What Do You Need to Reconcile a Bank Statement? Checklist

Quick Answer: To reconcile a bank statement you need four things: the statement itself (with its opening and closing balance), your own record of the account for the same period (ledger, register or accounting software), last month's finished reconciliation, and the paperwork behind anything unusual, such as deposit slips and the list of checks you wrote. With those in hand, the easiest way is to reconcile monthly, match by amount, and work from a transaction file instead of retyping the PDF.

Gathering the right records before you start is what separates a twenty-minute reconciliation from an afternoon of hunting. You compare two independent lists of the same money, so you need both lists for exactly the same dates, the figure where last month left off, and enough source documents to explain any line that appears on only one side.

The core documents

These are non-negotiable. Without any one of them the reconciliation either cannot start or cannot be trusted.

Check that the statement and your records cover identical dates. Many banks close statements mid-month (the 17th to the 16th, for example), and the books are usually kept on calendar months. Reconcile to the bank's cutoff, not the calendar's.

One detail people skip: confirm the statement's opening balance equals the closing balance on the previous statement. If it does not, you are missing a statement, or the bank issued a corrected one.

What supporting records should you have on hand?

These are the papers you reach for when a line does not match. Having them nearby saves you from stopping halfway to dig through email.

• Deposit records. Deposit slips, mobile-deposit confirmations, or remittance advice showing which customer payments made up each deposit. Banks report one total; your books may show five separate receipts.
• Check stubs or a check list. Number, date, payee and amount for every check written. This is how you spot a check cashed for the wrong amount or one that has been outstanding for months.
• Card and processor payout reports. Stripe, Square, PayPal and similar processors pay out net of fees. The payout report reconciles the gross sales in your books to the single smaller deposit at the bank.
• Loan and payroll schedules. Automatic payments for loans, payroll and taxes often hit the account without a matching receipt. Their schedules confirm the amounts and dates.
• Fee schedule from the bank. Useful when a charge appears that nobody recognizes, such as a wire fee or a paper-statement fee.
• Transfer confirmations. Movements between your own accounts must appear on two statements; the confirmation tells you which.

The IRS makes a related point in its guidance on recordkeeping for small businesses: transactions generate supporting documents, and those documents hold the information you record in your books. A reconciliation is where you discover that one of those documents never got recorded, so keep them filed by month alongside the statement.

What do you need if you reconcile in software?

Accounting software changes the list slightly. You still need the statement's ending date and ending balance, which you type into the reconciliation screen. You do not need a separate register, because the software is the register. But you do need:

• Access rights that allow reconciling; some programs limit this to admin or accountant users.
• Confirmation that the bank feed is current through the statement end date, or a file of transactions to import if it is not.
• Knowledge of how imported items were categorized. A transaction that came in through a feed but was never accepted or matched will not be available to tick.

If there is no bank feed, or the feed broke for a few months, the transactions have to come from the statements themselves. Many banks offer a CSV or QFX download for recent activity, and that is the simplest source when it covers the dates you need. For older months that are only available as PDFs, QuickBankConvert turns the statement into CSV or Excel rows, and the Plus plan adds a QBO file for QuickBooks. You download the statement from your bank yourself and upload only the file; there is no bank login involved. The QuickBooks integration page covers the import side.

What is the easiest way to reconcile a bank statement?

The tools matter less than the habits. These are the ones that consistently shorten the job.

1. Reconcile every month, soon after the statement arrives. One month of activity is a short list. Six months at once means you are matching hundreds of lines and trying to remember why a $212 transfer happened in February.
2. Clear the obvious items first. Recurring debits (rent, software subscriptions, loan payments) match on sight. Tick them off and the remaining list shrinks to the lines that need thought.
3. Sort both sides by amount. Dates drift: a check written on the 3rd may clear on the 11th. Amounts do not. Sorting both lists by amount lines up matches regardless of timing.
4. Work from a transaction file, not the PDF. Scrolling a PDF and ticking items in software is where errors creep in. A spreadsheet of the bank's rows can be sorted, filtered and compared with formulas. Our guide to reconciling in Excel shows a layout that flags unmatched lines automatically.
5. Record bank-only items as you find them. Service charges, interest and returned items appear first on the statement. Enter them in your books during the reconciliation, not afterwards.
6. Carry forward the open items deliberately. Checks still not cashed should be listed on this month's report. Ones that are months old need follow-up; see how outstanding checks are treated.
7. Save the evidence. File the statement, the reconciliation report and any notes together. Next month's reconciliation starts from this one.

Which approach is the best way to reconcile bank accounts?

There is no single best method; it depends on volume and on how the transactions reach your books.

• A handful of transactions a month (a personal account or a very small business): a paper or spreadsheet worksheet is perfectly adequate. Tick each line on the statement against your register and compute the adjusted balances.
• Dozens to a few hundred transactions with a live bank feed: use the reconciliation tool in your accounting software. The feed puts the bank's lines in front of you and you confirm them.
• Feed gaps, catch-up work or many client accounts: convert the missing statements to a file first, import, then reconcile in the software. A bookkeeper catching up a year of statements for several clients spends far less time when every statement becomes a file of rows. The bookkeepers page describes how Pro's batch upload and client labels fit that workflow.

Whichever method you use, the logic is the same as in the bank statement reconciliation guide: adjust the bank side for timing items, adjust the book side for items only the bank knew about, and make the two adjusted figures agree.

A pre-flight checklist

Before you open the reconciliation screen or a fresh worksheet, run down this list.

• Statement downloaded for the correct account and period, all pages present
• Statement opening balance equals last statement's closing balance
• Last month's reconciliation finished, with zero difference
• Outstanding items list from last month at hand
• Bank feed or imported transactions current through the statement end date
• Deposit detail and processor payout reports for the period
• Check register or list of checks written
• Loan, payroll and tax payment schedules if those debit the account
• Twenty uninterrupted minutes

If a statement is password-protected, have the password ready too. Most bank PDFs open without one, but some banks protect statements with a code built from details such as your date of birth or account number, and any tool you use to read the file will ask for it. QuickBankConvert prompts for the password on upload, and the file must be 4.4 MB or smaller.

Related guides

• Bank statement reconciliation guide
• Bank reconciliation in Excel
• When a bank reconciliation doesn't balance
• PDF to Excel for bank statements