Bank Reconciliation

Verify that your locally-stored books align with your bank statement -- entirely offline, entirely on your machine.

Beginning a New Reconciliation

1. Click ✓ Reconciliation in the left sidebar
2. Every bank and credit card account is listed as a card - click the one you want to reconcile
3. At the top of the window, Kantivo displays when this account was last reconciled and the closing balance from that session - a quick sanity check that your new statement follows on from the old one
4. Provide the following from your paper or PDF bank statement:
   • Statement Date: The closing date printed on the statement
   • New Statement Ending Balance: The final balance the bank reports
   • Interest Earned (optional): any interest credited this period, along with the income account it should post to
   • Bank Service Charges (optional): any fees debited this period, along with the expense account it should post to
5. Press Begin Reconciliation to proceed

Recording Interest and Fees on the Start Screen

If you've reconciled in QuickBooks before, this will feel familiar. Amounts entered in the Interest Earned or Bank Service Charges boxes are booked as balanced journal entries the moment the session begins, and they arrive already ticked off in the reconciliation - there's no separate adjustment step afterward.

• Both boxes start at $0.00, so skip them whenever the statement shows no interest or fees
• Your chosen income and expense accounts are remembered and pre-filled the next time you reconcile
• Discover a charge mid-session instead? The Add Adjustment button inside the workspace handles it the same way

Auto-Reconcile by Dragging In Your Statement

Rather than entering the date and balance by hand and ticking off every line, you can let Kantivo Core AI do the heavy lifting:

1. In the reconciliation start window, drag your bank statement PDF onto the drop zone (or click it to browse)
2. Kantivo Core AI (powered by Claude from Anthropic) reads the statement and fills in the statement date and ending balance, and captures every posted transaction
3. Press Begin. Kantivo automatically selects the register transactions that match the statement lines and updates the running difference
4. Review the result. Any statement line Kantivo could not confidently match is reported so you can locate or add it

Clearing Transactions

Kantivo presents your uncleared entries split into two columns:

• Deposits / Credits: Inflows recorded in your books
• Checks / Debits: Outflows recorded in your books

Work through your bank statement line by line:

1. Identify the corresponding entry inside Kantivo
2. Click on it to flag it as Cleared
3. Watch the running "Difference" figure recalculate instantly as you check items off

Find an amount, tick from the keyboard

Reading down a paper or PDF statement is quickest without the mouse:

• Find amount or name -- the box at the top of the list. Type a figure from the statement (1275, 1,275.00 or $1275) and every line for that amount is highlighted, with the first one scrolled into view. A word matches a payee, memo or check number instead.
• Enter in the find box moves the cursor onto the match (press it again for the next one), and Space ticks it. / jumps back to the find box for the next statement line; Esc there clears the search.
• ↑ / ↓ move the cursor through the list and Space ticks or unticks the highlighted line.
• The Difference is also shown at the top of the list, so it stays in view while you scroll; it turns green with a ✓ at $0.00.

The existing shortcuts are unchanged: Enter (outside the find box) completes a balanced reconciliation, Esc saves it to resume later, and Ctrl+A selects everything. The list follows your Grid appearance settings.

Understanding the Totals

Five figures run across the top of the reconciliation window. Each one exists to answer a different question:

• Beginning Balance - the sum of every item reconciled on this account in prior periods. It should agree with the opening balance your bank shows. First time reconciling an account? Expect $0.00.
• Statement Balance - the closing figure you entered, or the one Kantivo Core AI lifted out of your uploaded PDF.
• Book Balance - the account's live value in your ledger, including items that have not cleared.
• Reconciled Balance - what the account becomes once your checked items are applied and anything still outstanding is held back.
• Difference - statement less reconciled. Get this to zero and Kantivo releases the Complete button.

Two Summary Bars, Two Jobs

Below the transaction columns you will find a blue bar and a grey bar. They are not the same number viewed twice:

• The blue Selected This Session bar counts only what you have ticked, and it keeps the inflows and the outflows on separate sides with a net figure alongside. Bank statements report deposits and withdrawals as two distinct subtotals, so keeping them apart here means you can check one side at a time rather than reverse-engineering a blended number.
• The grey Outstanding bar counts the opposite - the entries you left unticked, such as cheques that have not presented and deposits still in transit.

