Hi,

Issue:
This year 2014, none of our cheques are auto matching in Bank Rec, creating additional work to manually match them. Last year 2013 I had no issues with auto matching cheques in Bank Rec.

Some relevant details:
Desautels Daniel from BDO upgraded our Bank Rec version to 8.1E this January 2014 and mentioned that additional features were added to the Bank rec matching rules.
I had a look at the new rules descriptions and tested every day all combinations of matching and the same problem still persists. Even with only "Auto match on reference/amount" selection on and the other two options off, the cheques are still not auto matching. Please find the attached screenshot of my Jan 23, 2014 reconciliation where you can see that chq#21796 (left side) did not auto matched to the same chq#21796 (right side, 2nd cheque from top).

Note that it has been no change in the imported file formats last year and compared with this year.

No issues with auto matching deposits.

Questions list:
What created these matching issues? Did the upgrade and the new features affected this problem? Can you suggest what else I could try to get back our efficient auto matching of cheques?

Many thanks for your assistance.
Florina Nisioiu

Work: 807-474-1613
Email: fnisioiu@bearskinairlines.com

It looks like your bank has decided it would be a good idea to put "CHQ#" in the cheque number field along with the cheque number.

BankRec does not think that "CHQ#21796" is the same as "21796" (and neither would Excel). Can you load the statement into Excel and strip off the unnecessary text before importing it?

Andrew: thank you for your suggestion, I will try that.

Weird is that the same format CHQ# was used last year before our Bank Rec upgrade and the auto matching was working.

I will be back if I will still have issues after testing the references without CHQ#.

Florina

Hi Florina,

The upgrade to Adagio BankRec 8.1E had a number of changes to how auto-matching imported bank transactions can work, to give you more control. These options can be found when editing the bank record in BankRec.

For example, there is a new option to 'Require reference match on payments', that was not in the previous version of BankRec. If you have enabled this option on the bank, then the check number reference must be exactly the same in order to be auto-matched. The previous version would do the auto-match, provided that there weren't any outstanding checks for the same amount. You can get this auto-matching back in the current version by disabling the 'Require reference match on payments' option on the bank, though you have to consider if this is what you really want.

You can see the effects of the new features by watching the short New Release video for BankRec, either from this link or from the BankRec product web page.

Thank you for your suggestions.

In my case, ongoing I will have to remove any additional characters other than the actual cheque number in order to have the auto match work. I did that this morning and for the first time this year, our cheques auto matched

I understand that version 8.1E has changed the auto-matching options in bank rec.
I explored all options already, and came to the conclusion that I need to format my upload file to a perfect cheque numer match to make the "auto match on reference/amount" work.

Have a great week everyone.

Florina

We are investigating ways that would make that step unnecessary for the next Upgrade to BankRec. Unfortunately, in this case we are at the mercy of the programmers at the banks, who keep changing their minds about what the download file will contain.

For some reason, they aren't asking us for advice!

Great, much appreciated Andrew.

Hi,
We have had issues with the CSV file from TD as well. Stripping off the literal text from the cheque # will work but even easier is to change to OFX format. The file isn't easy to read but import works almost every time.

You should consider (with Dan) to revise the import file layout from CSV to OFX (simply or quickbooks format), and then your TD import will fly into BankRec without adjusting the import file.

Best,
Brian

Brian:

Though OFX is supposed to be a standard it appears to be a standard open to interpretation (differently by each bank and software developer). Unfortunately OFX should work 100% of the time (as expected of a standard) but as often as not we have switched clients from OFX to CSV to get away from problems importing OFX files.

Agree. We have had some issues with BMO with OFX that can periodically change, but our experience with TD (her bank) works well with OFX.
Brian