Construction Business QuickBooks CleanupA match is a person agreeing

The bank feed offers guesses, and a person still has to agree with each one. Some guesses are right. Some attach a lumber yard to the wrong job because the memo looked similar. Some drop a transfer between your own accounts into profit. Treating the feed as finished work is how a file looks current and is not.

We reconcile the old way, with a statement and a person. Each item is either matched, or it is on a list. A check that has not cleared stays on the open list until the bank shows it, or until you say it was never going to. A check that will never clear is a decision, not a permanent ghost.

Owners move money. A sister company pays a bill. A loan draws. A personal deposit lands in the operating account because that was the card in the truck. None of those are job profit. If we cannot tell yet, the amount waits in a holding account on the balance sheet so the profit report is not used as a junk drawer.

The rule we keep is dull on purpose. Nothing leaves that holding account without a document. You can see the balance. We can see the balance. The month is allowed to close with the question still open, as long as the question is not pretending to be profit.

Owners describe the first truly matched month as quieter. The worry does not vanish. It stops roaming. You know which jobs are fed by the cash, and which cash is only passing through. That quiet is the point.

If the feed has been left to run on its own for a season, the first match takes longer. We would rather spend that time once than reprint a month that only looked finished.