How bank reconciliation works in Buildium and what to check when it's off
How bank reconciliation works in Buildium and what to check when it's off
Buildium's bank reconciliation works differently from AppFolio in a few important ways. Understanding the distinction matters if you've worked in one platform and are now managing books in the other.
In Buildium, all manual payments need to be grouped into batch deposits before they're available for reconciliation. This is similar to AppFolio's deposit requirement, but Buildium is more explicit about the batching step. If receipts are sitting outside a batch, they won't appear in the reconciliation workflow and your ending balance will be off before you start.
The reconciliation itself is accessed through Accounting in the main navigation. You select the bank account, enter the ending balance from your bank statement, and match transactions. Buildium shows outstanding checks and deposits separately so you can see exactly what hasn't cleared.
When the reconciliation doesn't balance, the most common causes in Buildium are these.
A payment was recorded in Buildium but not yet cleared at the bank, or the reverse. Outstanding items from prior periods that were never cleared can accumulate and make current reconciliations increasingly difficult to close. Run a report of uncleared items going back several months and confirm each one against your bank statements.
A transaction was posted to the wrong bank account. Buildium has separate accounts for operating and escrow funds. A security deposit receipt that landed in the operating account instead of the escrow account won't cause a total imbalance but will cause the individual account reconciliations to be off. The Security Deposit Liability report is the tool to catch this. It shows what Buildium thinks is in escrow against what should be there.
Manual journal entries that affect cash accounts are another source of trouble. Like AppFolio, Buildium doesn't auto-match journal entries in the reconciliation. They have to be cleared manually. If JEs that touched the bank account aren't being cleared, they'll accumulate as phantom items in the outstanding transactions list.
Reconcile every account monthly. Buildium flags accounts with reconciliation lapses but doesn't prevent you from running the books with an unreconciled account, so the flag is easy to ignore until it becomes a significant problem.
How bank reconciliation works in Buildium and what to check when it's off
Buildium's bank reconciliation works differently from AppFolio in a few important ways. Understanding the distinction matters if you've worked in one platform and are now managing books in the other.
In Buildium, all manual payments need to be grouped into batch deposits before they're available for reconciliation. This is similar to AppFolio's deposit requirement, but Buildium is more explicit about the batching step. If receipts are sitting outside a batch, they won't appear in the reconciliation workflow and your ending balance will be off before you start.
The reconciliation itself is accessed through Accounting in the main navigation. You select the bank account, enter the ending balance from your bank statement, and match transactions. Buildium shows outstanding checks and deposits separately so you can see exactly what hasn't cleared.
When the reconciliation doesn't balance, the most common causes in Buildium are these.
A payment was recorded in Buildium but not yet cleared at the bank, or the reverse. Outstanding items from prior periods that were never cleared can accumulate and make current reconciliations increasingly difficult to close. Run a report of uncleared items going back several months and confirm each one against your bank statements.
A transaction was posted to the wrong bank account. Buildium has separate accounts for operating and escrow funds. A security deposit receipt that landed in the operating account instead of the escrow account won't cause a total imbalance but will cause the individual account reconciliations to be off. The Security Deposit Liability report is the tool to catch this. It shows what Buildium thinks is in escrow against what should be there.
Manual journal entries that affect cash accounts are another source of trouble. Like AppFolio, Buildium doesn't auto-match journal entries in the reconciliation. They have to be cleared manually. If JEs that touched the bank account aren't being cleared, they'll accumulate as phantom items in the outstanding transactions list.
Reconcile every account monthly. Buildium flags accounts with reconciliation lapses but doesn't prevent you from running the books with an unreconciled account, so the flag is easy to ignore until it becomes a significant problem.
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