How do I undo or reverse a completed bank reconciliation in my accounting software?

Do you actually need to undo the whole reconciliation?

Start by naming what is wrong, because only one of three common situations calls for a full undo:

• The whole reconciliation was done against the wrong statement or the wrong period. The stored record, its ending balance and every mark it made are wrong together. This is the case the undo exists for.
• One or a few transactions were marked in error. A full undo throws away every correct mark along with the wrong ones. Un-marking the individual items is the smaller, sufficient fix, covered below.
• A transaction inside the reconciled set has the wrong amount, date or account. The error has to be corrected in the transaction itself. Whether to correct it in the original period or in the current one is a separate decision, covered in "A month I already reconciled turns out to be wrong — do I reopen it or fix it in the current period?".

One more test before you act: if the reason you want to undo is a difference you cannot explain, find the cause first. An undo leaves the cause in place, so the same difference comes back the moment you reconcile the period again. Tracing that difference belongs to "Why doesn't my bank reconciliation balance or match the general ledger, and how do I find and fix the difference?".

Never delete and re-enter transactions to clear a reconciliation. That changes the books in order to fix a control record, which is the opposite of what you want, and it leaves the account misstated.

What does undoing a reconciliation change, and what does it leave alone?

The undo acts on the reconciliation itself: the stored record and its report, the reconciled marks on the transactions it covered, and the balance the next reconciliation starts from.

In QuickBooks Online, Intuit is direct about the stakes: undoing a reconciliation is irreversible, and it permanently deletes the reconciliation's reports and attachments. Removing even a single cleared transaction from a past reconciliation changes the beginning balance for your next reconciliation.

In QuickBooks Desktop, when you undo a reconciliation the account's beginning balance goes back to the beginning balance that reconciliation itself started from — the ending balance of the reconciliation before it — and every transaction that was cleared on the undone reconciliation becomes uncleared. The undo also resets the account's last reconciled date and removes the Previous Reconciliation report for that date.

What the undo does not do is correct the books. Intuit describes removing a transaction from a reconciliation as changing the transaction status in your register, and describes the full undo by what it deletes: the reconciliation and its reports and attachments. The pages cited here do not state the ledger-balance consequence, so treat the operation as acting on status marks and the reconciliation record only: a transaction that was wrong before the undo is still wrong after it, and putting it right is a separate edit to that transaction.

How far back does the undo reach on your platform?

The two QuickBooks products work in opposite directions, and the difference decides how much you will have to redo.

QuickBooks Online undoes a chain. The QuickBooks Online Accountant documentation states the result as the chosen reconciliation and every reconciliation since it being undone; the Primary Admin route presents a warning message before you confirm. So if you pick January and you have reconciled through June, expect January to June to go, together with their reports and attachments. The undo does not reverse transactions that were marked reconciled by hand in the register.

QuickBooks Desktop undoes one at a time, newest first. The command undoes the last reconciliation only. To reach an older one, you repeat it, working back one reconciliation per pass. Intuit notes that if a transaction from years ago was edited or deleted, you may need to undo reconciliations for the past few years to get back to a correct opening balance.

Un-marking one transaction is the finest granularity. It leaves the reconciliation record and its report in place, but the reconciliation's figures no longer agree with the marks, and the next reconciliation's beginning balance moves.

On either product, the true scope of the job is the target reconciliation plus everything after it on that account. That is the list you record next.

What should you record before you start?

Before you undo anything, write down the starting state. The undo is irreversible in QuickBooks Online, and in QuickBooks Desktop the report for each undone period disappears, so this record is the only reference you will have for re-performing each period and showing afterwards that the chain was restored.

For each reconciliation from the target forward, record the statement ending date, the statement ending balance, the beginning balance the software showed, and the number of items cleared. Save or print each reconciliation report, and download any attachments.

A worked checklist for an owner who reconciled March against the April statement by mistake, and has since reconciled through June:

The figures are invented; the structure is the point. In QuickBooks Online, undoing March removes all four reconciliations in one step. In QuickBooks Desktop, you undo June, May, April and then March, four passes, newest first. Either way, you will be reconciling four statements again.

