Bank Reconciliation

Use Bank Reconciliation to prove that a bank or card account’s balance in Arcus agrees with what the bank itself reports. Run it at the end of every statement period, or any time cash activity needs a formal review. Viewing the screen needs the accounting view capability; matching, completing, and setting a baseline need the accounting post capability, so a read-only role can look at the workbench but cannot change it.

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Prerequisites

• A bank or card account set up in Arcus and linked to the correct general ledger cash account.
• A bank feed connected (recommended, not required) so transactions import automatically.
• Everyday cash, check, deposit, payout, fee, and journal activity posted before you sit down to reconcile.
• A reconciliation baseline set on new accounts before their first real statement period (see below).

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Open Bank Reconciliation

Go to Finance > Close & Reconcile > Bank Reconciliation, or search Bank Reconciliation in the command palette. The page has three tabs:

• Reconciliation: the hub described below, with one card per bank or card account.
• Bank Feed: the review inbox for downloaded bank lines. See the Bank Transactions article.
• Account health: a read-only audit of one account, described later on this page.

The hub opens with four tiles: Bank accounts, In progress, Completed, and With differences. Completed and With differences are clickable and jump to the completed-periods history at the bottom of the page, filtered accordingly. If a tile’s read fails, it shows Not loaded rather than a false zero, with a retry banner above the accounts grid.

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First-time setup

A brand new entity sees a guided path instead of an empty grid: Add a bank account, then Connect a bank feed (through Plaid) and Map accounts, then Set a baseline, then Reconcile. The wizard tracks which step you are on and its button always does that one next thing.

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Account cards

Each bank or card account is one card, showing:

• The account name, institution, and last four digits, with a feed health indicator (connected, needs attention, or no feed).
• GL account, Last sync, For review (the count of bank lines still waiting in the inbox), and Reconciled through (the later of the last completed statement date or the baseline anchor).
• A Reconciliation in progress banner with the statement date and match count when a session is open on the account, with a Resume button.
• Action buttons: Start reconciliation (hidden while a session is in progress), Review transactions (opens the Bank Transactions inbox filtered to this account), Check this account (opens Account health for this account), and Set baseline.
• A Baseline badge with its date once a baseline is set.

Set baseline is disabled while a session is in progress on that account, with the reason shown on the card: resume and cancel the open session first. A new account with no feed and no baseline shows a one-line nudge to connect a feed, map it, and set a baseline.

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Completed periods

Below the accounts grid, Completed periods lists every closed reconciliation for the entity: statement date, account, statement balance, recorded difference, completion time, and status. Filter to All or With differences. A difference does not carry into the next period on its own: the next session’s opening balance seeds from the statement balance, so an unresolved gap has to be corrected with an adjusting journal entry or by reopening that period’s own investigation.

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Set a baseline first

A baseline is a one-time cutover anchor per account: it tells Arcus that everything up to a chosen date is already settled, so you are not asked to reconcile history that predates using Arcus for this account. Click Set baseline on an account card. The wizard has three steps.

1. Inputs. Pick the Baseline (anchor) date, usually the day before live bookkeeping started in Arcus, and enter the real bank statement balance for that date. When a bank feed is connected, Arcus offers a Suggested balance from your bank feed, derived from the live Plaid balance minus activity posted after the anchor (or, if the bank does not answer, from the balance at the last sync); click Use this to accept it, or type the statement figure yourself. If pending items are sitting after the anchor date, Arcus shows both readings and lets you use either one, since banks differ on whether pending items count toward what they report as current.
2. Preview. Arcus shows how many GL lines will be marked reconciled and how many feed lines will be closed under the baseline (never excluded: excluding a line says it never happened, while closing it says its money is already inside the anchor balance). If some of those feed lines are already tied to entries in your books, Arcus flags it and suggests matching them first, though you can proceed either way. Expand Keep GL lines open to pick specific in-transit checks or deposits that should stay open (only this list moves the variance), and Keep bank feed lines for review to leave specific feed lines in the review inbox instead of closing them (this does not change the variance).
3. Apply. Click Apply baseline. Arcus proves the cleared ledger balance equals the entered bank balance before writing anything; if there is a variance, it shows the math (posted GL balance, kept-open total, cleared balance, entered balance, variance) and you either adjust your Keep-open picks or tick Accept this variance and apply anyway, which is recorded on the baseline session. Applying posts zero journal entries; it only marks lines reconciled, closes pre-anchor feed lines, and stamps the anchor on the account. Any bank line already matched to a record is adopted into the baseline automatically; one you chose to keep open is honored; a matched line with nothing behind it is deliberately left alone so you can still find it on the Categorized tab.

