Overview
A bank reconciliation checks your books against one bank statement. Beeswax takes the statement's opening balance, adds what you received and takes away what you spent, using only the transactions you have ticked as appearing on the statement. When that comes to the statement's closing balance, the reconciliation balances: your books and the bank agree for that period, and you can trust the balance Beeswax shows.
You do one bank reconciliation per bank statement, for each bank account. "The October reconciliation" is the one for October's statement.
Coming from Xero? Xero's Reconcile screen is what Beeswax calls Allocate (Money → Bank Feed). A Beeswax bank reconciliation checks your books against the bank statement.
Bank reconciliation is one of three banking jobs in Beeswax, and each has its own word:
| Job | Where | The word |
|---|---|---|
| Say what a bank line is (an expense, a payment of an invoice, a transfer) | Money → Bank Feed | Allocate |
| Pair a statement line with a payment already in your books | Statement Processing, on a bank reconciliation | Match (Beeswax does it) |
| Check your books against the bank statement | Bank Accounts → All Bank Reconciliations | Bank reconciliation (you tick each transaction you find on the statement) |
See the Banking Glossary for every term.
Why Reconcile
There are seven key reasons to reconcile your bank accounts regularly:
- Ensures correctness — confirms that all transactions have been recorded accurately
- Verifies deposits — checks that all expected deposits have cleared
- Confirms agreement — shows that your records agree with the bank's
- Prevents double payments — catches duplicate payments before they become a problem
- Avoids fraud — surfaces unauthorised transactions early
- Highlights unnecessary expenses — makes recurring costs visible so you can review them
- Identifies savings — helps you spot areas where you could reduce spending
Allocating your bank feed is not the same thing. Allocating records each bank line in your books; the bank reconciliation is what proves nothing is missing, doubled up or recorded at the wrong amount.
Your First Bank Reconciliation
- Open Money → Banking → Bank Accounts and choose the account.
- On its Bank Reconciliation card, choose All Bank Reconciliations. (Change Bank Account in the toolbar moves to another account's reconciliations.)
- In the actions (⋯) menu, choose New Bank Reconciliation.
- Choose the bank statement PDF and select Upload. Beeswax reads the statement's start and end dates, its opening and closing balances and every line. Until it has finished, the dates and balances show as Pending. If the statement's period is already covered by a bank reconciliation for that account, Beeswax doesn't create a second one: it takes you to the existing reconciliation and says why. Upload the statement there instead. (A statement that starts on the day the previous one closed is fine.)
- Check the dates and balances Beeswax read. If any are wrong, open the actions menu and choose Edit: Statement Details lets you correct them.
- Beeswax matches the statement lines to your payments and ticks the ones it is sure of (marked AI). Tick each other transaction you find on the statement.
- Watch the Difference. When it reaches zero and every transaction dated in the period is ticked, the status turns green: Reconciled.
If the Difference won't reach zero, see Bank Reconciliation: when it won't balance.
The Status
Each bank reconciliation, and each month on the account's timeline, shows one of these statuses:
- 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.
- Counted twice (red) — the Difference is zero, but a ledger entry ticked here is also ticked on another statement. One entry can only be one bank transaction, so the other bank line has nothing in your books behind it. The bank reconciliation lists the entry: use Release bank line to send that line back to the Bank Feed, then allocate it to what it really is.
Beeswax won't tick an entry on a second statement, or match a manual journal or bank transfer to a second bank line unless the lines add up to its amount.
A payment shows its own badge on the invoice, expense or payment it belongs to:
- Reconciled — allocated from a bank feed line, ticked on a bank reconciliation, or proven by the bank's balance (see Accounts on a bank feed).
- Unreconciled — neither yet.
A payment allocated from a bank feed line has its amount, date and bank account locked to that line; unallocate the line to change them. A payment that is only ticked on a bank reconciliation can still be changed: the change is logged against the statement and emailed to the account owner and accountants. Anything in a tax period that has been lodged, or dated on or before the lock date, stays locked whatever its bank status.
When a balanced reconciliation still disagrees with the ledger
A reconciliation compares the statement with the transactions you ticked on it. It does not compare the statement with the ledger, so every reconciliation can balance while the account's ledger balance differs from the bank's. The usual cause is one entry ticked on two statements: the statements count that money twice and the ledger counts it once.
