A reconciliation discrepancy means the balance in QuickBooks doesn’t match the ending balance on your bank statement. Finding the cause takes some detective work, but there are common culprits to check first.

Start with the opening balance. If you’re reconciling for the first time or the opening balance was entered incorrectly, every reconciliation after that will be off by the same amount. Go to the bank account register and look at the very first transaction. Compare it to your first statement. If the opening balance is wrong, fix it before doing anything else.

Duplicates are the next thing to check. Bank feeds in QuickBooks Online sometimes download transactions you already entered manually. You end up with two entries for the same purchase. Sort your register by amount and look for identical transactions close together. Delete the duplicate and you may have found your discrepancy.

Look for transactions in the wrong period. If something dated December 31 should have been January 2, it affects which month the reconciliation balances. Date errors are easy to make when entering transactions manually or when the bank posts something on a different date than expected.

Check for edited transactions. If someone changed the amount or date on a transaction that was already marked as reconciled, the previous reconciliation stays done but the numbers no longer add up. QuickBooks has a reconciliation discrepancy report that shows exactly this. Run it for the period in question and see if anything was modified after reconciliation.

Missing transactions cause problems too. Sometimes a bank fee or interest payment doesn’t come through the feed. Compare your statement line by line against QuickBooks to find what’s missing. A Mid-Missouri bookkeeper can often spot these gaps quickly because they know the common patterns.

If you’ve checked everything and still can’t find it, you have a choice. For small amounts under a few dollars, making an adjustment entry to a discrepancy expense account is reasonable. Document what you did and move on. For larger amounts, keep digging. A $500 discrepancy usually means something real is wrong and will cause problems later if ignored.

The longer you wait to reconcile, the harder discrepancies are to find. Reconciling monthly while the transactions are fresh means any difference is easier to track down because you’re only looking at 30 days of activity instead of a year’s worth.

If your books have months of un-reconciled transactions or discrepancies stacking up, that’s typically a bookkeeping cleanup project. Getting the historical data accurate first makes all future reconciliations straightforward. Once the foundation is solid, monthly reconciliation becomes routine rather than stressful.