Bank Reconciliation

Prove that a cashbook agrees with the bank for a period. Its lines come from finalised vouchers, POS settlements and cash transfers whose settlement method points at a cashbook; a manual journal against the bank GL code never does, so bank charges and interest must go in as vouchers or cash transfers to be reconcilable. Nothing here posts to the ledger.

Overview

The Bank Reconciliation applet proves that a cashbook in BigLedger agrees with the bank. You open one reconciliation session per cashbook and period, import the bank’s statement for that period, and link each bank statement line to the cashbook transaction line (or lines) it settles — either by hand on the Manual Matching tab or by running the weighted auto-matcher. Three reports then show the closing positions, the matched and unmatched balances on each side, and the variance.

The applet does not post to the General Ledger. It reads cashbook transaction lines that were created when Receipt Vouchers, Payment Vouchers, POS settlements and cash transfers reached FINAL, and it writes reconciliation links that reduce the open amount on both the cashbook line and the bank statement line.

Where it fits

Screens and menus

The Settings menu also carries the standard permission screens (Client Side Permission, Permission Wizard, Permission Set, User Permission, Role Permission), Webhook and Release Notes.

Listing

Columns: Company, Branch, Cashbook, Name, Opening Date, Closing Date, Cash Book Txn Open Bal., Cash Book Txn Close Bal., Cash Statement Opening Bal., Cash Statement Closing Bal., Processing Auto Matching, Status, Created/Updated Date and By. The listing can be grouped by cashbook.

Details tab

Company, Branch, Cashbook, Name, Opening Date, Closing Date, the two cashbook balances (read-only, calculated) and the two bank statement balances (entered). Status is one of five sign-off labels: Processing, Ready for review, Pending amendment, Approved by HOD, Reviewed and Approved. There is no CLOSE. The two cashbook balances are worked out when the session is created and stored, and refreshed by a background job every 30 minutes where that job is scheduled on the tenant; beneath the closing one, a greyed Calculated Cash Book Transaction Closing Balance line is worked out again each time the session is opened. The refresh icon beside it is greyed out and does nothing.

Upload Statement tab

Two sub-tabs. Upload Statement lists the files already imported for this session (File Name, Import Format, Upload Date/By, Modified Date/By) and opens the upload form (Bank, Bank Statement Name, file). Each imported file becomes a Cash Statement record with its own Details (Company, Branch, Cashbook, Name, Opening/Closing Date and Balance) and View Statement tab listing the parsed lines. Default Statement Helper lists files imported with the Default Format and shows, per file, a Checking tab with each row’s validation result.

Manual Matching tab

Three sub-tabs, all filtered to the session’s cashbook and to dates on or before the session’s Closing Date:

• Reconcile — cashbook transaction lines of FINAL documents that have not yet been fully settled by a match or an adjustment. Clicking a line opens its matching screen (Detail, Matched Bank Statement Lines, Unmatched Adjustment), from which Reconcile picks one or more bank statement lines, Undo Reconcile removes a link, and the adjustment screen books an unmatched residue against the line.
• Unreconcile — cashbook lines that a match or an adjustment has fully settled, so a wrong match can be undone from the same screen.

The two tabs do not test the open amount. They split on a settled marker on the cashbook line, which BigLedger sets whenever a match or an Unmatched Adjustment brings the line’s open amount to zero. Undo Reconcile gives the amount back but leaves the marker set. So a line you unmatched stays on the Unreconcile tab, now showing a balance, and does not come back to Reconcile. To match it again, open it from the Unreconcile tab, or find its bank line on Bank Statement Lines and match from the bank side; both open the same matching screen.

• Bank Statement Lines — every imported statement line (Date, Payor, Reference 1–3, Acc. Num., Description, Dr(-)/Cr, Balance, Txn Type, Remarks). Clicking a line opens the mirror screen (Bank Transactions, Matched GL Transactions, Unmatched Adjustment) so you can match from the bank side.

Columns on the Reconcile and Unreconcile grids: Date, Document (with a pop-up of the source document), Payee, Balance, Debit, Credit, Forex Amount, Forex Balance, Forex Exchange Rate, Ref No, Ref 1–6, Doc Reference, Doc Remarks.

