Obtaining Data

Bank Reconciliation > First Steps > Obtaining Data

Obtaining data is the first step in using Bank Reconciliation.  This step actually occurs outside of Bank Reconciliation.

Bank Reconciliation works off of two categories of data: bank data and general ledger data.

Exactly like they sound, bank data is received from your bank and general ledger data created by you.

Depending on what type of reconciliation you are doing, these can be files containing debits, credits, withdrawals, deposits, issued checks, voided checks, or any combination of transactions.

Receiving Bank Data

In the case of bank data, you will most likely have very little control of how it is formatted.  Fortunately, Bank Reconciliation will adapt to your format; it does not force you to format data in a certain way.  The only important step is to understand what the data fields represent and then to tell Bank Reconciliation what they mean.  This is the process known as mapping.

Receiving General Ledger Data

In the case of the general ledger, you actually generate the data.

There are two main ways this can be done:

1.  Export the data from your accounting package into a tabular format

2.  Use a report writer to create a tabular-formatted file.

This is how Bank Reconciliation achieves its accounting system-independence; the key is the tabular format and not a proprietary file type.  Any popular accounting system (current clients are using Peachtree, Great Plains, Salomon, MAS 90, and McCollough, but any are possible) or report writer (clients in the past have used Crystal Reports, Brio, Hyperion, but any are possible) can generate the proper format.

Formatting the data

Bank Reconciliation will  handle the data regardless of how the transactions are combined.  However, in order to allow this, Bank Reconciliation requires the data be in a tabular format.  The most common example of a tabular format is an Excel spreadsheet.  However, it can include many other popular formats, including:

These are just examples; any tabular format will work.  There is no need to remove headers, footers, or summary information from the files;  Bank Reconciliation will strip this information, leaving just transaction data.

Next Step

Now that you have your data, you must import it.

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