Bank reconciliation statements

The cashbook of the firm will show the cash payments and receipts that arise out of transactions. It will also show money being paid into and out of the firm's bank account. On a fairly frequent basis, the firm will actually receive a copy of a bank statement which is produced by the bank in which the firm holds an account with. This will detail the money paid into and out of our bank account. In theory, the bank column of the cashbook and the banks statement from the bank itself should be identical; they are, after all, the same account. However, in reality the two are unlikely to give us the same data, and the banks statement and the cashbook may well give us different figures for the balances.

This may seem worrying initially, how can this be? Surely something must have gone wrong. Well it is possible that a mistake has been made, but there are often sound reasons why the two balances are not the same. Let us consider possible explanations for any differences:

1. Error - by us or by the bank.
2. Items in the cashbook but no on the bank statement.
3. Items on the bank statement but not in the cashbook.

Of course, if the balances do not agree (i.e. are different) then we need to know why. In this case we can construct a bank reconciliation statement to show why they disagree and hopefully prove that no errors have been made. In fact, most examination questions on this topic will often ignore the prospect of errors and will concentrate on other reason why the balances are not the same.

The term reconciliation simply means to bring together. In this case, it involves a process where we actually try to show how the two balances are acceptable, given items in the cashbook and on the bank statement that do not appear in both.