Undo or delete a reconciliation

Sometimes you need to back out a bank reconciliation — you cleared the wrong item, the statement balance was wrong, or you need to delete a deposit or payment that’s currently locked because it’s reconciled. This article covers the two ways to do that:

Unreconcile a transaction — detach a single deposit or payment from a reconciliation so it’s no longer “cleared,” without removing the whole reconciliation.
Delete the reconciliation — remove the entire reconciliation.

This is the article several other delete chains point to, because a deposit, a bill payment, a tenant payment, and a refund are each blocked from deletion while they’re reconciled. The fix is always the same idea: break the link to the reconciliation first, then delete.

Before you start

Find the reconciliation: in the left sidebar click Banking, then Reconcile, and open the reconciliation from the list (or follow the Reconcile link shown on a deposit or payment that’s locked).

Unreconcile a transaction (detach one item)

Use this when you only need to free up a single deposit or payment — for example so you can delete it — but want to keep the reconciliation otherwise intact.

Open the Reconcile Summary and choose Edit Reconcile from the Action menu.
The edit worksheet lists each deposit and payment with a checkbox. A checked box means the item is cleared (reconciled); an unchecked box means it isn’t.
Uncheck the item you want to detach. This unreconciles it.
Click Save. The item is no longer tied to this reconciliation and can now be deleted, reversed, or edited as needed.

What blocks deleting a reconciliation

A reconciliation is blocked from deletion while deposits or bill payments are still linked to it. If a delete is refused, you’ll see:

“This reconciliation cannot be deleted because it has: {list} linked. You must unreconcile these transactions first before deleting this reconciliation.”

The way to clear the link is the Unreconcile step above (uncheck the transactions in Edit Reconcile and save), after which the reconciliation can be removed.

A note on the circular message: a deposit won’t delete because it’s reconciled, and the reconciliation won’t delete because the deposit is linked. The way out is always to unreconcile (uncheck the item in Edit Reconcile) first — that breaks the link both directions — and then delete whichever record you actually wanted to remove.

Delete a reconciliation

Open the Reconcile Summary and choose Delete Reconcile from the Action menu.
In the confirmation pop-up (“Please confirm that you would like to DELETE this reconcile”), click DELETE.

What you’ll see

After unreconciling, the detached transactions show as uncleared again and become deletable. After deleting a reconciliation, it’s removed from the Reconcile list with a confirmation, and the deposits and payments it covered are no longer marked as reconciled — they’ll appear again the next time you reconcile that account.

Tips

If your real goal is to fix a single cleared/uncleared item, Edit Reconcile and re-check the worksheet is usually all you need — you don’t have to delete the whole reconciliation.
After removing a reconciliation, your next reconciliation’s Beginning Balance comes from the prior reconciliation, so re-do the period if you deleted it to correct a mistake.