Overview
Reconciling customer deposits means comparing the total of unused deposits recorded in Blackpurl against the balance of your Customer Deposit General Ledger in your accounting package. In theory, these two figures should always match.
How Often to Reconcile
Perform this reconciliation regularly — at minimum at the end of every month. Reconciling on a regular basis means any discrepancies are caught quickly and can be corrected before they compound. If issues are left undetected, they become much harder to trace.
What the Customer Deposit General Ledger Represents
The Customer Deposit General Ledger holds the value of all unused deposits on Customer Orders in Blackpurl. A deposit is recorded here when a customer has paid and the payment has been applied to a Customer Order, but the deposit has not yet been used to finalise the order. At any point in time, the balance of this ledger should reflect exactly how much you are holding in customer deposits.
Important: How This Account Is Controlled
The Customer Deposit General Ledger is a true clearing account. Blackpurl controls all debits and credits flowing in and out of it. To avoid reconciliation problems, follow these rules:
Never post entries manually or directly into the Customer Deposit General Ledger in your accounting package.
Never modify or delete a transaction or journal entry that was generated by the Blackpurl integration.
If something posted by the Blackpurl integration needs to be corrected, make the correction in Blackpurl — not in your accounting package.
How to Reconcile
Step 1: Run the Customer Deposit Account Report in Blackpurl
Run the Customer Deposit Account report in Blackpurl to get the total of all unused customer deposits. For instructions on running this report, see Blackpurl Reporting - Customer Deposit Account (no longer available).
You can also schedule this report to run automatically — for example, at the end of each month at midnight — and have it emailed to you. See Scheduled Reporting to set this up.
Step 2: Identify the Correct General Ledger in Your Accounting Package
To find which General Ledger account corresponds to Customer Deposits, check this setting in Blackpurl:
System Settings > Accounting Integration > Control Account > Customer Deposits
The account name shown there is the General Ledger you need to check in your accounting package. For example, this might appear as 1010 BP Customer Deposits.
Step 3: Run a Balance Sheet in Your Accounting Package
Run a Balance Sheet in Xero or QuickBooks Online as of your reconciliation date. Note the closing balance of the Customer Deposit General Ledger account you identified in Step 2.
Step 4: Compare the Two Totals
Compare the total from the Blackpurl Customer Deposit Account report against the balance of the Customer Deposit General Ledger on your Balance Sheet. The two figures should be equal.
What to Do If There Is a Variance
If both totals match, no further action is required. If they do not match, you will need to investigate why. Start by checking for these common causes:
Has someone posted a manual transaction directly to the Customer Deposit General Ledger in the accounting package?
Has someone modified or deleted an integrated transaction that was originally generated by Blackpurl?
Because you should be reconciling regularly, review each transaction posted since the last time the account balanced to identify any new discrepancy.
If you cannot identify the cause, contact the Blackpurl Support team. They can review the daily logs in the backend of your Blackpurl account and identify which specific day or days showed a change in variance, giving you a starting point for further investigation.