Money and the account

Bank reconciliation

Menu: Money → Bank reconciliation · Reporting → Reports → Books → Bank reconciliation Who: the owner, and anybody the owner gives May read the books to

The books already have a bank column. Every bill you paid by transfer, every supplier you settled from the bank, every card sale the bank collects for you is posted there when it happens. What that column cannot tell you by itself is whether it agrees with the bank.

Most shops find out by holding the PDF statement next to the screen and going down both lists with a finger. That is how a bank charge nobody recorded goes unnoticed for eleven months. This screen does the comparison for you.

It is part of the books, so you need The books in your package and a start date set before any of it works (see The books chapter).

What importing a statement does, and what it does not do

Importing a statement posts nothing. Your books are your own record of what the shop did. The bank's statement is a second view of the same events, so it is checked against the books and never copied into them. If it were copied in, every payment you had already recorded would appear twice.

A statement line is stored on its own and never appears on the trial balance, the income statement or the balance sheet. The one thing that can reach the books from this screen is a line you choose to write in, under a head you pick. That is covered below.

Importing a statement

Money → Bank reconciliation → Import a statement.

Pick the account. Most shops have one bank account, and it is already selected. A shop with two banks keeps two accounts in its chart and imports each statement against its own account.
Choose the file. A CSV, exported from your bank's internet banking. Sellify shows you the file's own headings and its first rows exactly as they are.
Say which column is which. Pick the date, the description, the reference, and the money. Money comes one of two ways, and you pick the one your bank uses:
- one signed column, where money in is positive and money out is negative (or in brackets), or
- separate Money out and Money in columns.
A running-balance column is ignored. Sellify works balances out itself.
Say how the dates are written. A date like 03/04/2026 is the 3rd of April in Pakistan and the 4th of March in America, so Sellify asks rather than guessing. A wrong guess would put every line a month out, and the figures would still look right.
Type the closing balance from the statement. This is the figure the whole page is checked against, so it sits at the top of the form. You can import without it, but then there is nothing to compare against, and the page will tell you so.
Check it, then Import.

Check it reads the whole file before anything is saved. A bad row on line 400 is named by its line number and nothing is imported. Fix the file and try again.

The second month

Sellify remembers which column was which, for the same shape of file. If next month's export has the same headings in the same order, the columns and the date format are already filled in. If your bank changes its export, nothing is remembered and you map it again. A remembered map applied to a different file could read a Money out column as money in, so Sellify does not risk it.

Importing the same file twice

That is safe. A line that is already on file is recognised and skipped, and the check says so: 0 lines to import · 32 already on file. Two identical charges on the same day are still two charges. Sellify counts identical rows within a file, so it keeps both and skips neither.

Answering each line

The statement's lines are listed with a badge beside each one:

Badge	Meaning
Nothing yet	Nobody has said what this line is yet
Matched	It is the same event as an entry already in the books
Written into the books	The books had never heard of it, and this screen wrote it in

Press Answer it on a line. Two options appear.

Already in the books?

Sellify lists entries that could be this line: the same amount to the paisa, on this bank account, within about six weeks, nearest date first. Press This one on the right entry.

Sellify never matches a line by itself, even when there is exactly one candidate. A wrong automatic match is worse than no match, because nobody looks at it again. Every match on the page was confirmed by a person.

If the figures differ by even five rupees, they cannot be matched. A bank debit of 12,505 against a payment of 12,500 usually means a 5-rupee charge you have not recorded. Record the charge as its own entry and match the 12,500.

One bank line answers one entry, and one entry answers one bank line. If your bank paid three supplier payments as a single debit, you cannot split that line here. Record it as its own entry, or pay those suppliers as separate transfers in future.

Or write it into the books

For money the shop never recorded, such as a bank charge, profit paid on the account, or a standing order nobody entered: pick the head it belongs to, for example Bank charges or Other income, write a note that says what it was, and press Write it in.

This posts a journal entry dated the day the bank moved the money, with the bank on one side and your head on the other. In the journal it appears as Bank statement, and the line is matched to it automatically. If it needs undoing, use Undo on the line (below), not the journal.

Undo

Undo on a matched line clears the match and changes nothing else.

Undo on a line this screen wrote in first asks you to confirm, because it reverses the entry. The books keep both the entry and its reversal, the same way the journal handles every correction.

Deleting an import

Delete this import is for a wrong file: the wrong account, the wrong month, or the wrong bank. Every match it made is cleared, and every entry it wrote in is reversed, so the books never keep figures whose evidence has been deleted.

Reading the difference

Under the statement's lines, Sellify works through the reconciliation as at the statement's own closing day, not today. A March statement checked against the books as they stand today would count three weeks of April as a difference.

  Balance in the books
− Deposits the bank has not credited yet
+ Payments that have not cleared yet
+ On the statement and not in the books
  ─────────────────────────────────────
  Balance the bank should show
  Closing balance per the bank
  Difference

The difference should be nought. If it is not, it is shown in red, whichever direction it goes.

Two lists below it give the reasons, so you can act on them:

In the books and not on the statement. Deposits the bank has not credited and payments that have not cleared: a cheque you wrote that has not been presented, or a transfer made on the last day. These usually clear themselves within a few days.
On the statement and not in the books. Charges, profit and standing orders nobody recorded. This is the list to read. These do not clear themselves. Each one stays there until somebody writes it in.

Bank dates are calendar dates

The rest of Sellify files things by business day. A 2am sale belongs to the day before. The bank does not work that way. A transfer at 2am is that day's transfer, so statement lines keep the date the bank printed.

What this does not do (yet)

Only CSV files. OFX, MT940 and camt.053 files are not supported, and nothing connects to your bank directly. If your internet banking can export a CSV, you can use this today.
No splitting. One bank line covering several entries cannot be split (see above).
No rules that sort lines automatically, such as "anything from K-Electric is Electricity". A wrong rule would put wrong figures in your P&L without anyone noticing.
One currency. No figure in Sellify records which currency it is in.
Nothing works offline. A statement is checked at a desk against the server's books, never at a till.

In the demo

Metro Mart, the demo company that keeps books, comes with one statement already imported. It was built from the movements its own books contain, and three items are deliberately left for you to deal with:

Two lines the books have never heard of. An account maintenance charge (write it in under Bank charges) and profit credited on the PLS account (write it in under Other income).
One payment that has not cleared. The shop's last transfer before the statement closed is not on the statement yet.
One card settlement that nobody has confirmed. Answer it shows the entry it matches. Pick it.

The difference is nought before you start. Each of the three explains a gap, and none of them is itself the gap. Writing the two lines in and confirming the third leaves only the uncleared payment, which is what a real month usually looks like.