Auto Matching tab

Run Automatching queues the background job. The buttons Matched Cash Stmt Lines, Matched Txn Lines, Unmatched Cash Stmt Lines and Unmatched Txn Lines open the four result listings; all five buttons are disabled while Processing Auto Matching is true. Possible matches that the job did not auto-link appear as candidate rows with a Reconcile (bank side) or Add (cashbook side) button that confirms the pair. The tab shows no totals of its own: read what is still open on the four result listings, or on Report 3.

Report tab

Report 1, Report 2 and Report 3, each with a Generate Report button and an export-capable grid. Their content is described under Lifecycle and effects.

Imported External Cashbook

Create: choose a Cashbook and attach the CSV — there is no delimiter or text-qualifier choice, and the column headers are not customisable: the file must follow one fixed layout (see Fields below). Edit: Details (Cashbook, File Name, created/modified) and a Cashbook Txn Lines tab (Document, Payee, Reference, Description, Dt/Ct(-), Date Txn, Entry Date) with a Generate transaction lines action and DELETE.

Configuration

Before you can use it

The weightage configuration is stored on the cashbook and read by the auto-matcher each time it runs:

The Cashbook applet’s form disables Save when the ticked weightages total more than 100 or the threshold is outside 70–100 (a client-side check); the auto-matcher only reads a configuration whose status is ACTIVE.

Applet settings

Where the settings live: Settings → Application Settings is this applet’s own form of slide toggles, not the shared settings screen. Settings → Default Selection and Personalization → Default Selection are the applet’s own too. There are no branch-level settings.

Any user who can open the Settings menu can change these; there is no separate permission on the form. Every toggle is created as an empty form control and patched from the saved master settings, so the default for all of them is not set (off — nothing hidden). Saving dispatches the applet master settings, and every component below reads them from the session store; a change applies to all users of the tenant the next time the screen loads.

Settings that are declared in the applet’s settings model, rendered on the form, saved and read by the code:

Settings that are on the form, saved and used, but not part of the applet’s usual settings list:

On the form but doing nothing — switching them has no effect: the four Department Settings toggles labelled Segment, G/L Dimension, Profit Center and Project — the applet has no dimension fields. The applet also carries dimension, tax, custom-status and PRINTABLE settings with no control and no effect; they are not documented here.

Settings → Default Selection holds a branch and a location drop-down (DEFAULT_BRANCH, DEFAULT_LOCATION). They are saved, but no screen in this applet reads them: a new session takes its branch from the cashbook you pick, and no screen here has a location field. The same holds for Personalization → Default Selection. The one setting on this screen that changes something is Details Tab Ordering (BANK_RECON_DETAILS_TAB_ORDER): drag the five tabs — Details, Upload Statement, Manual Matching, Auto Matching, Report — into the order your team prefers; the edit screen rebuilds its tab strip from the saved order.

Document behaviour settings

A reconciliation session is not a posted document: no numbering set, no printable, no approval workflow, no e-Invoice flag. No exposed control found beyond the tab switches and tab order above.

Feature visibility / permissions

Three client-side permission codes are seeded for this applet in the registry: DELETE_BUTTON_FOR_BANK_RECON, DELETE_BUTTON_FOR_BANK_STATEMENT_TXN, DELETE_BUTTON_FOR_MATCHING. The applet’s code does not read any of them, so granting or withholding them changes nothing. To take away the session’s DELETE button, use the HIDE_DELETE_BUTTON switch in Application Settings; it applies to every user of the tenant, and the applet’s other Delete buttons have no switch.

You may come across SHOW_REFERENCE1_COLUMN … SHOW_REFERENCE6_COLUMN in the applet’s code, which looks as if a role could be allowed to see a Ref column the tenant has hidden. Do not create or grant them: they change nothing. The screen compares them against a list of the user’s permissions that it never loads, so the answer is always no, and the Bank Statement Lines grid does not look at permissions at all. A hidden Ref column is hidden for everyone; if one team needs it, leave the column on and let others hide it from their own grid’s column chooser.

Server-side, every call is gated by the tenant permissions on the Bank Reconciliation, Cash Statement, Bank Statement Line, Cashbook Transaction Line, Cashbook Txn Bank Statement Link and Cashbook Txn Statement Recon Possible Link targets (OWNER / ADMIN / READ / WRITE), assigned through the Permission Wizard. Report 1 and Report 3 need one more: read access to cashbook headers, as well as to bank reconciliation. A reviewer who can open the session but gets nothing back from Generate Report on those two is usually missing that one.

