bank-reconciliation

name	bank-reconciliation
description	Reconcile a bank or credit-card account: tie the GL to the statement, match cleared items, list outstanding and unmatched items, catch duplicates and timing/NSF differences, then compute and explain the reconciling difference to the penny. Use at month-end close, before issuing financials, when an account won't tie, or on demand for any bank/CC account. Drives QuickBooks Desktop (qb_) and vr-ledger MCP tools, reads the statement (PDF/CSV/portal), and leaves a workpaper. Never force-balances and never marks an account reconciled it can't prove.
version	1.0.0
author	RealDeal CPA
license	MIT
platforms	["linux","macos","windows"]
metadata	{"hermes":{"tags":["Reconciliation","Bank-Rec","Credit-Card","Month-End","QuickBooks","Workpaper","Internal-Control"],"related_skills":["accounting","month-end-close"]}}

Bank & Credit-Card Reconciliation

You reconcile a cash or credit-card account between the general ledger and the third-party statement to a professional, workpaper-grade standard. The deliverable is a proven reconciliation — not a forced one.

When to use

• Month-end close, before any financials are issued (recs are a hard gate).
• Any time a cash/CC account doesn't tie, or a balance looks wrong.
• Onboarding a new client: reconcile the most recent month and look back for the last cleanly-reconciled period.
• Credit-card accounts reconcile the same way — a CC is a liability (credit balance), so the signs flip: charges increase the balance, payments/credits decrease it.

Inputs to gather first

1. Which account & period. Statement closing date and statement ending balance.
2. The statement — PDF/CSV download, or pull from the bank portal with browser_navigate/ browser_snapshot, or the desktop MCP if the portal has no export. Save the source.
3. The GL/register for that account through the statement date.

Tools you drive

• QuickBooks Desktop (qb_) — ALWAYS start with qb_session_status then qb_company_info to confirm you're in the right company file and whether you're in live vs SIMULATION mode. Use qb_account_list to confirm the account + GL balance, and qb_general_ledger (or the account register report) for the line-item detail in the period. Use qb_balance_sheet_report/qb_trial_balance_export to confirm the GL ending balance you're reconciling to.
• vr-ledger MCP — for ledger-format books: balances for the account balance and validate to confirm the ledger is internally consistent before you rely on it.
• browser / desktop MCP — to retrieve the statement when there's no file/export.

Procedure

1. Set the two anchors. Record the statement ending balance (per bank) and the GL ending balance (per books) as of the statement closing date. These are the two numbers you must walk between. Note the basis is irrelevant here — a rec is balance-to-balance.
2. Roll forward from the prior rec. Confirm last month's reconciled balance is this month's beginning point. If the prior period was never reconciled, say so — you cannot trust the opening balance, and that becomes an exception.
3. Match cleared items. Tick each GL transaction to the statement (date within a few days, amount to the penny, payee/memo consistent). Mark matched items cleared. Match on amount + date, not memo alone — memos drift between bank and book.
4. List outstanding items — recorded in the GL, not yet on the statement:
   • Outstanding checks/payments (issued, not cashed).
   • Deposits in transit (recorded, not yet credited by the bank). These are legitimate timing differences and are the bulk of a normal reconciling diff.
5. List unmatched bank items — on the statement, not in the GL. Each one is a missing book entry you must explain and (after approval) record: bank fees, interest, merchant/ processor fees, auto-drafts, ACH, wire fees, NSF returns and NSF charges, card chargebacks. Prepare the journal entry; do not post material/unusual ones without sign-off.
6. Hunt duplicates & errors. Same amount/payee twice; transposed digits (a diff divisible by 9 is the classic transposition tell); a payment booked as a deposit (diff = 2x the item); off-by-a-period or wrong-account postings.
7. Compute the reconciling difference and PROVE it with the standard two-column bridge — keep bank-side and book-side items on their own sides:
   • Adjusted bank balance = statement ending balance + deposits in transit − outstanding checks ± bank errors.
   • Adjusted book balance = GL ending balance ± unrecorded bank items (interest, fees, merchant/processor fees, ACH, NSF, chargebacks). The rec proves when Adjusted bank balance = Adjusted book balance (difference $0.00). Show the bridge as a table. If it does not tie to $0.00, the account is NOT reconciled — report the residual variance, its sign, and where it most likely sits. Never plug a number to make it balance.

Stale & uncleared items

• Outstanding checks > 90–180 days (stale-dated) — flag; many banks won't honor a check over 6 months and state unclaimed-property/escheat rules may apply. Don't just void silently. Recommend stop-payment + reissue, or escheatment, per the client's state and the payee. To partner queue.
• Deposits in transit not clearing within a few days — investigate; likely a recording error or a deposit that never reached the bank.
• Chronic uncleared items rolling month to month — surface them; they often hide a duplicate, a posting error, or a bad opening balance.

Edge cases a 15-year CPA knows cold

• Beginning balance doesn't match prior statement — stop. A prior-period change or deleted/edited cleared transaction broke history. Find what moved before going forward.
• Bank feed / auto-match doesn't equal reconciliation — feeds add transactions; the rec still has to tie to the statement balance. Don't trust "matched" as "reconciled."
• Credit-card: reconcile to the statement closing balance, then the payment of that balance clears next period — don't double-count the payment as both a CC charge and a cash outflow surprise.
• Pending vs posted: only posted transactions belong in the rec; pending bank items are tomorrow's outstanding items.
• Voided/edited checks in a closed period silently change a reconciled balance — watch for them on the roll-forward.
• Currency/rounding on multicurrency accounts — reconcile in the account's functional currency; FX revaluation is a separate entry, not a reconciling item.

Safety / authority gate

• GREEN (autonomous): read the statement and GL, match, build the reconciling bridge, list outstanding/unmatched/stale items, draft the adjusting journal entries, write the workpaper.
• RED (prepare, then require human sign-off): posting any material or unusual adjusting journal entry, voiding/reissuing checks, initiating stop-payments, escheatment, and any client communication about a discrepancy. Prepare the entry (and may pre-fill), but a human reviews and authorizes the post via qb_journal_* (use dryRun to preview first).

Required output

1. Bottom line first — e.g. "Operating checking reconciled to the penny at $84,210.55 as of 5/31; 3 outstanding checks ($1,902.40) and one $35 bank fee booked," OR "NOT reconciled — $412.00 residual variance, GL over statement; likely a duplicated vendor payment."
2. The reconciliation bridge as a table, two columns proving to $0.00: the bank side (statement ending balance → + deposits in transit → − outstanding checks → ± bank errors = adjusted bank balance) and the book side (GL ending balance → ± unrecorded bank items = adjusted book balance), where adjusted bank balance = adjusted book balance.
3. Outstanding items table (checks + deposits in transit), with dates and amounts.
4. EXCEPTIONS QUEUE — for the partner: unexplained variances, stale/escheatable checks, duplicates, broken opening balances, anything material or ambiguous. Never guessed, never plugged.
5. WORKPAPER note — account, period, statement closing date, statement balance, GL balance, reconciling difference (must be $0.00 to call it reconciled), source-document reference, who/what cleared each item, list of adjusting entries proposed, basis of any judgment, and preparer/date. This is the audit trail.

Never report an account as "reconciled" unless the bridge ties to $0.00. A residual is a finding, not a rounding error to absorb.