Beeswax won't tick an entry that is already ticked on another statement, and it won't match a second bank line to a manual journal or bank transfer. If a bank line looks the same as one already matched, it's a separate transaction: record it. The year-end review lists any older double ticks under the bank account's check.
Bank balances
Every time a bank feed syncs, Beeswax keeps the balance the bank reported, and each statement's closing balance counts too. When a statement PDF has been read, the running balance printed beside its lines counts as well, so the statement checks every day it has a transaction on, not only its last. Beeswax checks the ledger against each of them (one per day, the latest that day) and shows "N of M bank balances agree" on the bank account's reconciliations, on each reconciliation and in the year-end review. Balances from before the account's first entry are not compared; the day before it is checked against the opening balance.
When one disagrees, an entry is missing, recorded twice or dated wrongly somewhere between the last balance that agreed and the first that doesn't, so you only need to look at those few days. The reconciliation table and the General Ledger show a Bank column beside the balance: the bank's balance after each line, with a tick where it agrees and red where it doesn't (hover to see which balance it came from). A dash means no bank balance follows that line yet.
A bank feed account whose every balance in the year agrees, through the first one after year end, counts as reconciled at year end without a statement upload. Beeswax only reports these differences; it never changes the ledger. Foreign-currency accounts aren't checked yet.
Missing statements
The bank account's reconciliations page lists what is missing from its statements, and marks the same stretches on the yearly bars:
- No statement for a stretch of days. Dashed red on the bar. Add the statement that covers it.
- Two statements that don't chain. One closes on a balance the next doesn't open on, so a statement between them is missing or one of the two was entered wrongly. A red line marks where.
- A statement PDF that could not be read. Open it and upload it again.
A bank feed stands in for a statement: a month needs no statement when the feed's next balance agrees with the ledger and none in the month disagrees. So an account on a feed is asked for statements only for the time before the feed began, or where the bank and the ledger disagree. A statement is not asked for until two weeks after its month ends. Nothing is shown when nothing is missing.
Accounts on a bank feed
An account whose bank feed is running (the bank has reported a balance in the last 31 days) has no bank reconciliations to do: the feed supplies every line, and the bank's balance is checked against the ledger at every sync. Its page shows the balance check and, under Statements, only the statements it already has or is still missing from before the feed began. The bank accounts list shows a Bank Balance card in place of the reconciliation bars. Every month since the feed's first line counts as covered once a later balance agrees.
If the balance goes out, the page first says how many bank feed lines are not allocated yet: the bank's balance already counts them, so the ledger cannot agree until each is allocated, or matched to its entry if it is already in the books, and the page says when they account for the whole difference. Otherwise it names the days the difference lies between.
Two things are allowed for so the check doesn't cry wolf. A bank feed reports today's balance a few days before it sends the lines behind it, so a feed balance less than seven days old that disagrees is not counted yet; the page says so. And a feed line carries the day a card was used while the bank posts it a day or two later, so a balance also agrees when it is one the ledger held within three days either side. A difference that stays the same from balance to balance is not timing: the page names it and the first day it showed, and it is usually one entry. Check against a statement in the page's menu uploads that month's PDF to find the line the feed missed. If the feed stops, the account goes back to bank reconciliations until it is reconnected.
Everything dated up to the latest bank balance the ledger agrees with reads Reconciled, including a payment or journal typed in by hand: had anything been missing, doubled or wrong, that balance would disagree. A payment that is Reconciled this way only can still be edited (one allocated from a feed line or ticked on a reconciliation cannot, until it is unallocated or unticked). If an edit is wrong the balance goes out and the page says where. Nothing reads Reconciled this way until a balance agrees, and nothing dated after the last balance that agreed.
The Bank Feed shows one line when an account's ledger and the bank disagree, with a link to this page.
How Beeswax Helps
- Statement processing — upload the statement PDF and Beeswax matches its lines to your payments and ticks the ones it is sure of
- Why doesn't this reconcile? — a panel that lists what is missing, unticked or outside the period, and does the sum for you
- Change alerts — if a payment ticked on a statement is later changed or deleted, Beeswax logs it against that statement and emails the account owner and accountants
- Red and green — Reconciled is green and Unreconciled is red, on the reconciliation and on the account's timeline
Note: If there is a Difference, review your transactions carefully. Common causes include missing payments, duplicate entries, or transactions recorded with the wrong amount.