After the auditors adjusted the AP Liability account(trying to get it to reconcil, which had never been done). I still can not get close to the amount that shows every month on the GL. The Open Invoice Reconciling Report doesn't pull invoices with with a 10/1/04 date and a Post date of 9/30/04. Why not? The criteria for running the AP report looks correct. Pull ALL invoices with a post date of 9/1 through 9/30.

If the invoice date is 10/1/04, why don't you post it 10/1/04 instead of 9/30/04? We always use a post date in the same month as the invoice date. We don't have a problem with reconciling that way.

Did you make sure that there are no entries other than Accounts Payable entries in your accounts payable account? Other entries will not show up on a/p reports. I found that the easiest way to reconcile the account is to manually check the general ledger activity line by line i.e., tick off corresponding dr and cr and the unmarked items should be your balance. P.S. Never let the auditors make an adjustment to the account. The account balance must be correct by definition.

It really is a Sept. Expense the invoice was dated 10/01

I did go line by line and didn't see anything other than some invoices that I keyed in Oct. and posted to Sept. That is why I was asking why I can't get those invoices to show on the Open Invoice Report. I asked for ALL Inv. posted to Sept. ALL Dates. I know not to let auditors adjust, but AP has never been balanced to GL(since 2001) but I have only been here for a year and we were trying to find a starting place.

When you say to tick off the GL are you useing the Open Invoice Report? or another report? or just the GL to clear dr and cr?

I guess I still don't understand your process. If it was our September expense, then we would use both a September invoice date and September post date for consistency. I really think your problem stems from using 10/1 as the invoice date but using 9/30 as the post date.

Before reconciling, you should always make sure that A/P has been posted to G/L if you are reconciling a period that has not been soft closed. I have also developed 3 A/P invoice queries that have helped in identifying reconciling differences in our system. 1. Search for invoice date after post date. I think the A/P reports pull info from the invoice date and G/L is based upon post date. This query finds problem transactions for me regularly. 2. Search for check payment post date before invoice post date. Every once in a while at month end we cut a check on the last day of the month but the invoice gets entered and posted as the first day of the next month. 3. Search for A/P invoices debited to our accounts payable general ledger account. Every once in a while the invoice is miscoded to A/P and entered incorrectly causing a G/L to A/P report out of balance. Also, unless your auditors addressed the above items in determining the adjustment, you may want to consider reversing it and attempting a month end reconciliation without their entry. Some of the items may have self corrected at a later date.