Reconciliation is where bookkeeping earns its reputation. If cash is wrong, everything downstream becomes negotiable: AR collections, AP timing, debt covenants, and owner distributions. The goal of a checklist is not bureaucracy—it is to make the close repeatable when the bookkeeper is new, the month is ugly, or the bank feed had a bad week.
1) Establish cutoff rules and stick to them
Ambiguous cutoff creates phantom differences. Decide whether you reconcile to book date, bank post date, or a documented hybrid—and apply it consistently. If multiple people touch the books, write the rule down where they cannot miss it.
2) Tie bank to GL for every material account
Materiality is a judgment call, but “we only reconcile the main checking account” is how side accounts become fraud vectors or silent error reservoirs. At minimum, reconcile every account that can move the balance sheet meaningfully.
3) Review uncleared items with suspicion
- Old outstanding checks: are they truly outstanding, voided, or duplicated?
- Deposits in transit: did they clear next month with a different amount (fees, chargebacks)?
- Duplicate imports: especially when switching between CSV and feed sources mid-period.
4) Rules hygiene: patterns should be boring
Import rules are code. If every month introduces one-off manual overrides, your rules are not expressive enough—or your chart is too messy. Refactor early: clean accounts, consistent vendor names, and disciplined memo patterns beat heroic month-end detective work.
5) Treat feeds as convenience, CSV as insurance
This is the core reliability idea in bank CSV and live feeds: the reconciliation discipline should survive a provider outage. If you cannot import a CSV and land in the same register shape, you are fragile.
6) Document exceptions like an auditor is watching
Write short notes for weird items: gateway settlement timing, payroll pulls, loan payments split to principal and interest, transfers between accounts. The future you will not remember why a $13,482.19 line exists.
7) Close loops to subledgers when relevant
Cash ties first, but month-end also means asking whether AR/AP and inventory narratives still make sense. If COGS and inventory are material, your inventory methodology should be defensible—see FIFO inventory mechanics.
Closing
If you want tooling that keeps CSV import as a first-class path while offering live feeds on paid tiers, compare Privbooks plans and prove the workflow on a prior month before you rely on it for compliance deadlines.