Bank Errors...

"I don't need to reconcile my account, I click that download button and it does itself." I hear this from time to time and I just have to shake my head. People always assume that the banks are correct, but this simply is not always the case. I was reminded of this today when I was doing a bank reconciliation for a client. Oh, there's sometimes an error of $0.50 or so, but this one was $11,000.00 - and NOT in the client's favor. Ouch! That's money they earned. If they weren't reconciling their accounts on a regular basis, this very well may never have been caught. Amazing, right?

Not really. It happens every single day. "Back in the day" it was common because of the human factor, humans entered the data and mistakes were made. Nowadays, it's mostly done by optical readers or MICR readers if it's encoded. But the harsh reality is that the technology is not perfect. Mistakes happen.

Bottom line - make sure you are reconciling your accounts and do it monthly, you never know....