When several reconciliations have been completed since the one you want, count them before you commit. Each one you add to the chain is a statement you must reconcile again, and each report you did not save is gone.

Who can run the undo, and what must be in place first?

QuickBooks Online. Undoing a full reconciliation requires signing in as the Primary Admin user, or having your accountant do it. An accountant working from QuickBooks Online Accountant needs Accountant access to your company, and Intuit asks them to download the reconciliation's attachments and reports first, because the undo deletes them.

QuickBooks Desktop. Before the undo runs, the software shows a message recommending a backup of the company file. Make that backup. It is the only way back if the undo goes further than you meant.

If the file is shared with an accountant or bookkeeper, talk to them before you act. They may be partway through their own review of the same periods, or may already hold reconciliation reports they relied on for a closing entry or a return. Agree who performs the undo, which periods it covers, and who reconciles again. In QuickBooks Online, the accountant can run the undo from their own access, which keeps the operation with the person who will re-perform it. In QuickBooks Desktop, whether an Accountant's Copy that is out with your accountant restricts the undo is not covered by the pages cited here; ask them before you proceed.

The pages cited here do not say whether a closing date or lock on the period, or other users signed in to the company file, blocks the undo in either product. Check both before you start: open the period's lock or closing-date setting, and confirm you are the only user in the file if your product requires single-user mode for this work.

How do you run the undo in QuickBooks Online?

1. Save the reports and attachments for the target reconciliation and every reconciliation after it.
2. Sign in as the Primary Admin user.
3. Open the reconciliation history for the account, History by account, and find the reconciliation you want to undo. If the one you want is not listed, change the report period.
4. In the Action column, select the dropdown and choose Undo. Read the warning message — it is the software's statement of what will be removed. If you want to continue, select the checkbox, then Undo reconciliation, then Done.

The documented result is the chosen reconciliation and every reconciliation since it being undone. Check the account's history against your checklist: each period on your list should no longer show as reconciled, and if one you did not expect has also gone, that is the chain, not an error. It cannot be reversed, which is why the reports come first.

How do you run the undo in QuickBooks Desktop?

1. From the Banking menu, select Reconcile.
2. In the Begin Reconciliation window, select the account, then select Undo Last Reconciliation.
3. QuickBooks displays a message recommending a backup of the company file. If you have already made one, select Continue.
4. When the message Undo Previous Reconciliation has completed appears, select Ok.
5. Back in the Begin Reconciliation window, confirm that the last reconciled on date has gone back to the previous date.

That date is your confirmation of what was undone. If it now shows the statement date before the one you meant to remove, the pass worked. If you are working back through several periods, repeat the steps and tick each period off your checklist as its date rolls back, until the date shown is the one before your target.

What should you check straight after the undo?

Five things, before you reconcile anything again.

The opening position. The beginning balance the software now offers should be the one the undone reconciliation itself started from: the ending balance of the last reconciliation still standing, immediately before your target. In the checklist example, that is February's ending balance. If it is not, stop. Something beyond the undone reconciliations has changed.

Transactions still marked R. The QuickBooks Online undo does not clear transactions that were marked reconciled by hand. Open the account register, filter the account by Reconcile status, and look for any transaction still marked R inside the periods you are about to reconcile again. Change each one back to uncleared using the register route below.

Transactions changed while they were marked. Intuit warns that transactions still in the register for the undone dates may have been changed by hand, and points you to the audit history to verify. In QuickBooks Online, go to Settings, then Audit log, filter to the account and the period since your last completed reconciliation, and review it for deleted or voided transactions. In QuickBooks Desktop there is no audit-log route in the pages cited here; select Locate Discrepancies in the Begin Reconciliation window, which gives you reports for finding discrepancies and other reconciliation issues.

