At the end of each month, Mahougnon Tossou, accountant of Groupe Gbaguidi, receives the statement of the group’s money account. He has to check that every line of the bank has a counterpart in the books: the cheque that was paid, the card settlement, the fee taken by the bank. Until now he ticked lines on paper and sometimes found the month’s balance a few thousand FCFA away from the books. The same steps apply to any organization that wants its books to agree with its bank.

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Who works where

Reconciliation exists on the organization’s own book only. Companies and client books cannot use it.

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Load the statement

Mahougnon records the statement for the money account with Add a bank statement: the period, the opening balance, the closing balance and, if he wants, the lines. He can add more lines later with Add statement lines, up to 500 at a time. If a date or a balance is wrong, Edit a bank statement corrects it. List bank statements and View a bank statement show what is loaded.

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Match the lines

He opens Open reconciliation workspace. It shows the lines of the statement still unmatched, the lines of the books for the same account, and a summary. Two ways to match: If he linked the wrong lines, Undo a bank match releases them. Matching creates no journal entry: it only marks the lines as explained.

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Close the statement

When all the lines are matched and the balances agree, Close a bank statement marks it as reconciled. A statement loaded by mistake can be removed with Delete a bank statement.

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The rules

  • The accounting module must be active for the organization. You need access to the book.
  • The book must be the organization’s own.
  • A statement is for a bank money account of the organization that is active and linked to an accounting account.
  • The end date cannot be before the start date and must fall in a fiscal year of the organization book. The currency is that of this fiscal year.
  • Lines need a date between the start and end dates, a label, a direction (debit or credit) and a positive whole amount. If one line is wrong, the whole request is refused.
  • Opening and closing balances are required. They are checked against the lines only when the statement is closed.
  • A reconciled statement cannot be edited, deleted, receive lines or matches, and its matches cannot be undone. It has no way back to open.
  • A statement can be edited or deleted only while it has no match. Undo its matches first.
  • A deletion removes the statement and its lines for good.
  • A manual match needs the signed totals of the two sides to be equal, debit positive and credit negative. A line already matched cannot be matched again. Lines of a carry-forward restatement are not eligible.
  • Auto-match pairs lines of the same amount and direction, at most 5 days apart. Lines with no counterpart stay unmatched without an error.
  • Closing needs every statement line matched, and the opening balance plus the lines (debit adds, credit subtracts) equal to the closing balance. Book entries not matched, such as a cheque not yet presented, do not block it.
  • Book lines and the book balance in the workspace are shown only to callers who hold the permission to view journal entries (journal_entries.retrieve).
  • Reversing a journal entry matched on a reconciled statement is refused. On a statement still open, the reversal releases the match and the statement lines become unmatched again. Two reversals keep their matches, even on a reconciled statement: the reversal of a confirmed card settlement, and the reversal of a cheque payment when the bank rejects a cheque it had already paid.

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All the actions of this topic

  • Add statement lines: Append more bank transaction lines to an open bank statement.
  • Open reconciliation workspace: Shows a statement, a page of its unmatched lines, a page of the unmatched book lines of its money account up to the statement end date, and a reconciliation summary.
  • Match statement to entries: Link bank statement lines to the corresponding accounting entry lines to mark them as explained.
  • Auto-match bank statement: Automatically match statement lines with accounting entries of the same amount and direction dated within 5 days.
  • Close a bank statement: Mark a statement as reconciled once every line is matched and the balances agree.
  • List bank statements: Browse the bank statements loaded for reconciliation.
  • Add a bank statement: Record a bank statement (with its opening and closing balances and lines) for one of the organization’s bank money accounts, ready to be reconciled.
  • View a bank statement: See one bank statement with its details.
  • Edit a bank statement: Change the dates, balances or details of a bank statement.
  • Delete a bank statement: Remove a bank statement that was loaded by mistake.
  • Undo a bank match: Remove a link between bank statement lines and entry lines so they can be matched again.