A baseline can only be set once per account through this wizard; changing an existing anchor requires a separate, gated correction.

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Start a reconciliation

Click Start reconciliation on an account card (or Resume if a session is already open).

1. Enter the Statement date, the last day the statement covers.
2. Enter the Ending balance from the statement. On a credit card or line of credit, the field reads Ending balance owed and takes the amount owed as a positive number. If the account has a bank feed, click Pull latest balance to fill it in from Plaid.
3. Add Notes if useful, such as the statement month.
4. Click Begin reconciliation.

If starting raises something worth double-checking, Arcus shows Confirm before starting with one checkbox per item: an ending balance of $0.00, no reconciliation baseline set, a feed that is connected but has no transactions, a feed that needs attention, or a prior period that closed with an unresolved difference. Tick each box and click Open session anyway; confirming only records your acknowledgement and posts nothing. If a session is already open on the account, the dialog says so and points you to Resume on the account card instead.

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The match workbench

Opening or resuming a session replaces the tabs with the match workbench. At the top, the difference tracker always shows the opening balance, the cleared amount (matched to GL, plus lines categorized straight from the review inbox), the reconciled balance, the statement ending balance, and the Difference, the number you are driving to $0.00. If the prior period closed with an unresolved gap, a banner names it and explains that the gap is absorbed into this session’s opening balance and will not resolve on its own. The cleared amount counts only lines dated after the date the opening balance is as of. A bank line dated on or before that day, which was still open when the opening balance was set (kept for review at a baseline, or left unmatched by a period that closed with a difference), can still be matched or booked in this session and is filed under it, but it is not counted a second time: the opening balance already holds its money. So the difference still reaches $0.00 when everything is explained, and you will not see a$0.00 statement fail by exactly the amount of one old line. On a live (in-progress) session, four lanes are available: To match, Suggested, Matched, and Excluded. A completed or cancelled session shows only Matched and Excluded, marked Read only, because every verb that could change history is refused by the server.

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To match

Two panes: unmatched Bank transactions on the left, unreconciled GL cash entries on the right. Select one bank line and one or more GL entries with matching totals, then click Match. Filter bank lines to All, Deposits, or Withdrawals. Each bank row also offers direct verbs, so a transaction does not need a GL counterpart to clear:

• Match AP (outbound lines): opens Match to AP, which lists candidate printed checks and AP payments, scored and ranked, plus (only when nothing ordinary matches) payments recorded on a different bank account with a Move to this bank and match option that re-points the payment and posts a dated correction. A bill paid by check shows one candidate, not two, and approving it clears both the bill payment and the check in one step.
• Match payout (inbound lines): opens Match to Marketplace Payout, listing Shopify, Stripe, Amazon, and eBay payouts already posted as journal entries. If the payout’s settlement correction would land in a closed accounting period, Arcus offers Match and leave the journal entry where it is or Leave it unmatched, and points you to Period Close to reopen the period if you want the correction dated correctly.
• Match customer (inbound lines): opens Match Customer Payment with two tabs. Recorded Payments matches to an already-posted receipt. Each receipt shows its books date, the day it was recorded, not the day it was stamped. Open Invoices proposes how the deposit splits across a customer’s open invoices, oldest first; picking Choose invoices and record hands off to the Receive Payment wizard with the bank line and the suggested split pre-filled, where you confirm or edit invoice by invoice and save; nothing is recorded until you do.
• Details opens the transaction detail view.
• Actions expands a tray with Create bill + payment or Record customer payment (matching the line’s direction), Record expense or Record income, Record transfer (or Link to recorded transfer when Arcus already sees the other half booked), and Exclude.

A receipt is not always a match you can make from here, and the list says why before you press Match:

• On a deposit ticket: “On (ticket): match the ticket.” The bank credits a ticket as one total, so this line belongs to the ticket, not to one receipt inside it, and matching the receipt would leave the ticket waiting in transit and count the money twice. In the workbench the row offers Open (ticket) to see which bank line it belongs to; where the Match Customer Payment window has a Deposits tab (on a bank review row), it offers Show ticket instead. If the ticket already shows as cleared, unmatch the line it is matched to first.
• Not yet deposited: “Still in Undeposited Funds (or Cash Drawer Pending Deposit, or External Clearing): no deposit ticket carries this receipt to a bank yet.” Build a deposit ticket from it, choosing the ticket’s date yourself, then match the ticket to this line. Build a deposit ticket from this receipt closes the window and opens the new deposit window on this line’s bank with the receipt’s check already ticked. Arcus never creates the ticket for you.
• Recorded on another bank: “Its own entry put the cash in (account); it cannot be matched to a line on (bank).” or “Deposited to (account) on (ticket); it cannot be matched to a line on (bank).” If the money really reached this bank, void the receipt (or the deposit) and record it again on this bank first. Where it is allowed, Move to this bank and match appears instead.

