Balancing Investments from A to Z

These steps provide information to assist in balancing your investment subsidiary to the General Ledger in CU*BASE.

  • There may be other steps you need to take outside of CU*BASE for handling investments. Follow your credit union policies and all regulatory requirements.

  • Remember to always check your work after you have completed an adjustment or otherwise to ensure that what you expected to happen occurred. Most issues can be resolved more quickly if found at the point of error rather than looking through 30 days of activity.

Tips for Balancing Investment Subsidiaries:

  • Set up an investment receivable/suspense account for receipt of payment processing. This will allow for some separation from investment accrual processing, which could aid in the balancing as you have less history to look through.

  • Balance your subsidiary records prior to any adjustments, payment processing, or maturities to ensure you are in balance prior to processing; this way you won’t be adding more to your out of balance situation. This will allow for you to pinpoint where to look for the out of balance.

  • If possible, save your subsidiary trial balance to PDF and subsequently convert into Excel from the last time you were in balance and compare month to month to see where your out of balance might be. If this isn’t possible, just do a side-by-side comparison.

  • Is the amount of out of balance divisible by 9, or what is the value divided by 2? If the amount is divisible by 9, there may have been a transposition. If divisible by 2, it could have been booked backwards.

  1. Produce an Investment Trial Balance.

    • For the Print field, select summary.

    • Select the G/Ls you are balancing.

    • All other options may be left as default.

  2. Produce a G/L History report.

  3. Compare the Investment Trial Balance totals for principal, premium, discount, and accrual G/Ls to the CU*BASE General Ledger’s balance to determine if you are out of balance.

    • If you are in balance, no further action is needed.

    • If you are out of balance, compare the asset G/Ls to the general ledger to determine the imbalanced G/L(s) and the amount out of balance.

  4. Produce an Investment Activity Report.

  5. Compare the Investment Activity Report to the G/L activity to determine where you went out of balance.

    • Activity that occurred in the G/L should be the same activity that occurred on the Investment Activity Report.

      1. For example, if you posted a payment for $583.20 in the G/L, then that same $583.20 should also be the payment posted in the history record of the subsidiary record.

    • The math within the history record needs to balance. If you edit a history record and do not ensure that the “resulting balance” is correct with that edit, it will cause your subsidiary record to be out of balance. The resulting balance is transmitted to the Trial Balance, and if it is off, your balancing to G/L will be as well.

  6. Determine the imbalance reason and make the necessary entries to correct your imbalance.

    • See possible reasons for G/L imbalances below.

Reasons for Imbalance

Accrual G/L

  • Investment payment posted to G/L but not posted to subsidiary record.

  • Investment payment posted to subsidiary record but not posted to G/L.

  • Investment payment posted to either the subsidiary or G/L that was not the same amount.

  • Adjustment made to subsidiary record or G/L that is either not the same amount or not posted at all to the other.

  • Adjustment made to the subsidiary record then subsequently to the G/L that is backwards.

  • Item posted to the wrong G/L (posting error).

  • Duplicate posting of either the accrual processing or investment payment(s).

  • Improper processing of investment income at maturity. Clearing the accrual to zero but not posting the difference to income.

Principal G/L

  • Matured investment principal posted to G/L but not posted to subsidiary record.

  • Matured investment principal posted to subsidiary record but not posted to G/L.

  • Matured investment principal posted for the wrong amount.

  • Matured investment principal posted to the wrong G/L.

  • Principal paydown adjustment posted backwards.

  • Duplicate posting of matured investment.

Discount/Premium G/L

  • Adjustment to discount/premium posted backwards.

  • Discount/premium receivable posted to the wrong G/L.

  • Discount/premium posted for wrong amount either on the record, G/L, or both.

Learn More

What should I consider while processing subsidiaries/investments?

Learn how to complete tasks related to subsidiary processing.

Check out the Balancing Made Easy booklet.