Fields

Details (create and edit)

Upload Statement

Import formats offered on the screen: Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC Bank, AMBANK-01, AMBANK-02, ABMB-Pdf, Hong Leong Bank-01, -02, -03, Hong Leong Bank Pdf, Maybank, Maybank Pdf, Public Bank-01, -02, Public Bank Pdf, RHB Bank, Citi Bank, CIMB-01, CIMB-02, CIMB Pdf, OCBC Pdf, Bank Islam, Default Format. The numbered variants are different export layouts of the same bank’s internet banking; each maps to its own backend parser that checks the column headers and rejects the file if they differ (The Headers Order Does Not Match The Expected Order, … Headers Are Not As Excepted). PDF formats are parsed by text extraction and fail with No transactions found in … PDF when the layout is not recognised.

Default Format is a generic CSV. Download the template (MasterData_Default_Bank_Statement_Template.csv) from the upload form; its columns are PAYEE_OR_PAYOR_NAME, RECIPIENT_REFERENCE, TRANSACTION_DATE, AMOUNT, DESCRIPTION, REMARKS, BIC_OR_SWIFT_CODE, IBAN, BANK_ACCOUNT_NUMBER, BANK_REFERENCE_NUMBER, REFERENCE_NUMBER, REFERENCE_NUMBER2, REFERENCE_NUMBER3, REFERENCE_NUMBER4. Rows are loaded into a helper table and validated row by row; the Checking tab shows Transaction Date / Amount / Payee-Payor Name validation errors, a short error message, and whether each row was Validated and Processed. Rows with errors are not promoted into the Cash Statement.

Cash Statement (one per imported file)

The statement’s Name (required) is the Bank Statement Name you gave at upload, or the file name.

Imported External Cashbook

Lifecycle and effects

The session

1. Create — the header is written with status ACTIVE and the BANK_RECON_STATUS value Processing. Opening balances are suggested from the cashbook’s most recent ACTIVE session (its cashbook closing balance and bank closing balance). Once the header is written, the server works out both cashbook balances from the cashbook lines and stores them over what the form sent. Afterwards, any cashbook line written, voided or re-dated on that cashbook queues a refresh, which a job scheduled every 30 minutes applies to every ACTIVE session of the cashbook — on tenants where that job is scheduled.
2. Work — statements are imported, links are made. The header’s processing mark (processing_auto_matching) is set when you click Run Automatching, just before the job is queued, and cleared by the job when it finishes or fails.
3. Sign off. Move Status through the review labels on the Details tab: Ready for review, then Approved by HOD or Reviewed and Approved, or back to Pending amendment. Nothing is locked by this: links can still be undone, and the next session’s Opening Date is validated against this session’s Closing Date whichever status it has.
4. Delete — deleting a session is a cascade, not a soft delete: every reconciliation link and possible link of the session is removed and the open amount of each affected cashbook line and statement line is restored; every Cash Statement (header, lines, attachment record) imported into the session is deleted; then the session header, its extensions and its events are deleted.

What a reconciliation link does

A link joins one cashbook transaction line to one bank statement line for an amount, and is tagged DBLSIDED (matched on both sides), BANK-STMT (an adjustment booked against a bank line) or CASH-BOOK (an adjustment against a cashbook line). On create the backend:

• aligns the sign of the amount with the line’s open amount and rounds away tiny differences so a full match leaves exactly 0;
• throws — the link is not written — if the open amount is already 0 (…_OPEN_AMOUNT_ALREADY_ZERO_CANNOT_OVERFILL), if the amount exceeds the remaining open amount (…_AMOUNT_CONTRA_EXCEEDS_REMAINING_OPEN_AMOUNT), if the signs differ (…_OPEN_AMOUNT_AND_AMOUNT_CONTRA_SIGN_MISMATCH) or if the amount is zero (AMOUNT_CONTRA_MUST_BE_NON_ZERO), the prefix being CASHBOOK_TXN_LINE or CASH_STMT_LINE;
• takes the amount off the open amount of both the cashbook line and the statement line.

Undo Reconcile deletes the link and adds the amount back to both open amounts. Partial matches are allowed: a RM 1,000 statement line can be linked to three cashbook lines, and a cashbook line can stay partly open across sessions.

Unmatched Adjustment creates a one-sided link (txn type BANK-STMT, description Adjustment) that sets the cashbook line’s open amount to zero and sets the line’s settled marker (the same marker a full match sets — see the Manual Matching tab), so an item the bank will never show (a write-off, a rounding residue) leaves the unmatched list; Undo removes the link and clears the flag. It does not post a journal — the accounting correction still has to be made with a voucher.