All three typed matchers include a manual search box plus Date window (up to plus-or-minus one year) and Amount tolerance (up to plus-or-minus $1,000) controls, for a counterparty that falls outside the default plus-or-minus 7 days and 5 cents.

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Suggested

Automatic matches by amount, date, and reference, each with a confidence chip. Approve one at a time with Review, or select several and click Accept N to apply them in bulk. With nothing to suggest, the lane says No suggestions right now.

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Matched

Two groups can appear: Matched to a record (lines cleared this session through a typed matcher such as Match AP or Match customer, each with Undo on Categorized, which opens the bank line on the Categorized tab where the undo actually lives) and Matched pairs (ordinary bank-to-GL matches, each with Unmatch to return both sides to the To match lane). On a closed period both groups are read only.

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Excluded

Read only here. Lines excluded from reconciliation (pre-baseline rows, migration duplicates, bank noise) are listed with their reason; Manage in review inbox opens the same lines on the Bank Transactions page, where they can be restored.

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Complete or hold a reconciliation

While a session is live, the workbench header offers Edit details (statement date, ending balance, opening balance, notes), Set baseline (only if the account has none yet), Cancel session, and Complete.

• Cancel session asks you to confirm, then fully unwinds the session with zero GL impact: matched bank-to-GL pairs return to the review inbox, deposit-level clears revert, and the session becomes history. Direct matches (Match AP, Match payout, Match customer) are payment-level facts and stay matched. You can start a new session immediately.
• Complete opens a summary. If the difference is $0.00, it reads Ready to complete; click Complete reconciliation. If a difference remains, tick Complete anyway (record the difference as unreconciled) to finish anyway; the gap is stamped on this period and does not carry forward automatically, so it needs a documented explanation or an adjusting entry.

Completing posts nothing to the general ledger by itself; it marks the covered lines and entries reconciled. If any printed checks were expected to auto-clear during completion and could not (most often because no bank was ever recorded for that check), Arcus finishes the reconciliation anyway and opens Checks that did not auto-clear, listing each check number and the reason. Until each one is fixed from the Check Register, the bank has paid it but the ledger still shows it outstanding, so the account will not tie cleanly on the next statement.

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What a completed period locks

A completed or cancelled reconciliation is history, shown with a Lock badge and Read only. Its stored figures (statement date, statement balance, opening balance, recorded difference) are exactly what was agreed to at completion, not a live recalculation, so later changes elsewhere in the books never silently move a closed period’s numbers. Edit details, Cancel session, Set baseline, and every match verb are unavailable. To correct a completed period, post an adjusting journal entry; the period itself cannot be reopened or re-completed from this screen.

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Check an account’s health

Click Check this account on a card, or open the Account health tab, to run a read-only audit of one account. Nothing here writes anything. Arcus answers, in plain language, as many as five questions and states outright which two it does not:

1. Does the feed reproduce the balance your bank reports? Compares the live bank-stated balance to what the feed implies, with a month-end table showing whether each period end is fully explained by open items.
2. The statement check. The one answer that needs your own statement PDF or figures.
3. Is any bank event here twice, or hidden? Counts excluded rows (system-suppressed duplicates from a prior connection versus rows a person excluded) and flags any bank event that is live more than once.
4. Do the books agree with the bank at each month end? Shows unmatched bank rows and uncleared book lines, and whether the account is anchored to a baseline or judged on raw movement.
5. Does each clearing account hold only money genuinely in flight? Lists clearing accounts fed by this bank account with their in-flight and unexplained balances.
6. Is any classic bookkeeping mistake present? Checks for a line matched to a reversed entry, a journal entry whose two lines hit the same account, a payment recorded on the wrong bank, a vendor paid twice, and a feed charge also booked from a bill.

The page states plainly that it does not search your books by amount for you (a judgment call) and does not set a baseline (the last step, once everything above agrees). Findings link directly to the screen that fixes them.

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Common scenarios

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No bank account appears

Click Add bank account, then link it to a GL cash account.

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The Plaid feed is empty

Review the connection on the Bank Feed tab and confirm sync timing; a feed with no transactions still lets you reconcile manually.

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The difference will not clear

Look for missing bank fees, duplicate feed rows, outstanding checks, timing differences, or an incorrect statement balance. Account health’s month-end table and duplicates check are the fastest way to isolate it.

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A verb seems to do nothing

Posting a match, applying a baseline, or completing a session requires the accounting post capability. If your role has view-only access to Finance, ask an administrator to grant posting rights before reporting a bug.

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