Entries the reconciliation itself created. In QuickBooks Desktop, service charges and interest are entered in the reconciliation window, and a forced reconciliation leaves a balance adjustment; the undo only unclears them. Intuit's Desktop instructions are to delete all statement service charges, interest adjustments, and balance adjustments for each statement period from the register or journal before you reconcile again. Do that, or a service charge or interest you enter again in the window is counted twice, and an old balance adjustment stays in the register. For QuickBooks Online, the pages cited here do not say what the undo does to such entries, so after an undo there, check the register for any in the undone periods.

Reports that now describe a state that no longer exists. The reports you saved describe reconciliations that have been removed. Label them as superseded so nobody treats them as current, and keep them as the record of what was there. Retrieving a prior report is covered in "How do I find, view, or print a previous bank reconciliation report in my accounting software?".

How do you re-perform the reconciliation and know the chain is whole again?

Reconcile each undone period again in date order, oldest first, against the correct statement. The mechanics of the tie-out itself are covered in "What is a bank reconciliation, who prepares it, and how do I tie the books to the bank (with a worked example)?".

The end condition is a chain that links: each reconciliation's beginning balance must equal the ending balance of the one before it. QuickBooks Online checks this for you at the start of each reconciliation and will not let you continue until the difference is accounted for.

Then compare the new reconciliations with your checklist. For every period you did not intend to change, the new ending balance should equal the statement ending balance you recorded. For the period you undid because of the wrong statement, the ending balance should now match the correct statement. When the last re-performed period's ending balance equals the current statement, the account is back in a fully reconciled state, and it is done. Stopping because the screen looks right is not enough.

Is there a smaller fix than a full undo?

Often, yes, and it should be your first choice when only a few items are wrong.

Un-mark individual transactions (QuickBooks Online). Open the account register, find the transaction marked R, select it, and select the box with the R repeatedly: the status cycles from R (Reconciled) to C (Cleared) to Blank (Uncleared). Save, then reconcile the account again. Verify that the transaction is truly the cause of the discrepancy before removing it. The Desktop documentation cited here does not describe un-marking a single reconciled transaction; the documented route there is Undo Last Reconciliation.

Reconciling again rather than marking by hand. Where a single transaction needs to be marked reconciled again rather than removed, a short re-reconciliation to the same ending date and ending balance as your last reconciliation records the change on a reconciliation report rather than only in the register; that procedure is its own question.

Correct the item, not the reconciliation. When the problem is a transaction's content rather than its mark, correct the transaction and leave the reconciliation alone. The choice of period belongs to the reopen-or-fix-forward decision named at the start.

What if your software has no undo at all?

The routes left, from least to most destructive:

Un-mark transactions individually. If your software lets you clear reconciled status transaction by transaction, you can unwind a reconciliation by hand. It costs time, not data. If the old reconciliation report is still on file afterwards, it no longer matches the marks, so label it superseded.

Restore a backup made before the reconciliation. This reverses everything, and that is the cost. A restored backup is the file as it stood when the backup was made, so every transaction, payment and reconciliation entered after that point is lost and must be entered again. That is usually a far bigger loss than the reconciliation you set out to fix. If you restore a QuickBooks Desktop backup into the same folder as your existing company file, you may overwrite your data; rename the existing file or the backup first so the names are unique and both survive.

Vendor-assisted correction. Ask your software vendor's support whether they can reverse the reconciliation for you, what they will change, and what they will charge, before you authorise anything.

Before any route that discards work, compare what you would lose with what you would fix. If the answer is weeks of entries to remove one wrong reconciliation, un-marking by hand is the better trade even when it is slow.

What record is left of the undo?

The documentation cited here says what the undo deletes; it does not say whether the QuickBooks Online audit log or the QuickBooks Desktop Audit Trail records the undo itself, or who can see that it was performed. In QuickBooks Online the undone reconciliations' reports and attachments are permanently deleted. In QuickBooks Desktop the Previous Reconciliation report for each undone date is removed.

So make your own record: keep the checklist with the saved reports, note who performed the undo, on what date, and why, and file it with the re-performed reconciliation reports. An accountant or reviewer who later finds a reconciliation dated after the transactions it covers will want exactly that explanation.