Standard. The total of Assets should equal the total Liabilities and Owner's Equity. If the amounts are out of balance you have a problem. Back up your books and do a Verify. If there is an error, Rebuild. Verify again.

Go to Reports, Accountant and Taxes, Trial Balance. You will have a list, in order of the Chart of accounts (first assets, then liabilities, equity, revenue, cost of goods sold, then expenses) of all accounts with balances. The total of all the debits should equal the total of all the debits. If the amounts are out of balance, you have a problem. Back up your books and do a Verify. If there is an error, Rebuild. Verify again.

You may have to run a Rebuild several times if you have get errors during the verify process. If you are out of balance in either the balance sheet or the trial balance (highly unlikely unless you have a database problem), verify will find an error.

I don't know why you are worrying about summing up your accounts to balance them. QuickBooks should have that done for you which is why I said to run the above reports. If your reports are in balance then you need to trust the program.

Stephanie Wells, RPB Durham Business Outsource Member, Canadian Bookkeepers Association QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor Simply Accounting Consultant