Correct for mistakes from a decade ago

by Foresta
(Berkeley, California)

I'm helping to clean up the balance sheet of a small non-profit. The Paypal bank account has never been reconciled (!) and is about $10,000 off (!!!) showing excessive assets that unfortunately don't exist. I tried to locate the mistake but the books date back to 2003, and only have PayPal bank statements for 2 years back, so even if I had time to reconcile for the last 15 years, I wouldn't be able to.

My guess is that there was a period when more than one unqualified person was entering into Quickbooks, and there are many payments that were entered twice, I see that sometimes a deposit of various payments are all entered together, and other times individual payments are entered.

I have an idea of how to cook the books by making changes to a period so long ago that no one will notice, but I should probably resist this idea since it's a non-profit, a small one, but still more likely to get audited.

Any ideas of how I can zero out the PayPal bank and start reconciling?
Thank you!

I agree that you don't want to do anything that would jeopardize the NPO's status. I would consult with a qualified certified accountant who specializes in NPOs for their advice on how to proceed.

Some of my readers may wish to chime in and make suggestions as well.