Effect on other documents

While a cashbook line is linked to a session, the source document is protected on the server: changing the settlement amount or transfer details of a FINAL Receipt Voucher, Payment Voucher or Cash Transfer whose lines are still reconciled is rejected with Cashbook txn lines are bank-reconciled. Unreconcile them from the bank recon (name and month) before changing amounts or transfer details. Three things are not guarded, and each takes a matched line out from under its match after the fact.

Voiding the source document. The void’s cashbook subscriber does not write a reversing line: it marks each of the document’s cashbook transaction lines DELETED, and on the way it adds the matched amount back onto every bank statement line the deleted line was linked to and marks each reconciliation link DELETED. So the cashbook line leaves the session, the bank line reappears on the unmatched list carrying its full amount again, and the session’s calculated cashbook balance moves. Nothing on the reconciliation screen says why.

Adjusting the settlement method on a document that is still FINAL. The Settlement Adjustment screen (offered by POS General, the sales invoice, the receipt and payment vouchers and the sales return) changes the payment lines of a finalised document by deleting its cashbook lines the same way and writing new ones for the new method. It never calls the guard above, so the amount change it performs is exactly the one the ordinary edit path refuses. See Payment Aggregators and Branch Settlement Methods.

Saving a finalised document again after its settlement method or date changed. Each save of a FINAL document already posted to the cashbook rebuilds its cashbook lines from the document as it stands: the cashbook comes from whatever cashbook the settlement method names now, and the date from the document header. Only the amount is checked against the match. So if someone re-points a settlement method from one cashbook to another and then edits the remarks on an old receipt, its matched line moves to the other cashbook (or to the new date) and its match stays in place. The bank line in the first cashbook’s session still reads as matched, to a cashbook line that now belongs to another cashbook. Nothing on either screen says so.

In all three cases unreconcile first if the period matters: undo the match on the Unreconcile tab, make the change, match the new line. And when you re-point a settlement method, expect any later save of an older document that uses it to move that document’s line too.

What this applet writes and reads. It writes reconciliation sessions, imported bank statements and their lines, and the matches (and suggested matches) between them, and it updates the open amount and the settled marker on cashbook lines and the open amount on statement lines. It only reads cashbooks, companies and documents. It is not a document, and has no journal and no stock movement: nothing here reaches the General Ledger, and nothing here is reversed by a VOID — voiding a source document voids its cashbook lines through the document’s own posting service.

Auto matching

Run Automatching marks the session as processing and then queues the auto-matcher for it, to run straight away. The marking happens first. If queuing the job fails, the screen is still told that all went well and the session stays marked as processing. The job itself:

1. Deletes all possible links of the session (a rerun starts from scratch; confirmed links are kept).
2. Loads the outstanding lines: statement lines of the cashbook with open_amount ≠ 0 and txn type TXN; cashbook lines with open_amount ≠ 0, txn type TXN, not DELETED, dated from 90 days before the Opening Date to 90 days after the Closing Date (company timezone).
3. Loads the cashbook’s ACTIVE Weightage Configuration, or the defaults (amount 0.25, date 0.25, reference 0.25, payee 0.25).
4. Scores every cashbook × statement pair: amount (1.0 when equal to the cent, linear decay, 0 when signs differ), date (1 − days apart ÷ 90, 0 beyond 90 days), reference (best Levenshtein similarity across the reference fields) and payee (Levenshtein). Pairs whose amount score is below 0.1 or whose weighted net score is below 0.40 are dropped. Weights of dimensions with no data on either side are redistributed.
5. Picks the best one-to-one pairs greedily. Net score ≥ the threshold creates a confirmed link immediately; with no configuration the rule is stricter — amount must be exact and payee similarity ≥ 0.85. Net score ≥ 0.55 but below the threshold creates a possible link for review.
6. Unless match_one_to_one is set, looks for groups of up to five still-open cashbook lines whose total comes within RM 1 or 2 % of one open statement line, whichever is larger. A group that scores ≥ 0.98 and totals the bank amount to the cent is linked automatically. Any other group above the threshold becomes possible links for you to review.
7. Clears the processing mark — also when the run fails part-way.

