When you have made the switch to Farm Focus you will find that your bank balances are now unbalanced. This is due to a change that now shows your "Focus Balance" and your "Bank Balance".

The bank balance includes everything that has happened at the bank, whereas the Focus balance is everything that is coded and matched. This allows a quick checkpoint to see if you are fully coded up to date or not.

Find the Balancing screen in the directory under Actuals

You will see that 2-3 years of transactions are pulled through from Cashmanager RURAL into your Balancing screen and you will be notified which ones need attention.

You will need to access the past 2-3 years of bank statements which you can download from your online banking site.

In the Farm Focus screen, scroll right back to the oldest outstanding entry. As long as everything had been balanced correctly in RURAL, the process will be rather simple from here.

Enter the opening balance as stated on your bank balance. If it matches your Focus balance, then all following monthly balances will also match up. You will need to continue to enter the opening balances to any months that are highlighted.

Once you have completed this for all relevant months you will see that you are all balanced up to date.

If you are unbalanced after this process, please see Balancing - Troubleshooting to identify the issue.

Going forward you will only need to check this screen monthly to make sure your account balances up to date. It will need to be fully balanced before you can finalise a GST return for that period.

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