Bank Reconciliation is how you prove your books agree with the bank. For each statement period you match the transactions the bank reports against the entries in your general ledger, account for anything that appears on only one side, and finish when the difference between the two is zero. include GO gives you a side-by-side workspace for this, with automatic matching, coding rules, and a full report at the end.
This guide walks through the whole workflow: getting bank transactions into the system, starting a reconciliation, matching and allocating, excluding items that don't belong, completing (and undoing) a reconciliation, reviewing history and reports, building bank rules, and the special charge-coding workspace for credit cards.
Where to Find Bank Reconciliation
From the main sidebar, click Finance. In the Finance section tab bar, click Cash & Credit, then choose the Reconcile tab.
Navigation path: Dashboard → Finance → Cash & Credit → Reconcile
If you have no accounts yet, the tab points you to the Accounts tab first — you need at least one bank or credit card account before you can reconcile. See Cash & Credit Manager for adding accounts.
Getting Bank Transactions into the System
Reconciliation matches bank transactions against your entries, so the bank's side has to be in the system first. There are two ways:
Connected accounts (Plaid) — if the account is linked through Plaid, transactions sync in automatically. Use Sync Transactions on the Accounts tab to pull the latest feed before you start.
Imported statements (OFX / QFX / CSV) — for accounts without a live feed, click Import Statement on the Transactions tab and upload a statement export from your online banking. OFX and QFX files are read automatically; for CSV files you match your file's columns to Date, Description, and Amount (plus optional Check # and Reference). Imported batches are listed below the register, where a bad import can be excluded or deleted and re-imported.
Starting a Reconciliation
Pick your account from the Account dropdown at the top of the Reconcile tab (the account's current balance shows beside it). If the account has no reconciliation in progress, a banner appears — click Start Reconciliation.
In the dialog, grab your bank statement and fill in:
Fiscal period — the open accounting period this statement belongs to. (If no periods are open, the button is disabled — open one first under Fiscal Periods.)
Statement date — the ending date printed on the statement.
Statement balance — the ending balance printed on the statement. This is the number you're reconciling to.
Notes (optional) — any context worth keeping.
Click Start Reconciliation. The two-grid workspace opens.
The Reconcile Workspace
The workspace is two grids side by side under a Match Transactions header:
Bank Feed (left) — the bank's transactions for the period, with Date, Description (plus the payee underneath), Reference, Type, and Amount. Badges flag special rows: Rule means a bank rule recognizes the transaction, and Possible duplicate means it looks like a copy of another entry.
GL Lines (right) — your posted general ledger lines for the account, up to the statement date.
Between the header and the grids a running tally shows Bank matched/total, GL matched/total, and the current Difference. Rows change color as you work: matched rows turn green, allocated rows turn blue, and excluded rows turn gray with a strikethrough.
Matching transactions
Matching links a bank transaction to the GL line (or lines) that record it. Amounts on the two sides must balance.
Select one or more rows in the Bank Feed grid and the matching row(s) in the GL Lines grid.
Right-click and choose Match to selected GL line(s) (or, from the GL side, Match to selected bank line(s)).
One bank line can match several GL lines and vice versa — useful when one deposit covers several receipts. Made a mistake? Right-click a matched row and choose Unmatch to unlink the group.
Quick Match — automatic matching
Right-click either grid and choose Quick Match. The system automatically pairs bank and GL lines it is confident about (matching amounts and dates) in one pass. Run it first, then work through what's left by hand — on a well-kept account, Quick Match usually clears most of the list.
Allocating a transaction to the GL
Some bank transactions have no GL entry to match — a bank fee, an interest payment, a charge nobody recorded. Instead of leaving the workspace to write a journal entry, allocate it:
Right-click the bank transaction and choose Allocate to GL…
Pick the GL Account to code it to (required), and optionally a Project, Task, and Description.
Click Allocate.
The transaction turns blue — the entry is staged and will post when the reconciliation completes. If a bank rule recognized the transaction, the dialog opens pre-filled with the rule's account, project, and task. To take a staged allocation back, right-click the row and choose Remove allocation.
Applying bank rules
Click Apply bank rules in the workspace header to run your rules across the unmatched bank lines in one sweep. Rules set to Auto-Confirm stage their allocations immediately; rules set to Suggest mark their rows with a Rule badge and pre-fill the Allocate dialog instead. (Creating and managing rules is covered in the Bank Rules section below.)
