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BANKING

Bank Reconciliation: when it won't balance

The bank reconciliation page in detail, Statement Processing, and what to do when the Difference won't reach zero.

Overview

A bank reconciliation checks your books against one bank statement: the statement's opening balance, plus what you received, minus what you spent, should come to its closing balance. To do your first one, see Bank Reconciliation. This article covers the bank reconciliation page in detail, and what to do when a statement won't balance. For the words used here (tick, match, allocate), see the Banking Glossary.

Key characteristics:

  • Statement-led — Each bank reconciliation covers exactly the dates of one bank statement, read from its PDF.
  • Bank-account specific — Bank reconciliations are made per bank account. Credit cards (Liability accounts marked as bank accounts) can be reconciled too.
  • Tick-based — You tick each Beeswax transaction that appears on the statement.
  • Difference tracking — Beeswax works out how far the ticked transactions are from the statement's closing balance.
  • Statement-assisted — Beeswax reads the statement PDF, matches its lines to your payments and ticks the matches it is sure of.

Creating a Bank Reconciliation

Open Money → Banking → Bank Accounts, choose the account, then choose All Bank Reconciliations on its Bank Reconciliation card. In the actions (⋯) menu, choose New Bank Reconciliation. Change Bank Account in the toolbar switches to another account's reconciliations.

The form has one field: Bank statement PDF (required). Choose the PDF and select Upload. Beeswax reads the statement's start and end dates, its opening and closing balances and every line, and writes them to the bank reconciliation. Until it has finished, the page shows the dates and balances as Pending.

If anything was read wrongly, open the actions menu on the bank reconciliation and choose Edit. Statement Details lets you correct the Opening Balance, Closing Balance, Statement Start Date and Statement End Date. The only rule is that the start date must be on or before the end date.

The Bank Reconciliation Page

The summary

Along the top: Opening Balance + Total Received − Total Spent = Closing Balance, with the statement's start and end dates. The Difference is how far your ticked transactions are from the closing balance. For a loan account the sum runs the other way (opening balance minus the ticked total).

Beside the Difference is the status:

  • Reconciled (green) — the Difference is zero and every transaction dated in the period is ticked.
  • Awaiting next statement (blue) — the Difference is zero, but some transactions dated in the period are still unticked, usually because they clear on the next statement. This is not an error.
  • Unreconciled (red) — there is still a Difference. Choose it to see why.

Totals include every transaction ticked on this reconciliation, even one whose Beeswax date falls just outside the period.

The transactions

The list shows the Beeswax transactions on this bank account dated inside the statement period, newest first: the ID, a type badge, the date, the description, and the amount spent or received.

  • Payments that arrived on one bank feed line share a row and one tick, because the bank shows them as one amount.
  • An AI badge marks a row Beeswax ticked when it read the statement.
  • A paperclip opens the receipt or document attached to what the row pays.
  • A green Reconciled badge in place of the tick box means the transaction was ticked on another bank reconciliation.
  • Filter Line Items narrows the list as you type.
  • Choose an ID to open the payment behind the row (and from there the invoice or expense it pays). A bank transfer or a manual journal opens for editing on the page.

Tick each transaction you find on the statement. The summary, the status and the explanation panel update as you tick. Ticking from elsewhere (another browser, or an AI assistant using the Beeswax API) updates the page live.

Statement Processing

Upload the statement in Statement Processing at the bottom of the page. It takes one PDF at a time and starts as soon as it arrives. Beeswax reads the statement, then matches each line to a payment in your books, in four passes:

  1. The same date, amount and description.
  2. The same amount within five days, when only one transaction fits.
  3. Two or three transactions within five days that add up to one line.
  4. An AI suggestion for whatever is left. It is ticked for you only when it is at least 90% confident; otherwise it is listed as AI Suggested.

Beeswax looks a little outside the statement period too (back to the previous bank reconciliation, or 30 days when there isn't one), because a payment dated the 31st can clear on the 1st. It never takes a transaction already ticked on another statement.

After a run, the card shows its counts: Auto-Reconciled, Combination Matches (when there are any), AI Suggested, Already Reconciled and Unmatched. Choose History to see every run; open one to see each statement line, its status, what it was matched to, why, and how confident Beeswax was.

