Bank Reconciliation Process

The bank reconciliation is the most important financial control in Aedon.Accounting. It proves that the bank nominal account in your ledger agrees with what has actually gone in and out of your bank. Reconcile little and often, so that only a few items are ever outstanding and any differences are easy to investigate.

In Aedon.Accounting you reconcile by working through the lines on your bank statement (the bank feed) and linking each one to the transaction it represents. When every line is reconciled, your Statement Balance and Nominal Balance should agree.

Before you start

• Your bank statement lines must be in Aedon.Accounting, either from an automated bank feed or imported from a file. See Importing a Bank Statement.
• You need access to the Aedon.Bank app.

Open the reconciliation screen

1. Click the App Launcher (the grid of dots, top left) and open Aedon.Bank.
2. Click the Bank Accounts tab and open the bank account you want to reconcile.
3. Click the Reconcile tab⁽¹⁾.

The summary bar at the top of the bank account⁽²⁾ shows where the reconciliation stands:

Field	What it tells you
Last Reconciled	The date a statement line was last reconciled on this account.
Last Refresh	When the bank feed last brought in new statement lines.
Unreconciled Bank Feeds	The number of statement lines still to reconcile.
Unreconciled Ledger Entries	Transactions posted to this bank’s nominal code that are not yet linked to a statement line, for example a payment you have recorded that has not yet cleared the bank.
Statement Balance	The balance according to the bank statement lines.
Nominal Balance	The balance of the bank’s nominal code in your ledger.
Matching Criteria	Whether automatic matching compares the Description, the Amount, or both.

Understanding the Reconcile tab

1. Filters: narrow the list by List View (All, Matched or Unmatched), date range, bank code, description, amount, transaction or internal notes, then click Filter. Click Clear Filter to show everything again.
2. Refresh Match: compares the unreconciled statement lines with your unpaid invoices, existing payments and bank matching rules, and suggests a match for each line.
3. Matched To: shows what Aedon has matched each line to:
   • Payment: an existing payment or bank transaction.
   • Invoice: an unpaid sales or purchase invoice.
   • Rule: one of your bank matching rules.

   The Transactions column next to it shows the matched record, account and date. Lines with nothing in this column have no match yet.

4. Actions: the options for lines that need to be matched manually.

Step 1: Refresh the match

Always click Refresh Match before you start, as the screen prompts you to. This picks up any invoices, payments or rules created since the last time the match ran. The screen refreshes itself when the match has finished.

Step 2: Reconcile the matched lines

1. For each line with a green Matched To button, check the Transactions column to make sure the suggested match is correct: the right account, reference and date.
2. Click the green button (Payment, Invoice or Rule) to reconcile that line.

Aedon confirms with Reconciled Successfully. Click Okay, and the line leaves the list.

What happens depends on the type of match:

• Payment: the statement line is linked to the existing payment or bank transaction, and both are marked as reconciled.
• Invoice: Aedon creates the Sales Payment or Purchase Payment against the invoice, and reconciles it to the statement line.
• Rule: Aedon creates the Bank Payment or Bank Receipt defined by the rule, and reconciles it to the statement line.

Step 3: Deal with lines that have no match

For any line without a match, click the arrow in the Actions column.

Create a Rule

Use this for regular transactions that don’t have an invoice, such as bank charges, wages, pensions or direct debits. A rule creates the bank transaction for you and will match future lines automatically. See Bank Matching Rules.

Match to Payment

Use this when the payment or bank transaction is already in Aedon but was not matched automatically, for example because the amount or description is different, or because one statement line covers several payments.

1. If necessary, use the filters⁽¹⁾ to find the transaction. The Amount is filled in with the statement line amount, and you can also search by account, transaction type or reference. Click Filter to apply them.
2. Tick the transaction or transactions that make up the statement line⁽²⁾. Transactions for exactly the same amount as the statement line are highlighted in green.
3. Check that Sum of Selection equals the statement line amount and that the Difference is 0.00⁽³⁾. Sum of Selection turns from orange to green when the amounts agree.
4. Add any Internal Notes if needed, then click Reconcile⁽⁴⁾. The button only becomes available when the difference is zero.

Match to Invoice

Use this when a customer has paid a sales invoice, or you have paid a supplier’s purchase invoice, and no payment has been recorded yet. When you reconcile, Aedon creates the Sales Payment or Purchase Payment for you.

The window works in the same way as Match to Payment. The Transaction Type⁽¹⁾ is set for you: SI (Sales Invoice) for money coming into the bank, or PI (Purchase Invoice) for money going out. Find and tick the invoice or invoices, check that Sum of Selection is green and the Difference is 0.00⁽²⁾, and click Reconcile.

If you have a lot of invoices to pay or receive in one bank line, use Bulk Payments first and then reconcile the payments with Match to Payment. See Creating a Bulk Sales Payment or Creating a Bulk Purchase Payment.

Add Notes

If you can’t resolve a line straight away, for example while you query it with the bank, use Add Notes to record why. The note appears in the Internal Notes column, and you can filter by it, so the next person reconciling knows what’s happening.

If the transaction isn’t in Aedon yet

If a line is for something not yet recorded, such as a one-off bank payment or a transfer between your own accounts, create it from the Bank Payments, Bank Receipts or Bank Transfer tab in Aedon.Bank and post it. Then return to the Reconcile tab and click Refresh Match, or use Match to Payment.

Step 4: Check the reconciliation is complete

Reload the bank account so the summary bar is up to date. The bank is fully reconciled when:

• Unreconciled Bank Feeds is 0, and
• Statement Balance equals Nominal Balance.

If there are no unreconciled items but the two balances still don’t agree, Aedon highlights the balances in red. This usually means a transaction has been posted to the bank nominal code without going through the bank, for example a manual journal, or that the opening balance is wrong. Check the Unreconciled Ledger Entries count and the Ledger Entries tab to find it.

Still not balancing? If you have worked through these checks and the help articles and still can’t find the difference, please raise a case and our support team will help you investigate.

Undoing a reconciliation

If you reconcile a line to the wrong transaction, you can unreconcile it:

1. On the bank account, click the Bank Feeds tab.
2. If necessary, use the filters to find the statement line and click Filter. This is most useful when you are looking for an older line or have a lot of statement lines.
3. Click the arrow at the end of the row and choose Unreconcile.

The line’s status changes back to Unreconciled, and it returns to the Reconcile tab, still matched to the same transaction. You can then reconcile it correctly.

The Bank Feeds tab is a line-for-line copy of your bank statement, whether it comes from the automated bank feed or a manual upload. It shows each statement line alongside its reconciliation status against the bank’s nominal code in Aedon. You can also import, add or export statement lines from here.

Good practice

• Don’t edit imported statement lines. They should match the bank statement exactly, so that there is a clear audit trail. Fix the transaction in Aedon instead.
• Investigate differences promptly. Small unexplained differences become much harder to trace as time passes.
• Use rules for repeating items. The more lines your rules match, the quicker each reconciliation becomes.

Related articles

• Importing a Bank Statement
• Bank Matching Rules
• Match to Payment
• Matched to Invoice
• Bank Account