Bank Reconciliations

Here is a support article in Markdown format that documents the Bank Reconciliation feature of your Bench accounting application. It is designed to be clear, helpful, and suitable for the support portal.

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Bank Reconciliation in Bench

Bank Reconciliation is a vital process that ensures the transactions recorded in your cashbook match your external bank statements. Bench provides a simple and structured way to manage this process accurately.

👉 Read this article online

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📌 What is Bank Reconciliation?

Bank reconciliation is the process of matching your companyΓÇÖs cashbook records to your actual bank statements. It helps identify:

• Transactions missing from the system (e.g. bank charges)
• Unpresented (outstanding) transactions
• Errors or discrepancies between your books and the bank

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🧭 How It Works

The reconciliation process in Bench follows these general steps:

1. Create a new reconciliation using BANK-RECON-#### as the identifier.
2. Select a bank account (cashbook) to reconcile.
3. Pull unreconciled entries from your system since the last reconciliation date.
4. Match entries from your cashbook to those in your bank statement.

5. Handle differences:

6. Add new entries for missing items (e.g., bank fees).

7. Mark entries as presented to indicate they appear on the statement.
8. Leave unmatched ones as unpresented for future reconciliation.
9. Enter the bank statement balance and verify that it matches the system-calculated closing balance.

You cannot submit the reconciliation until the statement difference is zero.

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🗂 Fields on the Reconciliation Form

Header Fields

Field	Description
Cashbook	The bank account to reconcile.
Reconciliation Date	Date of the statement you're reconciling.
Opening Cashbook Balance	System balance at the start of the period.
Statement Balance	Balance per bank statement at the reconciliation date.
Closing Cashbook Balance	Automatically computed system balance.
Statement Difference	Difference between system and statement closing balances. Must be zero to submit.

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Transaction Table

Bench will display a table of cashbook transactions with the following columns:

Column	Description
Date	Transaction date.
Description	Narration from the system.
Credit / Debit	Value of the transaction.
Presented	Mark this if the transaction appears on the statement.
(Hidden) Entry	Reference to the internal general ledger entry.

You can edit the Presented checkbox to indicate whether a transaction appears on the bank statement.

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📎 Special Notes

• Transactions not marked as presented are considered unpresented and can be pulled forward to the next reconciliation.
• You can manually add missing entries (e.g., for bank charges) from the statement if they aren't in the system.
• If no transactions are marked as presented, you cannot submit the reconciliation.

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🔍 How Bench Calculates Balances

Bench uses the following logic during validation:

closing_cashbook_balance = opening_cashbook_balance + sum(presented.debit - presented.credit)

The Statement Difference is:

statement_difference = statement_balance - closing_cashbook_balance

If the difference is not zero, Bench will prevent submission.

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✅ Submission Rules

You can only submit a reconciliation when:

• At least one entry is marked as presented.
• The Statement Difference = 0.

Otherwise, you'll receive a validation error.

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💡 Example Use Case

LetΓÇÖs say your last reconciliation was on June 30. On July 31, you:

• Select your main bank account.
• View all unreconciled entries since July 1.
• Tick off the entries visible on the July bank statement.
• Add a bank charge of \$10 thatΓÇÖs missing from the system.
• Enter the statement balance from the bank.
• If the statement difference is zero, submit the reconciliation.