How to Manage Multiple Bank Accounts

Multiple bank accounts are often held by individuals due to banks having competitive interest rates, account balance minimums and other account features. Effectively managing your multiple bank accounts is easy if you have the right tools. If you have had your bank accounts for a long time, you can apply the steps below as of a starting date rather than when the account was first opened. Simply pick your starting point as the time the bank account was last reconciled, which is usually the end of the prior month.

Choose one of your bank accounts. Create a new file for the account. Identify the account by its account number. Using the last statement received to record the opening balance.

Record all transactions for the bank statement period including deposits, checks written, bank fees and interest earned. Each transaction should, at a minimum, include a date, payee and the amount.

Add as much detail to each transaction as desired. For deposits, include the source of the deposit. For checks, include the type of payment, such as a credit card, mortgage or doctor visit in addition to any applicable memos. For bank fees, include the reason the fee was incurred in the memo section. For interest earned, include the period the interest applies to.

Create new files for your other bank accounts. Identify the accounts with their specific account numbers. Record all transactions as you did for the previous account.

Download transactions, if possible, from your bank accounts. Banks offering online banking will generally allow you to download transactions into your software. This is useful if you want to capture many transactions and do not want to enter each transaction for each account individually. Alternatively, you can set up each bank account by manually entering the information and then downloading the transactions each month.

Create reports that analyze spending and savings at regular time intervals. One benefit to money management software is that reports are created easily and can be customized. If you customize a report, you can save the parameters to use again at a later date. Reports will assist you in managing the activity in all or some of your accounts.