Reconciling the bank in QuickBooks or Xero
Match the bank feed to your books, deal with the transactions that will not match, and finish with a balance that agrees.
Reconciling means proving that what your accounts say matches what the bank says. With a live bank feed most of it is a series of confirmations.
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Check the feed is up to date
Open the banking screen and refresh the feed. If the last transaction is more than a couple of days old, the connection may need reauthorising — banks require this every 90 days under open banking rules.
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Work through the suggested matches
The software proposes a match for each line. Confirm the ones that are right rather than clicking Accept All — a wrong automatic match is much harder to find later than to prevent now.
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Categorise the unmatched items
For anything with no invoice behind it — bank charges, fuel, subscriptions — pick the expense account and the correct VAT rate. Set up a rule for the ones that recur so they categorise themselves next time.
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Deal with part payments and lump sums
When one payment covers several invoices, use Find Match and tick every invoice it covers. For a part payment, record it against the invoice and leave the balance outstanding rather than writing it off.
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Run the reconciliation report
Enter the closing balance and date from your bank statement. The difference must be zero. If it is not, look for duplicated transactions and for payments entered manually as well as coming through the feed.
Tip: A difference that is exactly divisible by 9 is often a transposed figure — 45 typed as 54.
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Lock the period
Once it balances, set a lock date in the settings so nobody can edit last month underneath you.
Common questions
Duplicate transactions appeared after reconnecting the feed.
Reconnecting sometimes re-imports an overlap period. Select the duplicates in the For Review tab and exclude them — do not delete the originals you already matched.