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Skills / Starter / Reconcile a bank statement

Starter Money skill

Reconcile a bank statement

Reconcile bank activity to accounting records while identifying timing differences, missing entries, duplicates, fees, and unauthorized transactions.

Preserve the original statement and prove the path from bank balance to book balance.

When to use

  • Use for periodic cash reconciliation, close support, audit evidence, or a suspected payment discrepancy.
  • Only post adjustments with the required accounting authority; reconciliation is not payment approval.

Procedure

  1. Save the original bank statement and record the account, currency, opening date, closing date, and statement balance.
  2. Confirm the prior reconciliation's adjusted balance and investigate any changed opening amount.
  3. Match deposits, withdrawals, transfers, card settlements, checks, and bank references to book entries.
  4. List deposits in transit and outstanding payments with dates, amounts, counterparties, and evidence of later clearance.
  5. Identify bank fees, interest, direct debits, returned items, foreign-exchange effects, duplicates, and missing entries.
  6. Escalate unfamiliar or potentially unauthorized activity through the approved fraud process without contacting a suspected party independently.
  7. Prepare proposed book adjustments with source evidence, account coding, date, and approver.
  8. Calculate the adjusted bank and book balances and require an exact reconciliation.
  9. Age unresolved items and prevent stale differences from rolling forward without an owner and deadline.

Worked example

The statement closes at $84,210 while the ledger shows $80,910. Matching finds a $4,000 deposit in transit, a $900 outstanding payment, a $200 bank fee not recorded, and no other difference. After the approved fee entry, adjusted bank and book balances both equal $83,310. The reconciliation report links every item and records when the timing items clear.

Related skills

  • Read an income statement — Interpret an income statement by tracing revenue, costs, margins, and period changes back to their definitions and source evidence.
  • Reconcile a purchase order — Match a purchase order, receipt, invoice, and approval trail before payment or correction.
  • Read a cash flow statement — Read a cash flow statement by tracing operating, investing, financing, noncash, and foreign-exchange movements back to balance-sheet change.