Reconciliation

Reconciliation answers one question: do your books match the bank? In Equated, every bank and credit account reconciles on its own schedule — its own statement dates, monthly or quarterly or whenever statements arrive. There is no shared “close date”; each account carries its own proof.

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Why it’s necessary

The bank feed keeps your books current, but a feed is a convenience copy, not the truth. Feeds drift: a transaction goes missing or arrives twice, something stays pending, a transfer between your own accounts gets counted as income, a row sits uncategorized and never reaches the ledger. The statement is the only record the bank stands behind. Until you’ve proven an account against a statement, its balance is an estimate — and estimates compound quietly into your reports, your taxes, and every decision made from them. A reconciled account is one where you can say, with evidence, “these books were right through this date.”

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Statement vs books

For each account, Equated rolls the books forward from the last proof:

• Expected = last verified balance + everything posted since
• Difference = statement closing balance − expected

A difference of zero means the account is proven through the statement date. A nonzero difference means something is missing, duplicated, or misfiled — the resolution tools help you find it. Two things keep the proof honest:

• Only confirmed transactions count toward the books, so you can’t reconcile past unreviewed work — completion is blocked while anything in the window is unconfirmed. That gate is per account, windowed to that account’s own statement dates: another account’s inbox never holds this one up.
• Completing a reconciliation freezes it. The figures you attested to never silently change, even as new activity arrives; the next reconciliation rolls forward from them.

After the opening, reconciling posts nothing to your ledger. It records that the books were right through a date, and holds them there.

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Opening balances

An account’s first reconciliation also opens it. During setup you confirm each account’s balance at the date your books begin, from a statement dated there, and everything the feed pulls from before that date stays out of the ledger. An account connected later joins at that same date, but you don’t go find its historical statement. Its opening balance is worked out backwards from a recent one: whatever the statement shows that the confirmed period can’t explain is what the account carried in. If the feed already covers the whole period there’s nothing to carry in, so the difference has to reach zero like any other statement. That makes the number diagnostic. Near zero means the feed carried the account’s whole history and nothing is missing. A real number is genuine pre-books history. On an account younger than your books, any number at all is worth investigating. Anything you can’t yet prove parks in Opening Balance Equity — a holding account for “money the books can’t explain yet.” Coming from another system with a full trial balance, it settles to roughly zero; a large leftover usually means a missed account. See Set up opening balances.

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What to review

Before reconciling, Equated flags common issues:

• Bank feeds that are stale or disconnected
• Bills and invoices that belong in the period but are still in the inbox
• Internal transfers that need to be paired
• Unpaid bills or uncollected invoices that should be closed
• Receipts that need to be linked

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Transfers

Internal transfers have two bank legs. Money leaves one account and arrives in another. Equated pairs them and categorizes both to the transfer account. For multi-currency transfers, Equated handles the currency gain or loss. A non-zero balance usually means one leg is still missing or in transit.

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Bills and invoices

Bills and invoices are accrual items. Confirming them posts the payable or receivable. When cash moves, you close them by linking the payment or collection. Partial payments leave the document partly paid. Multi-currency payments can create currency gains or losses. Short payments can be written off with an adjustment.

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What works today

Per-account reconciliation end to end: opening balances, statement entry, difference resolution (confirm, add from statement, adjust), completion, and undo. AI assistants can run the whole flow from a statement PDF over MCP. Future features: period locking and accepted-discrepancy adjustments.