Tips on How to Reconcile a Checkbook

"Hi! This is Summer on behalf of expertvillage.com in the last clip we went through our checkbook register and checked off everything that had cleared based on our bank statement. In this clip we’re actually going to go through our bank statement and make sure there’s nothing on there that isn’t in our register, so kind of instead of looking at our register first we’re going to look at the bank statement first. So you pretty much should of went through your register and check marked everything in your register that showed up also on your bank statement but you also want go through then your bank statement and see if there’s anything that is on your bank statement that wasn’t on your register. Some of the things that may of posted to your bank statement that you didn’t include on your register would be bank fees, if you would had got charged any NSF fees, any maintenance fees, any ATM withdrawal fees, anything of that sort that you might not of put in your register but that showed up on your bank statement you want to make sure that you include those in your register otherwise you’re not going to balance when you actually go to reconcile. So say we did have a fee, you want to make sure you write in the service charge say it was $1 and make sure you subtract that from your balance over here so that we make sure we’re using the right balance when we actually go to reconcile the account. Now at this point you want to make sure also that everything on your bank statement is correct, if you got charged a fee that you don’t believe you should have gotten charged that’s where you actually want to go into your bank or financial institution and discuss with them where that charge came from and possibly disputing that charge or that debit that posted to your account."