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Vietnamese Bank reconciliation is a vital aspect of financial management for any business, and it involves comparing the balances and recorded transactions of a company's external bank statements to the cash balances and transactions recorded in their general ledger.
Traditionally, bank reconciliation has been handled by the accounting department or business owners using manual methods, spreadsheets, or simple bookkeeping software, which is becoming inefficient, prone to errors, lacks standardisation, and provides limited visibility. This inefficiency can lead to discrepancies between bank statements and general ledger records, potentially putting your company's financial health at risk.
Read more: Intercompany Reconciliation: 3 Ways to Overcome the Challenges
But what if there was a smarter, more streamlined way to handle this critical financial task? Enter the world of cloud accounting software. In an era where data-driven decisions are the norm, cloud-based solutions are transforming the way businesses manage their finances.
Content
- What is a bank reconciliation?
- Why is bank reconciliation indispensable in business?
- Issues with manual bank reconciliation
- Benefits of cloud accounting software for bank reconciliation
What is a bank reconciliation?
Bank reconciliation is the process of comparing and matching the financial records of a business or individual with the corresponding bank statements to ensure accuracy and consistency between the two sets of data.
Here is an overview of how bank reconciliation works:
- Gather bank statements and financial records: Obtain the latest bank statement from the financial institution and gather the relevant financial records, such as the general ledger, cash book, and accounting software.
- Compare transactions: Compare the transactions listed in the bank statement with the corresponding entries in the financial records. This includes comparing deposits, withdrawals, checks issued, electronic transfers, fees, etc.
- Identify discrepancies: Look for any differences or discrepancies between the bank statement and the financial records. These discrepancies can include missing transactions, errors, duplicated entries, unrecorded bank fees, or any inconsistencies between the two data sets.
- Adjustments and corrections: Make necessary adjustments and corrections to the financial records to align them with the bank statement. This may involve adding missing transactions, removing duplicates, correcting errors, or recording bank fees or interest charges that were not previously accounted for.
- Reconcile the ending balances: Once the adjustments are made, compare the adjusted ending balance in the financial records with the ending balance on the bank statement. The goal is to ensure that the two balances match. If they do not match, further investigation is needed to identify and resolve the discrepancies.
- Document the reconciliation: Document the bank reconciliation process, including the adjustments made and any notes or explanations for the discrepancies. This documentation serves as a record for audit purposes and future reference.
The primary objective of bank reconciliation is to ensure the accuracy of financial records, identify errors or discrepancies, and maintain the integrity of financial reporting. It helps detect potential fraud, errors in recording transactions, bank errors, or timing differences that may affect the accuracy of financial statements.
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Reconciling bank accounts regularly, such as monthly or quarterly, is considered a best practice to ensure the reliability of financial information.
Why is bank reconciliation indispensable in business?
Foster business confidence and enhance cash flow management
Bank reconciliation ensures that the financial records of a business accurately reflect its true financial position while providing a comprehensive overview of the company's financial status and making informed decisions regarding budgeting, financial reporting, and strategic planning.
Well-executed bank reconciliation also enables businesses to achieve better cash flow surveillance by allowing them to track outstanding checks, identify deposits that have not yet cleared, and reconcile any timing differences between bank transactions and internal records. With better cash flow surveillance, businesses can anticipate cash inflows and outflows, ensure sufficient funds for operational needs, and make strategic decisions to optimise cash management.
With a clearer understanding of their available funds and cash position, businesses can assess their investment capacity and identify surplus funds that can be strategically invested to generate returns or explore growth opportunities.
Read more: Poor Cash Flow, Overdue Payments Thwart Your Accounts Receivable Processes?
This enhanced investment capacity helps businesses maximise financial resources and potentially increase profitability. Additionally, bank reconciliation can reveal opportunities for improvement, such as identifying cash flow gaps, optimising payment processes, or negotiating better terms with financial partners. These insights enable businesses to proactively address risks and seize growth opportunities.
Spot potentially fraudulent activities
When bank statements are not regularly reviewed, it creates opportunities for accountability evasion and unauthorised transactions, jeopardising the company's financial well-being. Individuals within the company can manipulate financial records without detection, evading accountability for their actions.
This lack of oversight can lead to financial losses and potential misappropriation of funds, which can severely impact the company's financial stability and reputation.
Furthermore, without regular comparisons between the company's internal records and the officially recorded transactions at the bank, it becomes challenging to identify suspicious or unauthorised activities.
Fraudulent withdrawals, unauthorised transfers, or check tampering may go unnoticed, resulting in significant financial losses and damaging the company's reputation, eroding trust from customers, suppliers, and stakeholders.
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Ensure compliance and transparency
Sufficient reconciliation ensures compliance with governmental and regulatory requirements regarding financial reporting. This is particularly critical in the context of audits and reviews, where the accuracy and integrity of financial records are always put first.
By frequently performing bank reconciliation, businesses can streamline their audit process, avoiding the risk of non-compliance penalties while providing clear audit trails if necessary. This way, they can promote transparency, thereby establishing trust and accountability commitments with stakeholders, who count on your financial reports to assess the company’s overall performance and make investment decisions.
This proactive approach reduces the risk of non-compliance penalties and potential issues during audits. The availability of clear audit trails, supported by comprehensive bank reconciliation, provides evidence of diligent financial management and strengthens the company's credibility with auditors.
Read more: What does Unified Ledger Accounting Mean to Accountants?
