How do you correct a misposted transaction that affected multiple accounts?

• A. Use a correcting journal entry or delete/re-enter the transaction with correct accounts; then re-check reconciliations.
• B. Edit the transaction in place to adjust the accounts.
• C. Create a new transaction and leave the old one as is.
• D. Reconcile only the affected accounts.

Answer: (A)

When a transaction that touches multiple accounts is posted to the wrong ones, the fix is to undo the incorrect impact and re-post to the correct accounts. The most reliable way is to use a correcting journal entry that reverses the amounts in the wrong accounts and records them in the proper ones, or to delete the misposted transaction and re-enter it with the correct accounts. This directly restores accurate balances and keeps the audit trail intact, which is essential for correct reconciliations.

Editing the transaction in place can leave residual misapplications and doesn’t always properly undo multi-account effects. Creating a new transaction while leaving the old one in place would double-count the amounts. Reconciliation alone doesn’t correct the underlying posting—it's about matching balances, not fixing the root mispostings.