Bank Reconciliation Corrections in Auditor
Bank Rec Ending Date
In the back end, go to Tables / BankRecs. The Date column is the date the reconciliation was completed in Jewel. A Date of 1/1/1990 is assigned to Beginning Balances. A Date of 12/1/1994 is assigned to bank recs that have been "undone".
Correct the EndingDate column of the bank rec(s) that are incorrect. Ensure that the last bank reconciliation has the latest ending date, or you will end up with beginning balance problems (below). Also, don't use the same ending date for multiple bank reconciliations (in the same account), as only one bank rec report per date is visible in Jewel.
If the dates have been off for multiple months, first look for blank bank reconciliations, where the beginning and ending balances match. Double-check in the front end that nothing was cleared, because someone could have saved a reconciliation that consisted just of clearing out old transactions. Then if the bank rec is truly blank, it can simply be deleted.
Next, compare the Date column to the EndingDate column to ensure that everything makes sense. There shouldn't be any Ending Dates that are after the Date of reconciliation, such as the 4/30/26 reconciliation completed on 4/7/26. And there shouldn't be any duplicate Ending Dates. If you find an error or duplicate, simply type in the correct Ending Date. Duplicate dates can be separated by changing the date by one day, so you have 4/29/26 and 4/30/26 instead of two 4/30/26's. This also resolves a known issue with the Bank Rec report, where only one reconciliation per date can be viewed.
Bank Rec Beginning Balance
Jewel uses the ending balance for the previous bank reconciliation as the beginning balance for the next bank rec. "Previous" is defined as the first-completed bank rec on the latest possible date. This can cause problems when treasurers accidentally save reconciliations with future ending dates and then try to correct the problem themselves, or if they save multiple reconciliations with the same ending date.
If a beginning balance is incorrect, compare the Date column to the EndingDate column to ensure that everything makes sense. There shouldn't be any Ending Dates that are after the Date of reconciliation, such as the 4/30/26 reconciliation completed on 4/7/26. And there shouldn't be any duplicate Ending Dates. If you find an error or duplicate, simply type in the correct Ending Date. Duplicates can be separated by changing the date by one day, so you have 4/29/26 and 4/30/26 instead of two 4/30/26's. This also resolves a known issue with the Bank Rec report, where only one reconciliation per date can be viewed.
Remember that you can sort by clicking on column headings. This can be very helpful in finding mistyped dates that are in the distant past or in the future.
Cleaning Up the Bank Rec in Auditor
Clearing old transactions out of the bank reconciliation is essential to generating correct reports. Generally, deposits, transfers, and electronic payments over a month old should be investigated and dealt with, as should checks over about six months old. Start by reading Cleaning Up the Bank Rec in the Jewel Handbook.
Stale Date Checks and Electronic Payments
By the time tech support gets involved, outstanding checks are often several years old, so can simply be voided (or manually reversed) and cleared, without any real need for investigation. The exception is remittance checks.
If the treasurer is frequently entering duplicate checks or electronic payments, they may need help finding a better system.
Offering Deposit
Stale-dated offering deposits are often duplicate entries. Usually, one entry is near the end of the month, and the other is near the beginning of the next month. To look for duplicates, go to Reports & Graphs / Deposit, and choose a large date range around the date of the outstanding deposit. Another option is to go into the back end, to Tables / JournalItems, and sort by amount or search for the amount. Note the JournalIDs of the duplicate entries (not the JournalItemID, but the JournalID), then go to View Journal and find the specific transactions. The JournalID is shown in the left-hand column when you hover over it with the mouse.
If you confirm that the deposit is a duplicate, then it can be deleted, reversed one envelope at a time, or reversed with a General Journal Entry. Which option you choose will depend mostly on how long ago the duplicate happened. Deleting is by far the easiest option, and is appropriate when the duplicate happened recently. If the deposit is old enough that donor receipts have already been issued and examined by the donors, then reversing with a General Journal may be appropriate, since it's a lot easier. But if the deposit is in that magical "too old to delete, but new enough that people want a correct receipt" range, then it must be reversed with a negative offering deposit, envelope by envelope. As always, use your best judgement, and encourage treasurers to reconcile monthly so that these mistakes are caught promptly, when they're easier to deal with.
If the offering deposit is not a duplicate, it still needs to be reversed as above. But now you have to worry about why there's a deposit that never made it to the bank. Jewel tech support may report questionable activity to the conference office, but is not under obligation to do so.
Transfers and General Journal Entries
The basic idea for these transactions is to manually enter a reversing transaction. Always write a good memo so the auditor can follow what happened.
Outstanding transfers between bank accounts should be thoroughly investigated, as treasurers often enter these incorrectly. The usual incorrect method is to write a check out of one account (from a local fund), and then deposit the money into the other account (into a local fund). Sometimes the local funds aren't the same on both ends. And sometimes only the check or only the deposit gets entered. The deposit might be included in an offering deposit. So verify that a) the funds didn't get unintentionally moved from one local fund to another, and b) both bank accounts show the correct balance. Use Transfer Funds and/or Make General Journal Entry to get everything where it belongs. And as always, write good memos, referencing original dates and transaction numbers, to preserve an audit trail. Encourage treasurers to use Transfer Funds or Transferring by Writing a Check in the future. They often also need help understanding why transferring funds from Savings doesn't increase local funds.
Marking Transactions Cleared/Uncleared
To clear a transaction on a specific bank reconciliation, go to Auditor / View Journal and select the transaction. Note its JournalID by hovering over the left-hand column. Note any numbers in the (non-editable) BankRecID column in the bottom left section, as this tells which bank reconciliation the transaction is currently cleared on.
If necessary, verify the correct AccountID in Tables / Accounts. Then go to Tables / BankRecs and find the BankRecID of the correct bank rec, using the Ending Date and AccountID.
Finally, go to Tables / JournalItems, find the affected transaction by its JournalID, make sure you're on the line with the correct AccountID, and type the number of the correct bank rec under ClearedBankRecID. Or if a transaction should not be cleared at all, delete the bank rec ID.
IMPORTANT: When you have finished, double-check that the affected bank reconciliation(s) still balance. At the bottom of the bank rec report, manually calculate the Beginning Balance plus the Cleared Deposits minus the Cleared Checks, and verify that you get the Cleared Ending Balance. Auditor does not recalculate the Cleared Ending Balance when edits are made, so it will not catch a mistake if you clear the wrong transactions.
Deleting a Bank Rec
Go to Tables / BankRecs, select the bank rec you wish to delete, and press Delete on your keyboard. However, deleting a bank reconciliation does not "unreconcile" transactions. It merely removes the bank rec report from the list of reports viewable in Jewel, which makes it nearly impossible to figure out which transactions were cleared on that bank rec. So don't delete bank recs unless they're blank, with no transactions marked cleared! Generally, unwanted bank recs should be "undone" in the front end, not deleted.