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Best Practice - Setting up GL Main Accounts tied to Bank Accounts (1 GL Account per Bank Account or Multiple Bank Accounts per GL Account).

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Posted on by TS Realfoundations

What is best practice when setting up Bank Accounts? Should you tie multiple bank accounts to 1 main account? or should you have 1 Main Account for each Bank Account?

What are the benefits of setting the accounts up as suggested by best practice?

Thank You,

Tanya

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André Arnaud de Cal... 301,075 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi Tanya,

The majority of companies (98%) which I have seen implementing this used one main account per bank account.

This was for convenience in reporting to have directly the balance and transactions available per bank account.

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Sukrut Parab 71,710 Moderator on at

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Did you try to create one with same main account? If you try to set it up you get below warning which gives you a idea what could be the impact.

"Main account xxxx is already associated with bank account USMF EUR. Associating more than one bank account with a single main account can result in unexpected or inaccurate results when reconciling that bank account or when generating cash flow reports."

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Ludwig Reinhard Microsoft Employee on at

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Hello Tanya,

Also prefer the 1:1 mapping that Andre mentioned and the locking of the main account for manual transactions.

Best regards,

Ludwig

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saurabh bharti 15,039 Moderator on at

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Hi Tanya,

It completely depends on customer's need. In my experience i used main account as per following criteria's :

1. One Main account for single currency (In case or multi currency bank account ) e.g. One account for all USD banks, One for EUR and so on..

2. One Main account for all banks with same Bank group or same type of bank e.g. Citi bank all bank accounts one main account

3. Many customer prefer to report individual bank accounts in their financial statements e.g. Balance sheet then you have to use one main account for one Bank

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TS Realfoundations 5 on at

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Thank you all.

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obergolsen 12 on at

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Hi Saurabh, I agree in what you write above as the customer's need varies. I would prefer using the Bank account table as a genuin subledger with groups of bank accounts summing up to specific bank accounts per currency etc. But can we ignore the warning regarding unexpected errors regarding reconciliation and cash flow reports? Have you or anyone else experienced problems setting up more bank accounts to a main account?

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BillurSamdancioglu 19,854 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Cash flow or bank reconciliation will not be effected. Only issue you may face is bank reconciliation report.

I have seen companies use both of them. And do not remember if they have any issue with that.

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