Watch the automatic group links. The matcher divides the bank amount equally across the lines of the group, whatever each line’s own amount. With lines of equal value that is exact. With unequal lines it is not: on a RM 1,000 deposit made up of RM 300 and RM 700, each line is offered RM 500. The RM 700 line is matched for RM 500 and left with RM 200 open, and the RM 300 line is refused because RM 500 is more than it holds. Its suggestion is deleted too, and nothing on the screen says so. The bank line is left with RM 500 open. After a run, check Unmatched Txn Lines and Unmatched Cash Stmt Lines for part-matched amounts like these. Undo the group’s links from each line’s matching screen (Matched Bank Statement Lines), then match the lines by hand for their own amounts. If your deposits are usually batches of different amounts, tick one-to-one on the cashbook’s Weightage Configuration to switch the group pass off.

The screen disables its buttons the moment you click Run, re-checks the flag after one minute and every 30 seconds while the tab is open. Confirming a possible link (Reconcile / Add on the Auto Matching result screens) creates the real link and deletes the possible one.

For an integration or a test. The screen’s button only queues the job. The same matcher can also be run inline: a POST to cashbook-txn-stmt-recon-possible-links/sync with the session’s guid runs it in the request and returns the possible links in the response, so there is nothing to poll.

Keeping a line out of the auto-matcher. The matcher only considers lines whose Txn Type is TXN. On the matching screens you can change a cashbook or bank statement line’s Txn Type to BANK-CHARGES or BANK-INTEREST, and the matcher then leaves it alone. This is useful for the monthly fee and interest lines it keeps pairing wrongly. The reports do not filter on Txn Type, so such a line still counts as unmatched in all three reports until you match or adjust it by hand.

The reports

All three read the links as they stand when you click Generate Report. Report 3 is the one to keep as the period’s evidence; Report 1 is the one that tells you which side the variance sits on.

Where each figure on these screens comes from

Two kinds of figure sit side by side in this applet. Some are stored, on the session or on a line, and change only when something writes them; others are worked out again each time you open the screen or click Generate Report. When a number looks wrong, find out first which kind it is: a stored figure can be older than the documents, a worked-out one cannot. The same split runs through the whole product — see Where did this figure come from?.

Verify the session before you sign it off

Report 1’s Variance / discrepancy at zero is the usual finish line, and the guide walks through it. The three checks below take a minute more, need nothing outside this applet, and each catches something the variance alone does not.

1. The stored closing agrees with the greyed Calculated line on Details. If the two differ, a document in the period changed after the stored figure was last worked out, and every report is starting from the older one. Where the refresh clock runs they come back together within about half an hour. What to do when they do not is in the guide, under If the stored closing is older than your fix.
2. The bank side adds up. On Report 3, add the bank’s opening balance, its matched balance and its unmatched balance. When the whole period was imported into this session exactly once, and no line on that side is part-matched, the total equals the closing balance you typed. For GadgetSphere’s March on GS-KV-01: RM 41,830.00 + RM 5,820.00 + (−RM 450.00) = RM 47,200.00. The applet shows the three parts but never their total. If the total is off, a day’s file is missing or was imported twice, the closing balance was mistyped, or a line is part-matched: the matched sections count fully matched lines only, so the matched part of a part-matched line is in neither section.
3. Nothing is left half-matched by accident. On the Unreconcile tab every line’s Balance (RM) reads 0.00. A line showing a balance there was undone and not matched again, because Undo leaves it on that tab. After an Auto Matching run, also look for the equal-split group links described under Auto matching.

Related applets

• Cashbook — defines the cashbook, its members and the Weightage Configuration the auto-matcher reads.
• Receipt Voucher (Internal) and Payment Voucher (Internal) — the FINAL settlement lines that become the cashbook side of the reconciliation; both are locked against amount changes while reconciled.
• POS General — POS settlements reach the same cashbooks through their settlement methods.
• Ledger and Journal — for the GL side of a bank charge or interest entry; the cashbook line itself must come from a voucher or cash transfer.
• Organisation — the company timezone that every date window in this applet uses.

Troubleshooting

Related documentation

• Bank reconciliation guide — the month-end procedure, step by step.
• Financial Accounting module — where reconciliation sits in the close.
• Cashbook applet — reference for the cashbook and its Weightage Configuration.

Video walkthrough

The video covers creating a session and entering opening balances, uploading a statement, manual matching (Reconcile, Unreconcile, Bank Statement Lines), running Auto Matching and reading its status, and generating Report 1, 2 and 3.