Stale Checks Are Lying to Your Balance Sheet Because Time Passed and No One Looked
Hi, it’s MIPster the Tipster™.
If you are carrying old checks past your stale date threshold, usually 180 days, your liabilities are not real anymore. They look real. They feel real. But they are not.
Here is the uncomfortable truth.
Old, unreissued checks quietly inflate AP and Payroll balances. They sneak through reconciliations. They survive audits until the wrong person asks the right question.
And no, deleting a reconciled check is not the fix. That shortcut breaks your GL and creates bigger problems later.
The right move is simple because it needs to be.
Void stale checks through AP or Payroll so MIP® reverses the GL correctly and removes them from future reconciliations. If the money is still owed, reissue the check cleanly. Nothing hidden. Nothing patched.
The real tip most organizations miss is this.
Quarterly stale check reviews keep liabilities honest because time does not fix accounting problems. Process does.
If you are responsible for MIP® accounting and you have ever wondered why balances never quite feel right, this is usually why.
This is for finance teams, controllers, and nonprofit accountants who want clean books and fewer audit surprises.
This is not for organizations that prefer workarounds, manual fixes, or hoping the problem goes away.
McGovern Consulting Group specializes in MIP Accounting® Training and Implementation Services. We have been doing this long enough to know where the bodies are buried, because we have cleaned them up.
If you want your liabilities to reflect reality instead of history, take the next step.
Schedule time with us because guessing costs more than fixing.
https://mcgoverncg.com/schedule/
Or start with free MIP® fund accounting training if you want clarity before a conversation.
https://www.freemipfundaccountingtraining.com/
PS. Accounting software is boring, but explaining to an auditor why a three year old check is still on your books is worse.
#mipaccounting #nonprofitaccounting #fundaccounting #accountingcontrols #financialmanagement #mipsoftware
