What is a mini reconciliation in my accounting software and how do I perform one?

What does "mini reconciliation" actually mean?

The term is software vocabulary, not a separate accounting control. Intuit's QuickBooks Desktop help describes it as a special reconciliation, "also sometimes called a" mini reconciliation, used to fix transactions that were reconciled before and now show as unreconciled. It uses the ordinary Reconcile window. What makes it "mini" is its scope: a date between two regular reconciliations, a target balance that has already been proven, and only the handful of transactions you are repairing.

Intuit states the purpose directly: it puts previously unreconciled transactions back without affecting the regular reconciliation cycle they belong to. So it is a bounded variant of the normal reconciliation. It fixes the reconciled status of a few items. It does not tie a whole statement period out to the bank.

The name and the procedure come from the documentation for one product family. The same Intuit article covers QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, Premier Plus and Mac Plus. Other systems may have no feature by this name, or may reach the same result another way (see the last section).

When is a mini reconciliation the right tool, and when is a regular reconciliation?

Intuit lists the situations that leave already-reconciled transactions showing as unreconciled, including:

• Someone undid the last reconciliation.
• Someone changed or deleted reconciled transactions.
• Cleared transactions were unchecked in the account register.
• Company file conversions, which Intuit says can cause issues going from QuickBooks Desktop for Mac to Windows, or from QuickBooks Online to Desktop.
• Transactions that were never reconciled in the company file.

Use a mini reconciliation when all of these are true:

1. The account has a successful reconciliation you trust, and you know its ending balance.
2. You can name the specific transactions whose reconciled status was lost, such as a deleted check you re-entered.
3. Those transactions belong to periods that were already reconciled, not to the month you are working on now.

Use your regular periodic reconciliation when you are matching a new bank or card statement. The mini reconciliation does not replace it. If you are on a monthly cycle, the month is still reconciled against its statement as usual.

Handle these cases another way:

• You cannot yet identify which items changed. Find them first. The Reconciliation Discrepancy report lists transactions that changed since your last reconciliation. That report and the Previous Reconciliation report are documented on a page whose editions are QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus, Pro Plus, Accountant Desktop Plus and the Enterprise editions, so on Mac Plus check your own edition's report list.
• The account was never set up with the right balance. Intuit lists an account not set up "with the right balance" as a separate cause of a wrong beginning balance. That is an opening-position problem for a first reconciliation, not something a mini reconciliation repairs.
• The old reconciliations themselves are wrong. A mini reconciliation assumes your last reconciliation is correct. If it is not, that reconciliation has to be undone or reworked, which is a separate procedure.

What do I need before I start?

Have three things ready:

• The account. Choose the bank or credit card account whose reconciled items went missing.
• The span, or statement date. Choose a date between your last reconciliation and your next scheduled one. Intuit's instruction says this date "can be any date between your last reconciliation and the next scheduled one." It must not be a regular statement date.
• The balance figure. Use the ending balance of your last successful reconciliation. Intuit says the method assumes "you know the ending balance from the most recent reconciliation" and tells you to get that figure before you start. Take it from that reconciliation's report or the statement you reconciled it to. Do not take it from the current register or from your newest bank statement.

Print or save as PDF the report of your last successful reconciliation first. In QuickBooks Pro you can only access the last reconciliation report, and Intuit's advice for keeping the others is to save a PDF copy on your hard drive.

The balance figure is where the procedure most often goes wrong. The Ending Balance field looks like the one you fill in every month. In a mini reconciliation, though, it holds the balance you already proved last time, not the ending balance of the statement you have open. If you enter the new statement's balance, the difference can only reach zero by ticking that period's activity. You would then have reconciled a real period against the wrong date, while the result looks successful.

Also list the transactions you intend to tick, with their amounts, before you open the window. That list is what you will check the result against.

How do I perform a mini reconciliation in QuickBooks Desktop?

For a checking or other bank account, Intuit's steps are:

1. Go to the Banking menu and select Reconcile.
2. Select the bank account with the transactions you need to reconcile.
3. In the Date of Statement field, enter your off-cycle date. QuickBooks will remind you that you are doing a mini reconciliation. That prompt confirms you chose an off-cycle date.
4. In the Ending Balance field, enter the balance of your last successful reconciliation, then select Continue.
5. In the Reconcile window, check off only the transactions you are fixing and re-reconciling.
6. Make sure the Difference field shows 0.00.
7. Select Reconcile Now.

