Balancing

Learn more about balancing and what to do if you are unbalanced. Balancing replaces reconciling.

Updated over a week ago

Your Farm Focus balance should be the same as your bank balance. If you use bank feeds you should always be balanced providing your coding is up-to-date and you have not duplicated or deleted any bank transactions. Bank feeds come directly from your bank and are the source of truth. Farm Focus should normally always mimic what happens in the bank. Regular checks ensure farm bank accounts are balanced, GST returns are correct and your working plan is up to date.

The account balance in Farm Focus is reconciled to your bank account balance each day which makes it easy to pinpoint when the account may have become unbalanced.

Before you prepare a GST return, always check you are balanced for the period of your GST return.

On the Needs Action page, Farm Focus will alert you if your account is unbalanced.

An unbalanced account is highlighted in red indicating that you need to look in the Balancing page. You can do this by either clicking on the amount in red or clicking on the Balancing page.

Navigate the Balancing page

  1. Shows you are on the Blanacing page

  2. Shows the financial year

  3. Shows the bank account the balancing refers to

  4. The green line shows you where you're balanced too

  5. Balanced amount - note it is single figure in black text

  6. Farm Focus Balance - note it is red and does not balance your bank balance

  7. Bank Balance - note it is red and does not balance your Farm Focus balance

  8. Shows this transaction is coded - if it was uncoded it would have a blue token saying

  9. Shows it is a manual entry - if a bank feed had been used it would say Bank feed

  10. Select these 3 vertical dots to view the transaction

  11. Use the drop-down arrow to view the details of the month

Your farm business could be unbalanced because:

  1. The opening balance entered for your farm business may be incorrect.

  2. Un-coded transactions are sitting in the Needs Action tab of the Actuals screen that are dated on or before the bank account balance date. This is the primary reason an account is unbalanced.

  3. There are duplicate transactions (recorded more than once). If so, remove any transactions that don't belong to the bank account.

  4. Transactions have been accidentally deleted.

  5. You have a manual bank account and need to enter a closing balance each month.

  6. Other - What else can cause an unbalanced account?

1. Opening balance

  1. Go to Settings > Bank Accounts.

  2. Check the opening balance and the date shown against your bank statement.

  3. If the opening balance is incorrect, re-type the opening balance into the opening balance field.

2. Uncoded transactions

  1. Uncoded transactions are easily identified by the blue Uncoded token.

  2. Click on the 3 vertical dots on the transaction line and select View Transaction.

  3. Code the transaction as per normal.

  4. Once coded the Farm Focus balance will up-date.

2. Duplicate transactions

To delete duplicate transactions:

  1. In the Balancing page - click the 3 vertical dots on the transaction line. 

  2. Select Delete.

3. Transactions have been deleted

  1. Click on the Deleted tab and locate the deleted transaction.

  2. Select the 3 vertical dots. Click Restore transaction.

4. Enter a closing balance on a manual bank account

For manual bank accounts, where the transactions are imported as a CSV or QIF file, the closing balance will need to be entered manually on the last day of the month.

  1. Check your bank to confirm the month's closing balance. 

  2. Type the balance into the Bank Balance field. 

5. What else can cause an unbalanced account?

Journal entries

You may have created a transaction in Farm Focus that doesn’t appear in your bank account.  For example, you want to claim the GST for a business-related item that was paid for from your personal account. These are called journal entries. Journal entries should not change your bank balance as the total transaction should equal $0.00. Click here to learn more about journal entries.

Pending transactions do not appear in daily bank balance

When using bank feeds, on rare occasions, pending transactions may not appear in your daily bank balance. This corrects itself the next day but in your balancing page the bank balance will not match your Farm Focus balance for that particular day. If this occurs, you are able to manually correct the bank balance for that day. This feature should be used with caution and is the exception and not the normal.

Rabobank All In One account.

Rabobank All In One accounts combine your everyday banking with loan facilities. 

  • The Bank balance displayed in the Focus balancing screen is fed directly into your farm business from Rabobank. This is a combined total including loan facilities
    NOTE: You can manually adjust the bank account balance to exclude your loan facilities. Find out more 

  • The Focus balance refers to cash movement only. For more information please visit the Rabobank website

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