The bank reconciliation
Confronting your bank statement with your transactions: importing a CAMT.053 or a CSV, understanding items in transit, matching a line, and what to do when nothing matches.
Without reconciliation, your accounting is a declaration: it says what you recorded. With it, it becomes proof: every line of your statement is confronted with a transaction, and whatever does not match is named instead of disappearing.
That is the difference between accounts a board must take on trust and accounts it can verify.
Creating a bank account
- Open Finance, then Bank.
- Click Add an account: a label is enough ("Belfius current account", "Sunday cash box").
Note: we never ask for your IBAN. Sanctumel does not hold your money and does not access your bank: you export and import your own statements. That is a guarantee, not a gap.
Importing a statement
The import happens in three steps: we say what is accepted, we show you what the file contains, then we save.
- Click Import a statement.
- Read the accepted formats.
- Drop your file, or click to choose it.
- Check the preview: period, closing balance, lines to import, duplicates skipped, first lines.
- Confirm.
Nothing is saved before you confirm. The preview is produced by the same code as the import: same errors, same figures. What you see is what will be written.
Tip: the first figure to check in the preview is the closing balance. It must match your paper or online statement exactly. If it differs, you did not export the right period, and it is better to know that before writing 300 lines.
The two formats, and why they are not equal
CAMT.053 is the European standard. It carries a unique reference per transaction and a balance certified by your bank. It is the format to prefer: the balance it states is proof, not a deduction.
CSV helps out when your bank exposes no CAMT. Columns are recognised by name, in any order: a date column, and either a signed amount or separate debit and credit columns. It almost never carries balances, so we derive them from the last known balance.
The screen tells you which of the two you imported, because the evidential value is not the same.
Note: the Belgian CODA format is not supported. It is fixed-width with per-bank variants; implementing it halfway would produce silently wrong statements. Every Belgian bank also exports CAMT.053: ask yours, it exists.
Note: importing the same statement twice, or two overlapping statements, adds no duplicate line. The system recognises transactions already known and tells you how many it skipped.
The equality the screen checks
| Your statement balance | 12,690.00 |
| − receipts recorded, not yet credited | − 300.00 |
| + payments recorded, not yet debited | + 200.00 |
| = expected book balance | 12,590.00 |
The two middle lines are items in transit: a cheque deposited on Friday, a transfer sent on the 31st. They are not errors. They explain the gap between your statement and your accounts, and the screen presents them as such.
What remains after them, however, is a real anomaly: a statement line with no transaction is money that moved without anyone recording it.
Tip: a gap that persists to the cent over several months is almost always a bank fee never recorded. Look for a small regular amount before redoing everything.
Matching a line
Click Match next to an unexplained line. The system proposes the transactions that could correspond, ranked by score, with the reason for each score: close amount, same day, reference found, counterparty recognised.
Warning: the score never applies anything on its own. You validate. A wrong but automatic match is far worse than a slow one: it gives the feeling that your accounts are proven when they have just been dressed up.
The amount is a necessary condition, never a sufficient one: two tithes of 50 on the same Sunday do happen. It is the date and the description that tell them apart, and it is you who decides.
When no transaction matches
This is the most frequent case, and there is nothing abnormal about it: it simply means the statement line does not yet have its equivalent in your records. Three causes, in order of frequency.
1. The transaction was never recorded. A bank fee, a direct debit, an incoming transfer nobody was told about. That is the most common case.
The move: go to Finance, record the missing transaction with the date and amount from the statement, then come back and match.
2. The transaction exists, but with an amount or a date too far off. A tithe recorded at 50 when the transfer was 50.50, or dated Sunday when the bank posted it Tuesday. The system does not propose it because it does not guess.
The move: correct the transaction in Finance so that it reflects banking reality, then come back.
3. The line should not be matched at all. An internal transfer between two of your accounts, a bank adjustment, a line belonging to a year already closed.
The move: click Set aside.
What "Set aside" does exactly
Setting a line aside removes it from the count of lines to explain, without deleting it and without creating any accounting entry.
- The line stays visible in the imported statement.
- It is no longer counted as an anomaly.
- You can bring it back at any time.
Warning: setting aside is not "filing without action". Only set a line aside if you can say why it has no counterpart. A line set aside out of weariness is money that moved and that nobody will look for again.
Common mistakes
- Importing a statement and stopping there. The import matches nothing: it brings the material. Reconciliation is the move that follows.
- Setting lines aside in bulk to bring the counter to zero. The counter is an indicator, not a target. A zero obtained that way lies.
- Matching on amount alone. That is how one member's tithe is attributed to another, and the year-end tax receipt reveals it publicly.
- Waiting until December to reconcile everything. An unexplained line is found in two minutes in the same month, and in two hours eleven months later.
Tip: reconcile once a month, just before closing the month. That is the natural order: you prove, then you freeze.
Printing it
The bank reconciliation statement prints from Finance, Bank. It carries the same letterhead as the other accounting printouts, and it states at the bottom whether every statement line corresponds to a transaction.
That mention prints even when all is well. It is what gives the document its value before an auditor.