Completing the bank account reconciliation

When your bank statement file has been imported, and if you have automatic matching turned on, the status for each bank statement line has been updated to indicate if further actions are needed or if the line has already been matched with a ledger entry.

Before you can post the reconciliation, all bank statement lines must be matched with a ledger entry and have a status "Completed." In many cases, Banking Import automatically finds a match based on various pre-configured matching criteria and your custom configuration of Banking Import. When a perfect match isn’t found, Banking Import helps you out by generating a list of the most likely ledger entries, referred to as Payment Application Proposals.

Depending on the exact status of the line, you need to either manually solve matching issues or review and accept any found payment application proposals by the system. It all depends on the status of the line. In the example above, you can see the following statuses:

• Unsolved: This status indicates that no direct match was found, for example, if no payment application proposals was found or if you have not yet applied the bank account ledger entries. This status requires additional investigation before completion, but Banking Import supplies all the available information for you to quickly make a manual match.

• Pending Cash Receipt/General/Payment Journal: This status indicates that a payment application proposal has been generated and applied for the bank statement line. This triggers a journal line to be created in the appropriate journal assigned to the bank account reconciliation. To complete this matching process, you need to review the proposal and post the line in the journal.

• Related Party Matched: This means that a the bank statement lines are partially matched but need further investigation. The system has identified an account (customer, vendor, or employee) but couldn't find corresponding ledger entries.

For a complete overview of what each status means and suggestions for how to complete the match, please refer to the article The Reconciliation Statuses in the Bank Account Reconciliation

Payment Application Proposals

Based on the import and matching setup for reconciliation, Continia Banking not only identifies perfect matches, but also potential matches between the bank statement lines and ledger entries. These potential matches are called Payment Application Proposals and they assist you in quickly finding and applying the correct match.

On the Bank Account Reconciliation page, the number in the Proposals column indicate how many Payment Application Proposals have been found for the line and if they haven't been applied automatically, you can manually select and apply them.

In instances where a Payment Application Proposal is automatically created, and the statement amount matches the remaining ledger entry amount, the automatic application takes place without user intervention. In the following example, you can see that 6 proposals have been found for the second to last line. Since the status of the line is Pending Cash Receipt Journal, you also know that the proposal lines have already been matched and created as journal lines and ready to be posted.

Even if no immediate proposal is found for a line, you can still benefit from accessing the overview of application proposals overview when manually searching for a match.

For example, if you click the link in the Proposal column for the fourth line with the description "Relecloud", you'll see a list of ledger entries that partially match the customer. The match wasn't automatic because the amounts on the ledger entry and the bank statement differ. However, it's clear that the statement line can apply to the first two entries, so you simply select the two lines and close the page.

These are just a couple of examples of how to use the information gathered for you on the Payment Application Review page. Banking Import provides several options to help you find the right match. For instance, if you apply a reconciliation line with a ledger entry where the amounts don't fully align, Banking Import will notify you and offer to create a payment suggestion to account for the difference.

You can read more about the payment application proposals in the article Working with Payment Application Proposals on Continia Docs.

Matching rules

To continuously improve the automatic matching abilities of Banking Import, you can define search rules to assist in identifying accounts based on specific text criteria. These rules are particularly useful for recurring entries such as interests or fees.

You can create rules manually from the Search Rule page in which case you have to manually add all the information.

Or, you can create a search rule based on a specific bank statement line during reconciliation. This way, Banking Import assists you with automatically filling in the relevant information for the search rule based on the statement line you're working on.

In the example reconciliation above, you can see, in the Description column, that the second unsolved line is a bank fee. When you select the link in the Details column, you'll see all the text strings that Banking Import has identified for this statement line, one being "Bank fee".

Directly from here you can select Add Search Rule which opens up a new search rule with all the information automatically populated. All you have to do in this situation, is to specify which G/L account you want to apply the bank fee to and close the page.

Now the status changes to "Search Rule Matched", which means that the account type and account number specified in the search rule has been assigned to the bank statement line and it's ready for posting.

For more detailed information about the creating and using search rules, please refer to the article Introducing Search Rules

Post the bank account reconciliation

Before you can post your bank account reconciliation, all the journal lines that were automatically created during the reconciliation, must first be posted.

You can do this in one go from the action bar where you navigate to Journals > Post All Journal Lines. This only posts the journal lines that the specific reconciliation created.

Now all the lines should have the status Completed and you can post the bank account reconciliation from the action bar where you select Home, and then Post.

Scenario

Follow along in this video, where Lina reconciles a bank account from the Bank Account Reconciliation page. You'll see how she:

• Imports the bank statement file.
• Uses the payment application proposals to manually find matches.
• Creates search rules to improve the matching process in the future.
• Posts all the journal lines created during the reconciliation.
• Posts the reconciliation.

Other resources

• Optimizing Bank Account Reconciliation with integrated journal functionality (Continia Docs article)
• Working with Payment Application Proposals (Continia Docs article)
• Introducing Search Rules