Close a Month (Start Reconciliation)

Closing a month proves that a bank or card account in Arcus agrees with one bank statement. You enter the statement’s last day and its ending balance; Arcus compares it with the bank lines you have cleared; you complete the period when the difference is $0.00. How this fits with the start point and the daily review: Reconciling, Start to Finish.

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Before You Start

• The account has a start point. If Set baseline is still on the card with no Baseline badge, do Set the Start Point first.
• The month before this one is completed. Close months in order.
• Work For Review in Bank Transactions for the month first. The fewer lines left, the faster the close.
• Have the statement. You need its last day and its ending balance.
• You need permission to post accounting.

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Start the Session

1. Open Finance > Close & Reconcile > Bank Reconciliation.
2. On the account’s card, click Start reconciliation. If a session is already open, the card shows Resume instead; click it to carry on where you left off.
3. Statement date: the last day the statement covers.
4. Ending balance: the ending balance printed on the statement. On a credit card or line of credit the field reads Ending balance owed: type the amount owed as a positive number.
   • When the bank feed can work out the balance for the statement date, whatever the date, a box below the field shows it, headed Balance on the date from your bank feed (on a card, Balance owed on the date from your bank feed), with a line saying how it was worked out. Use this copies it into the field; the button then reads In use. It is a cross-check, not the statement: if the two differ, type the closing balance from the statement.
   • Pull latest balance appears only when the statement date is today and the account has a bank feed. It fills in the balance the bank reports right now.
5. Add Notes if useful, such as the statement month.
6. Click Begin reconciliation.

If something is worth a second look (an ending balance of $0.00, no start point, a feed that is connected but has no lines, a feed that needs attention, a prior period that closed with a difference), Arcus shows Confirm before starting with a box for each item. Tick each one and click Open session anyway. Ticking only records that you saw it; nothing is posted.

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Read the Five Figures

The workbench opens with five figures across the top: **What $0.00 means.** The Difference compares the bank's own statement with the bank lines Arcus holds: the opening balance plus the lines cleared after the opening day and on or before the statement date. Pending lines never count. A$0.00 says every bank line in the period is accounted for and nothing is missing or extra. It does not read your ledger’s balance; your ledger agrees because each line was cleared against a record in your books. When a difference remains, it is usually one of these: a bank line still in To match, a line that belongs to a later statement, or an ending balance typed wrong. For example, when one deposit of $640.00 is still waiting in To match, the Difference is exactly$640.00.

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Clear What Is Left

The workbench has four tabs:

• To match: bank lines not cleared yet on the left, ledger cash entries not cleared yet on the right. Tick one bank line and the ledger entries that make it up, then click Match. Each bank line also has Match payout, Match customer (money in) or Match AP (money out), Details and Actions, the same actions as in Bank Transactions.
• Suggested: matches Arcus proposes, each with a confidence chip. Read each one, then accept it, or tick several and accept them together.
• Matched: what is cleared in this session. Unmatch puts a pair back in To match.
• Excluded: lines that are not business transactions in this account. Manage them in Bank Transactions.

The window above the tabs reads Showing activity since a date. Click Show all history to see older lines too.

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Complete

1. Click Complete.
2. At $0.00 the window reads Ready to complete. Click Complete reconciliation.
3. If a difference remains, the window is titled Reconciliation has a difference and shows the arithmetic. Complete reconciliation stays unavailable until you tick the box Complete anyway (record the difference as unreconciled); clicking it then completes the period with the gap written on it. The gap does not carry into the next month and will not fix itself: find it, or post an adjusting journal entry for it.

Completing posts nothing to your books. It marks the period’s lines as reconciled and locks the period. If a printed check was expected to clear and could not, Arcus still completes and lists it under Checks that did not auto-clear; fix each one from the Check Register.

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Edit or Cancel a Session

• Edit details changes the statement date, the ending balance, the opening balance or the notes while the session is open.
• Cancel session asks you to confirm, then undoes the session with no effect on your books: bank lines matched in this session go back to For Review. Lines you matched or recorded in Bank Transactions stay matched. You can start again right away.

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After You Complete

The period appears under Completed periods at the bottom of the hub, with its statement date, statement balance, difference and status. Open it to see what was cleared. A completed period is Read only: its figures are the ones agreed at completion and later changes never move them. To correct a completed period, post an adjusting journal entry. The account card’s Reconciled through moves to the statement date. Start the next month the same way.

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