A run stops rather than guess, and History says why, when:

  • the statement's account number or BSB isn't this bank account's;
  • the statement's lines don't add up to its opening and closing balances;
  • the statement covers different dates from this bank reconciliation (correct the dates with Edit, then upload it again);
  • the PDF duplicates another bank reconciliation, or no lines or dates could be read.

Why Doesn't This Reconcile?

When there is a Difference, a red Why doesn't this reconcile? button appears next to the bank account name. Its badges show what is out:

  • Missing — lines on the bank statement with no matching transaction in Beeswax
  • Unticked — Beeswax transactions dated in the period that haven't been ticked
  • Outside period — ticked transactions whose Beeswax date falls outside the statement period
  • Statement not processed — no statement PDF has been processed yet, so Beeswax can't list missing lines

Choose the button (or the red Unreconciled badge) to open the panel. It shows the statement's movement, what is ticked in Beeswax and the Difference, then lists each of those transactions. It also does the sum: it tells you whether entering the missing lines would account for the whole Difference. If nothing is outstanding on either side, the difference is almost certainly in the opening or closing balance; compare them with the statement and correct them with Edit.

Fixing the Difference

You can enter most missing lines without leaving the page. In the actions (⋯) menu:

  • New Bank Transfer records money moved between two of your own bank accounts.
  • New Manual Journal covers the rest, such as a bank fee or interest, posted to the account it belongs to.

Once saved, the new transaction appears in the list, ready to tick. A missing line that came in through your bank feed is allocated from Bank Feed in the Money menu instead (see Bank Feed Allocations).

Reconciliation Status

Reconciled needs a Difference of exactly zero and every transaction dated in the period ticked. A tick on another statement counts, and a bank feed line's payments are covered when any one of them is ticked. Confirm only genuine bank matches, rather than ticking rows to force the status.

Payments that missed a statement

A payment made on the 30th that clears on the 2nd is ticked on the next statement. A payment still unticked after a whole statement has passed since its date is almost always a duplicate, a payment recorded on the wrong account, or one that never went through. The statement page lists these above the transactions, and the bar for that statement on the account's timeline shows an information icon. Payments dated before your first bank reconciliation for the account are not listed.

When a reconciled statement changes

If a payment that is ticked on a statement is later changed (amount, date, bank account, the document it pays, or its bank feed line), unhooked from its bank feed line, or deleted, the change is logged against that statement in the activity log, and the account owner and accountants are emailed with a link to each affected statement. Open it and check it still balances.

How-to Guides

Reconcile a Bank Account

  1. Open Money → Banking → Bank Accounts and choose the account
  2. On its Bank Reconciliation card, choose All Bank Reconciliations
  3. In the actions (⋯) menu, choose New Bank Reconciliation
  4. Choose the statement PDF and select Upload
  5. Check the dates and balances Beeswax read (correct them with Edit if needed)
  6. Tick each transaction that appears on the statement until the Difference reaches zero

Fix a Statement That Won't Balance

  1. Choose Why doesn't this reconcile?
  2. Enter each missing line (New Manual Journal or New Bank Transfer, or allocate it from the bank feed) and tick it
  3. Tick any unticked transaction that is on the statement; look into any that isn't
  4. If nothing is outstanding, check the opening and closing balances

Permissions by Role

Action Owner Super Admin Manager Accountant Basic Client
Create bank reconciliations Yes Yes No Yes No No
View bank reconciliations Yes Yes No Yes No No
Tick transactions Yes Yes No Yes No No
Edit statement details Yes Yes No Yes No No
Delete bank reconciliations Yes Yes No Yes No No
New bank transfer / manual journal Yes Yes No Yes No No

Basic Plus follows Basic for the actions in this table; its extra access is to account-wide tasks and read-only projects. See Roles.

Key Notes

  • Managers cannot manage bank reconciliations, bank transfers or manual journals. This is an accounting-level feature.
  • Accountants have full access to bank reconciliations.
  • Basic users, Contractors, and Clients cannot access bank reconciliations.
  • Bank reconciliations are included with every paid plan and during the trial.
  • The change alert email goes to the account's Owners and Accountants.
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