Reconcile

The check that makes the books an assertion about the world rather than an internally consistent story. A trial balance that foots proves the bookkeeping is arithmetically sound. Reconciliation proves it matches the bank.

Hard gates

• State the difference for every account, including the zeros. A report listing only the problems hides every account nobody looked at. The zeros are the evidence.
• Where there is no statement, say "cannot check" and why. Never 0.00. An unchecked account and a checked account that agrees are not the same thing and must never render the same.
• Never plug. If an account is out by 41.18, the report says 41.18. An entry written to make that disappear is the single clearest sign of books that cannot be trusted.
• A reconciliation you cannot reproduce is not one. Every difference names the statement it was measured against.
• Record the last month each account reconciled clean. It is what tells the queue apart from the feed offering back a month that already closed. Without it, a re-download reads as work to do and booking it double-counts a period somebody signed off. See scope-the-year.

Run it

python3 bin/books.py reconcile --profile profiles/mine.local.json --from 2025-01-01 --to 2025-12-31

One row per account per month: book balance, statement balance, difference, and the statement it used. Two summary lists come out of it, and they are different problems:

• Unreconciled: a real difference. Something is missing, duplicated or mis-dated. Work these.
• Unchecked: no statement for that account-month. Get the statement, or record why it does not exist.

With no statements at all

This runs with an empty statements/, and that is worth doing on day one. Every cell reads "cannot check", which is not a failure of the tool: it prints every account's book balance on its own side and names every account-month somebody has to go and get, then prints the statement request at the end. Do not send an owner away to collect documents before showing them this.

Balances read as a magnitude and a side, 3,118,447.25 Cr, the way the trial balance prints them, and never as a negative number. The difference column keeps its sign, because a difference is not a balance.

Under the table is the wrong-side list. Any account holding a balance on the side opposite its normal one, what it usually means, and the document that settles it. That list frequently contains the most important thing in the engagement, and it is a different question from whether an account reconciles.

Working a difference

Look in this order, because this is roughly the frequency order:

1. A timing difference at the period edge. A deposit in transit or an uncleared payment. Real, and it resolves next month.
2. Something in the feed still sitting in For Review. Not yet booked.
3. A duplicate. The same transaction entered by hand and also accepted from the feed. Very common in a catch-up.
4. A transfer booked as income or expense, so it hit the P&L instead of moving between two accounts.
5. A wrong sign or a transposition. A difference divisible by 9 is the classic signature of two transposed digits.
6. A mis-dated transaction, often a mistyped year, which moves it out of the period entirely.

Then reconcile inside QuickBooks too

This skill produces the evidence. QuickBooks' own reconcile screen produces the record: the state the accountant, the lender or the buyer will look for. Once an account and month agree here, reconcile it there, and the account is done.

What good looks like

Twelve months by however many accounts, every cell filled, every difference either 0.00 or explained by name. Coverage stated as n of N.