Bank Reconciliation

Bank reconciliation is the process of matching transactions from your bank statement against entries in your general ledger. This ensures that your books accurately reflect your actual bank activity and helps you catch discrepancies early.

Why Reconcile

• Confirm that every bank transaction has a corresponding entry in your books.
• Identify missing entries, duplicates, or errors.
• Detect unauthorized transactions or bank fees you may have missed.
• Maintain accurate cash balances for reporting.

Accessing Bank Reconciliation

Navigate to Accounting > Bank Reconciliation. Select the bank account you want to reconcile and the date range to work with. Kraal displays two side-by-side lists:

• Unmatched bank transactions — items from your bank statement that have not yet been linked to a ledger entry.
• Unmatched ledger entries — entries in your books that have not been linked to a bank transaction.

The Matching Workflow

Auto-Matching

When you open the reconciliation view, Kraal's AI scans for likely matches based on:

• Amount — transactions with the same value.
• Date — transactions occurring on or near the same date.
• Description — text similarity between the bank description and your ledger entry remarks.

Suggested matches are highlighted for your review. You can accept a suggestion with a single click or dismiss it if the match is incorrect.

Manual Matching

If a transaction is not auto-matched, you can match it yourself:

1. Select a bank transaction from the left panel.
2. Find the corresponding ledger entry in the right panel.
3. Click Match to link them together.

You can also match one bank transaction to multiple ledger entries (or vice versa) when a single bank movement corresponds to several bookkeeping entries.

Creating Missing Entries

Sometimes a bank transaction has no corresponding entry in your books — for example, a bank fee or an automatic payment you forgot to record. In this case:

1. Select the unmatched bank transaction.
2. Click Create Entry.
3. Kraal opens a pre-filled journal entry form with the amount and date from the bank transaction.
4. Select the appropriate accounts, review the details, and submit.
5. The new entry is automatically matched to the bank transaction.

Reconciliation Status

Each transaction pair moves through the following statuses:

Status	Meaning
Unmatched	The bank transaction or ledger entry has no corresponding match yet.
Matched	A match has been identified (auto or manual) but not yet confirmed.
Reconciled	The match has been confirmed and the reconciliation is complete.

Best Practices

Reconcile Regularly

Perform bank reconciliation at least once a month, ideally after all transactions for the period have been posted. Waiting too long makes it harder to investigate discrepancies.

Work Oldest-First

Start with the oldest unmatched transactions and work forward. Older items are more likely to represent genuine issues that need attention.

Investigate Variances

If a bank transaction amount does not exactly match a ledger entry, investigate before forcing a match. Common causes include:

• Bank fees or interest that were not recorded.
• Partial payments or split transactions.
• Timing differences where a payment was recorded on a different date.
• Data entry errors in the original booking.

Post Before Reconciling

Make sure all invoices, payments, and journal entries for the period have been submitted before you begin reconciliation. This minimizes the number of unmatched items and reduces unnecessary investigation.

TIP

Use the reconciliation view as a health check for your books. A clean reconciliation with zero unmatched items at month-end is a strong indicator that your accounting is accurate.