How do I reverse an outstanding cheque?
From time to time, you may write a cheque to a supplier and the cheque will not be banked and become 'stale', (A bank cannot legally cash a cheque 15 months after the date of issue. The cheque is, after that time, a stale cheque.) or the supplier loses the cheque and requests another one to be written.
A stale or lost cheque may sit in your list of Unpresented Cheques for a very long time.
Deleting an unpresented cheque is not an option if it has affected the GST from a previous financial year or BAS period. (ie. you may have already claimed the tax credit.)
The correct procedure is to reverse that transaction via a Cashbook transaction dated today or in the current BAS period.
For Example: When doing the bank reconciliation for 30/06/2015, a bookkeeper noticed that cheque number 321 (Cheque dated 26/11/2013, made out to Bill Blogg's Auto Repairs) had still not been presented after 17 months. The bank will no longer cash this 'stale ' cheque, so it can be reversed.
The screen-shot below shows an unpresented cheque as it appear in the Cashbook Reconciliation:
The unpresented cheque belongs to a previous financial year. ie. 2014. The procedure to reverse it is:
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3