Reconciling, Start to Finish

Reconciling a bank account proves that your books and your bank agree. In Arcus it happens in three stages, always in this order:

1. Set the start point once for each account: a baseline.
2. Work the bank lines as they arrive: every line gets its record.
3. Close each month against the bank statement, oldest month first.

You need permission to view accounting to look, and permission to post accounting to change anything. If you have never connected a bank, read How Bank Feeds Work first.

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Before You Start

• The bank account exists on Finance > Close & Reconcile > Bank Reconciliation and its card shows the right GL account. If the link is wrong, a reconciliation can look clean while the books are wrong.
• A bank feed is connected and mapped (recommended). You can reconcile without one, but you then enter every line yourself.
• Your bank statements, or the bank’s monthly statement PDFs, are at hand for the month-end step.

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Stage 1: Set the Start Point (Baseline)

A baseline tells Arcus: “everything on this account up to this day is already settled.” From then on Arcus only asks you about what happens after that day. You set it once per account, before your first month-end close. Click Set baseline on the account card. The wizard has three steps. The short checklist is Set the Start Point.

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Step 1: Pick the Day and the Balance

• Baseline (anchor) date: the day you are starting from. Usually the last day of a month, just before you began keeping these books in Arcus.
• Real bank balance at that date: the closing balance printed on your bank statement for that day. Not the ledger balance. On a credit card or line of credit the field reads Balance owed at that date: enter the amount owed, as a positive number.

When a feed is connected, Arcus shows a Suggested balance from your bank feed (on a card, Suggested balance owed from your bank feed): the bank’s current balance minus the activity after your chosen day. Click Use this to take it, or type the statement figure. If a pending item sits after that day, Arcus shows two readings, with and without it; use the one that matches your statement.

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Step 2: Preview

Arcus shows what the baseline will do:

• GL lines to mark reconciled: every unreconciled ledger line on this account dated on or before the day.
• Feed lines to close: every bank line dated on or before the day. They are closed under the baseline, not excluded: they are real bank events whose money is already inside the balance you entered.

If some of those bank lines are already in your books, Arcus says so and suggests matching them first. That is optional but better: a matched line keeps the link between the bank and the entry. Two pickers let you hold things back:

• Keep GL lines open (in-transit checks / deposits): a check you wrote before the day that the bank had not paid yet, or a deposit you made that the bank had not credited yet. These stay open so they can clear in your first month. This is the only control that changes the variance.
• Keep bank feed lines for review: bank lines before the day that you still want to look at. They stay in For Review. This does not change the variance.

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Step 3: Apply

Click Apply baseline. Before writing anything, Arcus proves the arithmetic:

Posted GL balance at the day, minus the kept-open total, equals the cleared-ledger balance. The cleared-ledger balance must equal the bank balance you entered.

If the two agree to the cent, the baseline applies. If they do not, Arcus shows the Variance with every figure behind it and does not apply. When there is a variance, fix the books, not the baseline. A variance means your ledger and the bank disagreed on that day. The usual causes are:

• A check or deposit before the day that the bank had not cleared yet: keep it open in the picker.
• A bank charge, fee or transfer before the day that was never recorded: record it, dated on or before the day, then apply again.
• A typing slip in the balance: check it against the statement.

There is also a box: Accept this variance and apply anyway (recorded on the baseline session). Use it only when you know what the difference is and have decided to carry it. The difference stays in your books, and the baseline cannot be redone from this screen to fix it later.

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What Applying Does

• Marks the ledger lines on or before the day as reconciled.
• Closes the bank lines on or before the day, except the ones you kept for review.
• Stamps the day and balance on the account; the card shows a Baseline badge, and Reconciled through shows the day.
• Adds a completed session for the day to Completed periods.
• Posts no journal entries. Nothing is deleted.

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Stage 2: Work the Bank Lines

Every bank line after the baseline needs its record. Open Finance > Close & Reconcile > Bank Transactions, pick the account, and work the For Review tab. Each line shows what Arcus thinks it is and offers the right action: Work the inbox every day or every week. A line that is matched or recorded is cleared. If you chose wrong, Undo on the Categorized tab (it reads Unmatch for a line matched to a record that already existed) puts the line back in For Review; a few records, such as a receipt already applied to invoices or an entry in a closed period, are corrected where they live instead. For the full list of actions and what each one posts, see Bank Transactions.

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Stage 3: Close Each Month

When every line for a month has its record, close the month against the statement. The short checklist is Close a Month.

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Start the Session

On the account card, click Start reconciliation.

1. Statement date: the last day the statement covers.
2. Ending balance: the closing balance on the statement. On a credit card or line of credit the field reads Ending balance owed: enter the amount owed as a positive number.
3. Notes (optional), such as the statement month.
4. Click Begin reconciliation.

When the bank feed can work out the account’s balance for the statement date you picked, any date, a box below the balance shows it, headed Balance on the date from your bank feed (on a card, Balance owed on the date from your bank feed), with one line saying how Arcus worked it out. Use this copies it into the ending balance field, and the button then reads In use. It is a cross-check, not the statement: if the two differ, type the closing balance from your statement. Pull latest balance appears only when the statement date is today, and it reads today’s balance only. If something is worth a second look, such as no baseline yet, an ending balance of $0.00, a feed that needs attention, or a previous month that closed with a difference, Arcus asks you to confirm each item before it opens the session. Confirming posts nothing.

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Read the Difference

The top of the workbench always shows five figures: The difference is bank-side arithmetic. It compares the statement’s ending balance with the opening balance plus the cleared bank lines dated after the opening day and on or before the statement date. It does not read your ledger balance. So a difference means one of three things:

• A bank line in the period is not cleared yet. Find it on To match and give it its record.
• The ending balance was typed wrong. Fix it with Edit details.
• The opening balance is wrong, because an earlier month closed with a difference.

Pending lines never count, and a line dated on or before the opening day is never counted twice.

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Clear What Is Left

The workbench has four lanes: To match, Suggested, Matched and Excluded. On To match, select a bank line and the ledger entries that add up to it, then click Match, or use the line’s own actions. Suggested lists matches Arcus proposes, each with a confidence chip; read each one, then accept them one at a time or several at once. See Bank Reconciliation for every control on the workbench.

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Complete

Click Complete.

• At $0.00 the dialog reads Ready to complete. Click Complete reconciliation. Arcus marks the cleared lines and their ledger entries reconciled and posts nothing.
• With a difference, the dialog says by how much. You can tick Complete anyway (record the difference as unreconciled). This is a last resort. The gap is stamped onto that month and does not carry into the next one: the next month opens from the statement balance, so the gap will never resolve itself. It stays visible under With differences in Completed periods, and the next session warns about it. Fix it with an adjusting journal entry, or better, find the line and finish at $0.00.

If you need to stop, leave the session open and come back with Resume. Cancel session unwinds the session’s own matches and posts nothing.

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Completed Periods

Every completed month appears under Completed periods on the hub, with its statement date, statement balance, recorded difference and completion time. A completed month is locked: its figures are what you agreed to, and later changes elsewhere never move them. To correct a completed month, post an adjusting journal entry.

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Keep to This Order

• Lines first, then the month. Closing a month before its lines are worked only produces a difference to chase.
• Months in order. Each month opens from the month before it, so close January before February.
• One account at a time is fine. Each account has its own baseline and its own months.

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