Here are the steps that you should follow when reconciling your business cash flow at the end of every week:
1. First, log into your bank account and print out or save as a pdf all the transactions for the week.
2. You need to reconcile your Cash Flow Updates worksheet against your bank account every week. During the week, bold and adjust the receipts that come in, by each source. Also, bold and adjust the expenses that occur throughout the week. At the end of the week, move the numbers that aren’t bolded to the next week. These are the receipts and expenses that you had scheduled to come in or go out, but you didn’t log them during the week as being received or paid, so they need to move to the following week.
3. Compare the beginning balance for the beginning of the week to the same date on your bank balance. Sometimes, adjustments occur by the bank, when compared to the bank balance the prior week. Make sure the numbers for the beginning of the week still match. If they don’t, compare your log to the bank account details and adjust your log to match the bank.
4. Then, compare the actual transactions in your bank account to your cash flow sheet. Unbold all expenses and receipts in your Cash Flow Updates log for the week that match the bank account for the week. Continue through all the transactions until the bank account and the cash flow match. Then, you are ready for next week!
5. Adjust anything that may have changed during the week that could impact the future cash flow. For example, were there any new sources of income that should be added for future weeks? Were there any lost sources of income that should be removed from future weeks? Are there new recurring expenses to add? Or any expenses that had been recurring but were stopped? Adjust any changes in recurring receipts and expenses, so your cash flow will be accurate going forward.
By entering all your receipts, expenses, and income sources into Cash Flow Updates, you streamline your financial tracking, and it’s easy to reconcile money coming in and out against your bank account. Keeping your projected expenses and income as accurate as possible for upcoming months will help you see if there are any weeks where you might be short cash, and if you need to start planning now to make up for the shortage.
Cash Flow Updates puts all the key data in one spot, making reconciliation and cash flow planning as simple as possible.