A zero Difference together with a successful Reconcile Now is how you know it completed. If the difference will not reach zero with only your listed items ticked, stop. Either the list is incomplete or the balance figure is wrong, and ticking extra items to force zero would hide the problem.

For a credit card account, the same seven steps apply, then these:

• After Reconcile Now, QuickBooks asks whether you want to Create a Payment Check or Create a Bill to Pay Later. Select Create a Bill to Pay later.
• If you need to, print your Reconciliation Report for your records.
• After you print the report, a bill appears on the screen, for the balance you just reconciled.
• Select Clear, which removes all the information from the bill.
• Close the bill.

Clearing the bill matters. The mini reconciliation is not a new card statement, so you do not want a new bill for a balance you already dealt with.

What does it leave in the reconciliation history?

The transactions you ticked are now marked as reconciled. Intuit describes the method as putting previously unreconciled transactions back without affecting the cycle they follow, and the checks below are how you confirm nothing else changed.

Because you entered the last successful ending balance, the account's reconciled position returns to that proven figure. The next regular reconciliation should then open at the right starting point. Intuit's Desktop help lists previously cleared and reconciled transactions being voided, deleted or modified as a cause of a zero or incorrect Beginning Balance, so restoring their reconciled status is what puts that starting figure right.

What does it look like before and after?

Say a checking account was last reconciled to a statement dated March 31 with an ending balance of 12,400.00. In April, someone deleted check 1042 for 350.00, which had cleared in March and was reconciled. They then re-entered it. The re-entered copy is not reconciled.

Inside the mini reconciliation, the ending balance entered is 12,400.00. The beginning balance is 12,750.00. Ticking the re-entered check (a 350.00 payment) brings the cleared balance to 12,400.00, so the difference is 0.00. Nothing dated in April is ticked, and the April statement is still reconciled in full on its normal date.

How do I confirm that only what I intended changed?

Check four things once it is done:

1. The mini reconciliation's own report. Open the Previous Reconciliation report, where you select the account and a statement ending date. Intuit's steps do not say whether a mini reconciliation is listed there or under which date, so check your own company file for the date you entered for this run and, if it is listed, display the report for that date. It should list only the transactions on your prepared list, at their amounts. An extra item means you ticked something you did not intend to.
2. The Reconciliation Discrepancy report. Run it again. A change it still shows is one the mini reconciliation did not cover.
3. The next beginning balance. When you start the next regular reconciliation, its beginning balance should equal the last successful ending balance you used (12,400.00 in the example).
4. The current period. Confirm that no transaction from the period you have not reconciled yet was marked reconciled.

Intuit also suggests comparing the Previous Reconciliation report to your past statements from your financial institution. That is the test that the older reconciliations you relied on are sound.

What will a mini reconciliation not fix?

Beyond the three cases routed above, it also will not fix:

• Data damage. Intuit's Desktop help lists possible data damage as a cause of a zero or incorrect beginning balance, and the special reconciliation article does not name it among the issues the method addresses.
• A difference you simply want to go away. In a regular reconciliation, QuickBooks Desktop's Enter Adjustment option posts a journal entry to a special expense account called Reconciliation Discrepancies. That books an amount and explains nothing, so treat it as a last resort after the items are found, not as a substitute for a mini reconciliation.
• An account that has not been reconciled for months. Catching up a backlog means reconciling each missed statement period in turn.

What if my software has no mini reconciliation?

Look in your system's reconciliation help for either of these: a reconciliation run to a date other than a regular statement date, or one run to the same ending date and balance as the last reconciliation, in both cases marking only specific transactions. Wherever either appears, you have the same operation under another name.

QuickBooks Online is an example. Its beginning-balance help does not use the term. Instead, when a fix calls for reconciling an individual transaction, you can mark it R (reconciled) in the account register. Or you can reconcile the account again "using the same ending date and ending balance as your last reconciliation." Both correct the beginning balance, but only reconciling again records the change on a reconciliation report, so take that route if you need the evidence trail a reconciliation leaves. Its Reconcile Discrepancy Report lists what changed, how that affected your balance, and what you can do to fix each item. Fix only a change that was made in error, because some changes are intentional and the suggested fix assumes an error. If a correction affects a reconciled period or your opening balance and you are not certain, check with your accountant. Start there rather than hunting for a menu item called mini reconciliation.

If your system's documentation shows none of these, use its documented beginning-balance or discrepancy tools to identify and restore the changed items. Then reconcile the next statement normally. Do not assume that another product's steps apply to yours.