After going through a full reconciliation process I found an effective way of using automatic reconciliation which is actually an absolute must have.

After having completed the bank accounts reconciliation I perform automatic reconciliation on all the 'control accounts', in my case:

• Debtors Control Account

• Creditors Control Account

• Stock IN

• Stock Out

Having 1000+ transactions a month this allows me to then check the accounting entries for each account and determine the cause of the unreconciled entries which can then adjusted manually. In my case this is typically due to returns. I then reconcile the adjustments until every transaction is reconciled.

This mechanism coupled with reconciliation of accounts with external references such as bank accounts gives me the confidence my books are in order.