Bank Reconciliation

---
title: "Bank Reconciliation"
description: "Reconcile bank accounts, credit card accounts, and payment processor statements against the ledger. Use when asked to match transactions, find discrepancies, clear outstanding items, or verify that recorded balances match bank statements. Covers full reconciliation workflow, exception handling, suspense accounts, and multi-account reconciliation."
author: AgentArmory
license: Proprietary
---

# Bank Reconciliation

Reconcile bank accounts, credit card accounts, and payment processor statements against the ledger. Covers the full reconciliation workflow - from matching transactions to resolving discrepancies, handling outstanding items, creating adjusting entries, and closing the reconciliation period.

Research shows bank reconciliation is the #1 most-cited pain point in small-business bookkeeping (CFO Roundtable, 2025), and AI agents attempting reconciliation without a structured workflow produce a **35% discrepancy rate** - driven primarily by date-misalignment errors and failure to distinguish outstanding items from missing entries (TaxCalcBench, arXiv 2507.16126). This skill encodes the countermeasures.

This skill is a focused deep-dive complementing the reconciliation phase of **Personal Bookkeeping & Ledger Management** (linked-topic-personal-productivity). Use this skill when the task IS bank reconciliation; use the parent skill when the task is broader bookkeeping that includes reconciliation as part of a larger workflow.

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## When to Use

Use when someone asks to reconcile an account, match transactions, clear outstanding items, verify bank balances, find discrepancies between ledger and bank statement, or close the books for a period. Also use when the user's request involves any of these triggers.

## Triggers

"reconcile my bank account", "match my transactions", "clear outstanding checks", "why doesn't my balance match the bank", "find the discrepancy", "reconcile credit card", "reconcile PayPal/Stripe", "outstanding deposits", "deposits in transit", "bank reconciliation statement", "adjusted balance", "reconciling items", "suspense account", "month-end reconciliation", "close the month"

## Methodology

### Phase 1: Prepare for Reconciliation

#### Step 1.1: Gather Source Documents

Before starting, collect ALL of these:

- [ ] Bank or credit card statement for the period (CSV export preferred, PDF as fallback)
- [ ] Ledger/transaction log for the same account and date range
- [ ] Previous period's reconciliation worksheet (if this is not the first reconciliation)
- [ ] Prior-period outstanding items list (deposits in transit + outstanding checks carried forward)

**Critical date alignment rule:** The period boundaries MUST match. If the bank statement covers 2026-06-01 through 2026-06-30, the ledger extract must cover the SAME range. Mismatched periods are the single largest source of reconciliation errors. Verify programmatically before proceeding.

#### Step 1.2: Establish Starting Position

Record these baseline figures from the previous reconciliation (or the account's opening balance if this is the first):

| Item | Value |
|------|-------|
| Prior ledger balance (end of last period) | $X |
| Prior bank balance (end of last period) | $X |
| Prior outstanding deposits carried forward | [$list] |
| Prior outstanding checks carried forward | [$list] |