Excluding a transaction (and undoing it)
If a bank transaction doesn't belong in this reconciliation at all — a duplicate from an overlapping import, or an entry you'll deal with elsewhere — right-click it and choose Exclude / dismiss…. Enter a Reason (required) and click Exclude. The row is struck through and stops counting toward the difference; it stays in the ledger and in view so there's always a record.
Changed your mind? Right-click the excluded row and choose Restore — it becomes active in the reconciliation again.
Completing the Reconciliation
The Reconciliation Summary panel below the grids tracks the finish line:
Beginning Balance — where the account started (the prior reconciliation's ending balance).
GL Balance (as of statement date) — what your books say.
Statement Balance — what the bank says.
Difference — shows Balanced in green at zero, or Out of Balance in red with the remaining amount.
When the difference is zero, click Complete Reconciliation. The reconciliation is marked Reconciled, matched transactions are locked to this statement, and any staged allocations post to the general ledger.
Completing with a small adjustment
If a small difference remains — under your configured adjustment threshold — a second button appears: Complete with adjustment…. Confirming writes the leftover amount off to the configured adjustment account and completes the reconciliation. A zero-difference completion never posts an adjustment, so use this only for genuinely immaterial residue, not as a shortcut past an unexplained gap.
Cleared vs. reconciled — what gets locked
While a reconciliation is in progress, matches, allocations, and exclusions are staged — you can undo any of them freely. Once you complete it, those transactions are reconciled: they're locked to that statement, the account's Last Reconciled date updates, and the ending balance becomes the beginning balance of the next reconciliation. Setting a reconcile lock date on the account additionally protects transactions from closed periods being edited.
Undoing a completed reconciliation
Right after completing, the Reconcile tab offers an Undo / Unreconcile button for the most recently completed reconciliation. It reopens the reconciliation so it can be edited again — but read the warning before you confirm: later reconciliations rely on this one's ending balance for their beginning balance, and any GL entries that already posted are not reversed. Undo is for fixing a just-made mistake, not for rewriting history.
History and the Reconciliation Report
Click History next to the account picker to open the Reconciliation History dialog — every reconciliation for the account with its statement date, balances, and status (Draft, In Progress, or Reconciled), each with a link to its report.
Click Open Report (in the summary panel or from History) to open the Reconciliation Report in a floating window you can move, resize, or minimize while you keep working. The report shows:
Balance Summary — beginning balance, statement balance, and the adjusted GL balance.
Cleared & Allocated Items — everything matched or coded in this reconciliation.
Outstanding Checks — recorded payments that haven't hit the bank yet.
Discrepancies — anything that still doesn't line up.
Click Download PDF to save a copy — auditors and lenders love these.
Bank Rules
Bank rules teach include GO to recognize recurring transactions and code them for you. They live on the Rules tab of Cash & Credit Manager (visible with the bank-rules permission).
The grid lists each rule's Name, Source (Manual — you created it; Learned — the system built it from allocations you made while reconciling), Direction, GL Account, Apply Mode, Priority, and Active status.
Creating a bank rule
Click Add rule and fill in:
Name (required) — e.g. "Monthly bank fee".
Account — restrict the rule to one bank account, or leave as All accounts.
Direction — Money In, Money Out, or Any.
Apply mode — Suggest pre-fills a match for you to confirm; Auto-Confirm stages the allocation automatically.
Conditions (required) — one or more tests on the transaction: pick a field (Description, Payee, Merchant Name, Check Number, Reference, Category, or Amount), an operator (Contains, Equals, Starts With, Between, Greater Than, Less Than), and a value. Check Match all conditions to require every test, or uncheck it to fire on any one.
GL account (required) — where matching transactions get coded, with optional default Project and Task.
Priority — when several rules could match, lower numbers are evaluated first.
Click Create rule. From then on the rule works in three places: it badges matching rows in the reconcile workspace, it powers the Apply bank rules sweep, and Auto-Confirm rules stage allocations on their own as transactions come in.
Rules learn from you. When you allocate transactions by hand during reconciliation, the system can turn the pattern into a Learned rule automatically — so the second month's reconciliation is faster than the first.
