Reconciling a bank statement

Reconciliation is the monthly proof that your books match the bank: you take one statement, check off every transaction on it, and finish when the difference is exactly $0. It's separate from day-to-day Bank feed matching — matching gets transactions onto your books; reconciliation certifies a statement period. Starting and finalizing require the accounting.manage permission, and the account must have a GL cash-account link first.

Starting a reconciliation

Choose Reconcile from a bank account's card menu on the Banking page (or Catch up, when the card warns the account is statements behind). If a reconciliation is already in progress for that account you're taken straight back into it — only one can be open per account at a time.

The Start Reconciliation dialog needs two numbers from your statement:

• Statement Ending Date
• Statement Ending Balance

You can type them, or drop the statement PDF onto the dialog and Corbica reads both for you (nothing is imported from the PDF — it only fills in the numbers). Dropping several months at once is fine: statements are ordered by end date, each one pre-fills the dialog after you finish the previous reconciliation, and a checkmark confirms each statement's opening balance chains from the one before it.

The Beginning Balance is carried over from your last completed reconciliation (or the account's opening balance the first time), which is why months should be reconciled in order. When a dropped statement's opening balance matches, you can also enable Auto-clear transactions already matched to your bank feed for this period — feed-matched entries are checked off for you, leaving only the remainder to review.

The workspace

The reconciliation workspace shows three panels:

• Statement balance — the bank's version of the period: beginning balance, checks and withdrawals, deposits and additions, ending balance.
• Cleared balance — the same math built from what you've checked off so far.
• Difference — the gap between them.

Work through the list below the panels, checking off each transaction that appears on your paper statement. Every check moves the difference; when it reaches $0.00 the panel turns green and the Finalize button appears.

If something is on the statement but missing from your books — a bank fee, an interest credit — use Add Transaction to record it without leaving the workspace.

Finalizing

Finalize completes the reconciliation: cleared transactions are locked in as reconciled, and the account's Reconciled through date advances to the statement end date — that's the badge on the account card and in the Banking page header. The date only ever moves forward.

Two guards apply:

• The difference must be $0 (to the cent). If it isn't, keep checking off entries or track down the missing transaction.
• A statement period that ends inside a closed accounting period can't be finalized — see Closing the books.

Fixing a mistake

Completed reconciliations are listed on the account's Reconciliations tab, where you can void the most recent one. Voiding un-clears its transactions and rewinds the reconciled-through date so you can redo the month. Because each reconciliation's beginning balance chains from the previous one, always void from the most recent backwards.