Issues with manual bank reconciliation
Despite the relentless advancement of cutting-edge technology, many companies still opt for performing bank reconciliation the traditional way, using paper records or manually managing their finances with spreadsheets.
This heavy reliance can leave organisations buried in a mountain of work while ineffectively spending an excessive amount of time and resources to maintain most of the manual financial processes.
Let's take a closer look at the obstacles that often arise when using the traditional reconciliation process:
- Inefficient process: manual reconciliation can be time-consuming, especially for businesses with large volumes of transactions. As organisations expand, the time and effort required for a fruitful reconciliation also grow.
- Inaccurate and outdated reporting: manual financial data entry is more likely to be prone to human errors, which can negatively impact your business. As your business grows, such catastrophes may increase along with the costs.
- Lack of standardisation: when every department and geographically spread subsidiaries perform account reconciliation on different spreadsheets with no version control or standardisation, there is a high chance of inconsistencies and discrepancies in the data aggregation process for final reporting.
- Visibility deprivation: traditional reconciliation cannot provide real-time updates or alerts. Besides, this lack of visibility can also hamper organisations from analysing current financial trends and patterns, limiting their ability to make informed decisions or identify business opportunities.
As the business landscape becomes increasingly competitive, organisations must embrace technological advancements to stay ahead. As a result, many businesses are recognising the benefits of embracing cloud accounting software to streamline their financial processes and minimise the human errors that are often associated with manual reconciliation.
Read more: Redefining Finance: Four priorities for the modern CFOs
Benefits of cloud accounting software for bank reconciliation
Keep financial data secure
Ensuring the security of data is a top priority for businesses, particularly when it involves sensitive financial information. However, a significant number of small and medium-sized enterprises have yet to establish robust data security policies.
Cloud-based solutions employ robust data encryption techniques to protect sensitive financial information. Data is encrypted both during transit and while at rest on the cloud servers.
Read more: How Financial Data is Protected on Sunsystems Cloud
Encryption ensures that even if unauthorised individuals gain access to the data, they cannot decipher its contents without the encryption keys. This encryption adds an extra layer of security, reducing the risk of data breaches during the bank reconciliation process.
Additionally, cloud providers implement strict and/ or role-based access controls to limit who can access financial data, ensuring only authorised personnel can view or modify financial information.
Cloud financial management software also incorporates regular data backups and disaster recovery mechanisms. Cloud providers typically have redundant infrastructure and backup systems in place to ensure that data remains accessible even in the event of hardware failures or other disruptions. Regular backups protect against data loss, allowing businesses to restore their financial data to a previous state if necessary.
Reputable cloud providers also adhere to stringent industry standards and compliance regulations. They undergo regular security audits and assessments to validate their security practices and ensure compliance.
By partnering with compliant cloud service providers, businesses can have confidence that their financial data is being stored and managed by industry best practices.
Enable real-time access to business accounting information
Cloud accounting software provides real-time access to centralised financial data instead of going over the clutter of past financial reports. Unlike traditional methods that require manual data entry and consolidation, cloud-based systems update financial data automatically, allowing businesses to have an up-to-date and accurate view of their financial position at any given time.
This real-time access to information enables C-level managers to make informed decisions promptly, identify potential issues, and propose solutions promptly.
Furthermore, cloud accounting software offers additional features, such as automated bank feeds to automatically import bank transactions into the system, thereby further reducing the need for manual data entry.
The software can also provide customisable reconciliation rules, allowing businesses to set specific criteria for matching transactions and automating the reconciliation process even further. These features not only save time and effort but also improve the accuracy and reliability of the reconciliation process.
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Reduce manual data entry and administrative tasks
Cloud-based accounting software can simplify the bank reconciliation process considerably, reducing the need for manual downloading of statements as the solution automatically retrieves the necessary data from the bank. This streamlined approach speeds up the process, ensuring the company always has accurate and balanced financial data.
With cloud accounting software, businesses can automate the process of reconciling bank transactions, eliminating time-consuming administrative paperwork, thus saving valuable time and reducing the risk of human error.
The software can automatically match transactions from the bank statement with those in the financial records, flagging any discrepancies for further investigation. This not only improves efficiency but also increases the accuracy of the reconciliation process.
Leverage powerful financial reporting and analysis tools
Today, many cloud accounting solutions come with powerful built-in financial reporting and analysis tools that enable accountants and decision-makers to acquire insights and generate reports upon request.
Users have the flexibility to choose the periods they want to analyse. They can also select the relevant data fields they wish to include in the reports, such as revenue, expenses, cash flow, or profitability indicators. This customisation empowers users to focus on the financial metrics that matter most to their business.
Furthermore, cloud accounting software allows users to apply filters to refine their reports. They can filter data based on various criteria, such as specific accounts, cost centres, departments, or customer segments. This level of granularity enables users to drill down into specific areas of their financial data and gain deeper insights.
The ability to create tailored reports in cloud accounting software saves time and effort. Users can quickly generate reports without the need for manual data extraction and manipulation. The software automatically pulls data from various sources, such as bank transactions, sales records, and expense reports, and consolidates them into comprehensive reports.
This automation streamlines the reporting process, allowing users to focus on analysing the data rather than gathering and organising it.
Regardless of the size of your business, whether you are a small startup or a larger corporation, everyone deserves to benefit from the convenience, effectiveness, accuracy, and security provided by modern financial management systems.
In today's highly volatile economy, even a small improvement in one area of your business can lead to significant results. Embrace the future of cloud technology and harness its power to simplify, streamline, and take complete control of your financial operations.