Reconciling a credit card or line of credit? Kantivo relabels these totals in balance-owed language - charges rather than payments, payments and credits rather than deposits - so the screen mirrors the card statement in front of you.

Resolving Differences

Entries on the Statement but Not in Kantivo

When your bank lists a transaction that does not appear in your records:

1. Press Add Transaction from within the reconciliation screen
2. Key in the missing entry's details
3. Kantivo marks the new entry as cleared right away

Amounts That Do Not Agree

If a transaction exists in both places but the dollar figures differ:

1. Look for data-entry mistakes such as transposed digits
2. Correct the entry directly if the error is in your books
3. Alternatively, post an adjusting journal entry to account for the variance

Duplicate Entries

Spotted the same transaction recorded twice? Void or remove the redundant entry before continuing.

Finalizing the Reconciliation

Once the Difference reads exactly $0.00:

1. Press Finish Reconciliation
2. Every cleared item is locked to prevent accidental edits
3. A permanent reconciliation record is written to your local database

Immediately after finishing, Kantivo offers to print the reconciliation report - see below.

Settling the Card Balance Without Leaving the Screen

A credit card reconciliation ends differently to a bank one. Where a checking account simply agrees with the statement, a card agrees with a debt - the closing balance is money you owe the issuer. Kantivo treats that as the obvious next step and raises it while every detail is still on hand: the card, the outstanding figure, the statement's closing date.

Close out a reconciliation on a Credit Card account that still shows an outstanding balance and Kantivo puts up a brief prompt with the card's name and the sum due. Three routes forward:

• Write a Check Now - launches the check window pre-loaded with the figure, the card already selected as the account being cleared. Choose the bank account funding it and who it's made out to, and you're done.
• Enter a Bill to Pay Later - drafts a bill carrying your statement date, the card account and the balance, dropping the payoff into payables so it's scheduled alongside your other obligations.
• Not Now - clears the prompt without recording anything.

Kantivo seeds the field with the entire statement balance, but it remains an ordinary editable amount: overwrite it to send a partial payment and the rest of the flow is identical. Nothing about this touches asset accounts - reconcile a checking or savings account and you'll see the same completion you always have. Cards already sitting at a zero balance skip the prompt too, since there's nothing left to settle.

Printing the Reconciliation Report

Kantivo produces a QuickBooks-style reconciliation report you can hand to an accountant or keep for your audit file. It contains the statement summary, the cleared balance and difference, and an itemized list of the cleared checks/payments and deposits.

1. Accept the prompt to print right after completing a reconciliation, or
2. Open Reconciliation History, find the session, and press Print to reprint any past reconciliation at any time

Uncleared Transactions and Your Account Balance

Finishing a reconciliation at zero and then noticing that the account balance on your screen doesn't equal the statement's closing figure is normal, expected, and not a sign of an error. The gap is created by transactions that had genuinely happened in your business but had not yet moved through the bank on the statement date - a check mailed to a supplier who hasn't presented it, or a deposit dropped off after the bank's cut-off time. In accounting terms these are uncleared, or outstanding, transactions.

Kantivo prints the full derivation on the reconciliation report so nobody has to work it out by hand. Directly below the statement summary, a second panel reconciles the two figures line by line:

• Cleared Balance (per statement) - the total the bank had settled as of the statement date
• Plus: Outstanding deposits and credits - incoming amounts recorded in Kantivo but not yet posted by the bank
• Less: Outstanding checks and payments - outgoing amounts issued but not yet presented
• Register Balance as of the statement date - what the account shows inside Kantivo

The individual uncleared transactions appear further down the report in dedicated tables, complete with date, reference number, payee and amount, so the difference is always traceable to specific entries rather than being an unexplained number. As each one clears the bank it drops off next month's list automatically.