Figure $9-5$ ge Journalized It is important for Becca to prepare a bank reconciliation when she receives her bank statement every month as part of the cash control procedure. It verifies the amount of cash in her chequing account. Another important reason to do a bank reconciliation is that it may uncover irregularities such as employee theft of funds. Before we look at a more comprehensive bank reconciliation, let's look at trends in banking. Trends in Banking Banking has changed a lot in recent years, and additional changes are on the way as this is being written. It is still true that businesses make the usual deposits and write the usual cheques, and those activities are described and illustrated in this chapter. However, even a small business needs to have the ability to handle and account for new methods of conducting everyday transactions that are becoming the mainstream way that many transactions are done. Credit Card Transactions Many companies allow customers to use credit cards such as Visa, Mastercard, or American Express to pay for purchases. The customer has the convenience of using the credit card instead of using cash or cheques. The seller accepts credits cards for a variety of reasons: accepting credit cards tends to increase customer traffic in its stores, avoids the costs and delay of providing credit directly to customers, and lowers losses due to bad cheques. Credit cards also reduce risk from fraudulent credit card sales since credit card companies often absorb any losses if the seller follows the proper procedures. The seller pays a fee for the services provided by the credit card company. This fee covers costs incurred by the credit card company. Therefore, when the fee is deducted, the cash received by the retailer is less than $\backslash (100\backslash \%\backslash )$ of the sales value of the transaction. Each credit card company has its own fee structure.