Credit card liabilities review
Reviewing the AmEx and TD card liabilities, the green/blue coding, and the deliberate two-layer reconciliation with the client.
The company maintains separate AmEx liability accounts by entity, plus the TD corporate card.
Source: Rackson_RRS_RCY_Review_Process.docx sections 10 and 27.3.
The cross-entity AmEx liability account should always net to zero. Any nonzero balance signals a transaction that was coded to the wrong entity.
The green / blue coding
| Coding | Source | Handling |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Statement activity arriving through the automated feed | Loads automatically |
| Blue | Activity not captured by the automated feed | Must be keyed manually |
The blue items come from the missing-items list the client (Caitlin) sends after she reconciles her own statement-to-file comparison. Her process is: she compares the statement to the file, identifies what the file missed, and sends that list over. PBI records those items manually into the workbook — and once recorded, the full list becomes PBI's balance sheet reconciliation.
TD does not come through an automated file feed at all. All TD activity is coded manually from the statement. This is a heavier lift than the AmEx process but has historically been consistent and easy to work with. Whether the TD card can be automated through Sage is a standing open item.
The two-layer reconciliation is intentional
There are two layers of reconciliation happening:
- The client's own statement-to-file tie-out.
- PBI's file-to-GL tie-out.
This redundancy is deliberate — a second set of eyes — even though PBI is not the one performing the client's underlying statement reconciliation.
Step-by-step checklist
If not, search for a transaction coded to the wrong entity.
Confirm they loaded completely for the period.
Request or locate Caitlin's missing-items list and enter those into the workbook.
There is no automated feed — code all activity manually.
For each card.
Roughly $40 or less — document larger variances and their resolution.
Do not force small day-of variances to zero, particularly close to period end. Forcing them can create a bigger problem the following period if the timing item reverses.
Illustrative examples. A small ($20) variance was traced to a miscoded transaction; a larger ($2,000) variance identified earlier in the same review was also traced to a similar miscoding and corrected once flagged to the preparer. A ~$40 day-of variance was left as timing.
RCY (Dave's) — payroll and cards
Handled the same way as PBI's other restaurant clients: take the funding, reconcile the various payroll liability accounts (401(k) and others), and resolve any outstanding AP or payroll checks requiring research.
The TD card and AmEx reconciliations for Dave's follow the identical process described above.
Related
- RRS AP and credit cards workpapers — the 20600 AmEx and 20603 TD preparer steps, including the colour conventions and the auto-payment row
- AP aging and payroll review
- Intercompany tie-out — where entity miscodings surface