Reconciling Credit Cards — the Charge Coding Workspace
When the selected account is a credit card, the Reconcile tab swaps the two-grid workspace for a Code Charges workspace. Instead of matching bank lines to existing GL lines, you code each charge on the statement to a vendor and GL account (or match it to a purchase order), and the coding posts when the reconciliation completes.
The grid shows each charge's Date, Merchant, Description, Amount, and the coded Vendor, Project / Task, and GL Account, plus a Status badge: Uncoded, Suggested (a rule or merchant match proposed a vendor), Coded, Matched to PO, Payment (a card payment, which pairs off against the bank side), or Excluded. Drag the Merchant column into the grouping bar to work merchant by merchant — each group shows its charge count.
Coding a charge
Right-click a charge and choose Allocate…
Pick the Vendor (you can create one inline), an optional Project and Task, the GL Account, and an optional GL Description. Suggestions from bank rules or merchant-name matches come pre-filled.
Click Save Coding.
Select several charges from the same merchant and right-click to get Allocate Selected (n)… — one coding applied to all of them at once. To re-code a charge, choose Remove coding first, then allocate again.
Matching a charge to a purchase order
If the charge paid for something you ordered through Purchasing & Payables, right-click it and choose Match to PO… instead of coding it. The dialog lists candidate purchase orders for the vendor — pick one and click Match to PO. Each charge matches to exactly one PO, and the dialog warns you if the charge exceeds the PO's open balance.
Finishing a card reconciliation
The footer tracks Statement Balance, Coded, and Remaining, with an uncoded count while work is left. When every charge is coded (Remaining at zero), click Complete Reconciliation — the codings post and the statement is closed. Charges that don't belong can be right-clicked and Excluded, just like on the bank side.
Who Can Do What?
Reconciliation duties are split across separate permissions, so you can let a bookkeeper match transactions without letting them close the books:
Matching transactions — matching, allocating, and excluding in the workspace.
Completing reconciliations — the Complete / Complete with adjustment buttons.
Undoing reconciliations — the Undo / Unreconcile action.
Bank rules — viewing the Rules tab and managing rules are gated separately.
Imported statements — deleting import batches has its own permission.
By default these belong to Super Admin and Accountant roles. See Roles & Permissions.
Tips & Best Practices
Sync (or import) before you start. Begin every session with fresh bank data so you're not matching against a stale feed.
Quick Match first, then hand-match the rest. Let the automatic pass do the boring 80%.
Never force a balance. If the difference won't reach zero, find out why — the usual suspects are an outstanding check, a missing entry, or a transposed amount. The adjustment write-off is for immaterial residue only.
Exclude with a reason, don't ignore. The required reason on every exclusion is your future self's audit trail.
Reconcile monthly, in order. Each reconciliation's ending balance feeds the next one's beginning balance — skipping around breaks the chain.
Download the report PDF when you complete. A dated snapshot at close beats reconstructing one later.
Common Questions
The difference isn't zero — what do I look for? Check the tally above the grids: unmatched bank lines mean the bank has something your books don't (allocate it), unmatched GL lines mean your books have something the bank hasn't cleared yet (an outstanding check is normal — it shows on the report). Also scan for Possible duplicate badges from overlapping imports.
What's the difference between matching and allocating? Match links a bank transaction to a GL entry that already exists. Allocate creates the GL entry for a bank transaction that was never recorded — you pick the account, and it posts when the reconciliation completes.
Can two people reconcile the same account at once? The workspace protects itself — if someone else matches or excludes while you work, your next action refreshes the workspace to the latest state instead of overwriting theirs.
I completed a reconciliation by mistake — can I undo it? Yes, right away: use Undo / Unreconcile on the Reconcile tab. It reopens the most recent reconciliation, but posted GL entries are not reversed, so review the staged work carefully before completing again.
Why is the Complete button disabled? Either the difference isn't zero yet, or you don't have the completion permission. On credit cards, every charge must be coded before you can complete.
Where do allocations post? To the general ledger, against the GL account you chose, when the reconciliation completes. You can see them in GL Entries & Transactions.
Related Topics
Cash & Credit Manager — Accounts, transactions, and statement imports
GL Entries & Transactions — Where matched and allocated entries live
Chart of Accounts — The accounts allocations and rules code to
Fiscal Periods — A reconciliation belongs to an open period
Purchasing & Payables — Match credit-card charges to purchase orders
Roles & Permissions — Who can match, complete, and undo