True bank reconciliation has arrived here at PracticePanther. Firms can now easily manage and reconcile every payment made on an account by account basis.
Watch the video tutorial or follow the steps below to reconcile your trust and operating accounts:
1) On the top of your screen, click "More", then click "Bank Accounts", or click here.
2) Click on any account you wish to reconcile.
3) This is your reconciliation page. Here you will see quick summaries about how much money has been reconciled in each account.
You can also click on "Trust Reconciliation Report" any time you want to see exactly where your trust account stands so far.
4) Scroll down to see the complete list of payments toward this account. You can go item by item and reconcile these payments with your bank account. As items get reconciled they will move from the "Not Reconciled" tab to the "Reconciled" tab.
Note: Reconciling a payment will "lock" this payment in the system, preventing it from being edited or deleted in the future. If you wish to edit or delete the payment after it's reconciled, be sure to find it in the "Reconciled" tab, then click "Not Reconciled" to unlock the payment for edit or deletion.
5) This is your Trust Account Reconciliation Page. You can choose between which trust account you'd like this report for.
Book balance is the account's balance in PracticePanther.
Uncleared deposits are payments in this account that have not been reconciled yet.
Uncleared withdrawals are withdrawals from this account that haven't been reconciled yet.
The bank balance is the difference between the book balance and these un-reconciled amounts.
You can scroll down to see a full list of all payments processed with this account with a full breakdown payment by payment.
6) To see a report of your Bank Account Ledger, simply click "More" on the top, then "Reports", or click here. Then click on either report depending on if you want to see your bank ledger by contact or matter as seen below.
7) This report will show you how much you've been paid in total and how much of that money is still sitting as retainer/credit as an "Unapplied Amount" in your contacts or matters.
8) To see how much money you should currently have in your Trust account, select "Trust Account" in the "Payments In" filter found on the top left.
9) Above the list of payments, click "Choose Columns" found on the top right and make sure "Unapplied Amount" is enabled.
10) Scroll to the bottom of this report to see the total listed under the "Unapplied Amount" column. This total should be what you have in your trust account today.
Pro Tip: To see what should have been in your trust account/escrow for a given month, make the date range on this report. This date range should start on any day before you started using PracticePanther, and the end date should be the end of the month you are interested in.
For example, if you want to see how much money you should have had in your trust account for April 2017, the start date could be 1/01/2015 and the end date would be 4/30/17.