How to
How to reconcile a bank statement
The statement came in. You need to prove two things: every line the bank printed is accounted for in your books, and the bank's closing balance, adjusted for what hasn't cleared yet, matches your ledger to the cent. In BasicBMS that proof is a statement period, worked in three steps: Statement, Sort bank lines, Prove & close. It's finished when the difference reads $0.00 and you reconcile it.
Before you start
- The bank or card account exists in the chart of accounts.
- You have the statement's OFX / QFX file from the bank, or the paper statement for a period you'll start by hand. Keep the paper handy either way: it has the closing balance.
- The account's Reconciliation cutoff is set, once: the date you began reconciling this account line by line. It's behind the gear icon on the account. Without it, the first period lists years of old entries as "not yet at the bank".
- You have payables administrator rights. Others can look but not file or reconcile.
Steps
Open Accounting → Reconciliation. Bank Reconciliation shows a card for every account you reconcile: whether it's Current or some months behind, what it's Reconciled through, a timeline of its periods, and what's Next up.
To bring in a statement, click Import statement file, choose the Account, click Browse…, pick the file and click Import. The file's dates create the statement period (or extend an open one), lines already imported are skipped, and you land on the period it filled. Inside an account the button is Import file. For a period with no file, use Start a period by hand and enter Period start, Period end and, if you have it, the closing balance.
Or click Continue on a card to open the account's oldest open period.
Step 1, Statement. Check the dates and the Closing balance (from the statement). If the file didn't carry a balance, type it from the paper statement (New Balance on a card statement, Ending Balance on a bank account) and click Save. If the dates are off, click Edit beside Statement period.
Step 2, Sort bank lines. Start with Find matches: it looks for lines already in your books. Click Match N line(s) to clear them. Nothing new is posted.
Work the rest on the To sort tab. Click a line and say what it was: Customer payment on an invoice, New invoice (sale), Payment on a bill, New bill (expense) or Other ledger entry. Click Split to divide one line, such as part bill payment and part bank fee. When the footer reads "balanced", click File. Something already recorded? Use Already in the books… to match it by hand. Several card charges from one supplier? Tick them and record them as new bills in one go.
Step 3, Prove & close. The tie-out reads top to bottom: Bank statement closing balance, plus money in your books the bank hasn't received yet, less money out the bank hasn't paid yet, equals what the bank will show once those clear, against Your books (ledger) at the period end. The Difference must be $0.00. When it is, you'll see "The bank and your books agree. This period is ready to reconcile."
Anything waiting more than 30 days shows in red. It's usually a bank line that was recorded as something new instead of matched, or a duplicate. Undo it from the Done tab, or expand Matched with the bank this period and click Unclear on the row. You see exactly what will be reversed before anything is.
Click Reconcile this period. The period is Reconciled, its filed lines show a lock, and Next open period takes you on. To change anything later, click Reopen first.
The bar along the bottom keeps score the whole time: the difference, the lines left to sort, and the next step.
What posts behind it
Each filed line posts a balanced entry against the account you're reconciling (shown here for a checking account):
| Filed as | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Customer payment on an invoice | Checking | Accounts Receivable |
| New invoice (sale) | Checking | Revenue account you chose |
| Payment on a bill | Accounts Payable | Checking |
| New bill (expense) | Expense, then Accounts Payable | Accounts Payable, then Checking |
| Other ledger entry, money in | Checking | The ledger code |
| Other ledger entry, money out | The ledger code | Checking |
New bill (expense) posts two entries, because a bill was created and paid. An $84.00 internet bill:
| Account | Debit | Credit | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DR | Internet expense | 84.00 | — |
| CR | Accounts Payable | — | 84.00 |
| DR | Accounts Payable | 84.00 | — |
| CR | Checking | — | 84.00 |
Matching posts nothing. The entry already existed; it's marked cleared on the statement date. Reconcile this period posts nothing either. It records the proof: the difference, the date and who did it.
When it won’t let you
Reconcile this period stays greyed out, with the reason under "Not ready yet:", until it's cleared:
The statement is out by $12.40. Find the difference before reconciling.
The statement is out by $50.00, of which $12.40 arose in this period and $37.60 was carried in from earlier. Reconcile the earlier periods first. The earlier periods are where to look. If all of it was carried in, the message says so and this period will come right on its own once they're reconciled.
This statement has no closing balance. The imported file didn't carry one — enter it to reconcile. Enter it in step 1.
Undo is refused in three cases:
This line is in a reconciled statement period (Dec 13, 2025 – Jan 14, 2026). Reopen the period first, then undo.
This reconciliation touches a closed ledger period. Reopen the period first, then undo.
Undo can't reverse this line — it was filed before reconciliations recorded what they produced, so some of its postings can't be found. Leave it filed, or reverse those entries by hand.
What this doesn't do
You can't edit the amount, the date or the bank reference on an imported line. Those are the bank's. Recording several lines at once applies one supplier and one expense account to all of them; to give lines different accounts, file them one at a time. Matching is one to one: a charge the books recorded as several bills is handled by hand. And reconciling a statement doesn't close the ledger; that's a separate lock.
Related
- How to fix a statement period: dates, closing balance, or delete it
- One deposit, three invoices — splitting one deposit across the invoices it covers
- How to record a customer prepayment
Stuck on this one? Call (509) 955-0770 and we'll walk through it with you.
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