Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online

Learn how to reconcile your accounts so they always match your bank and credit card statements.

Reconciling means you review your bank and credit card statements and compare them to what's in QuickBooks. It's a best practice to do this monthly, and helps make sure nothing was double-counted or missed in QuickBooks.

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When you have your account statement in hand, you'll compare each transaction with the ones entered into QuickBooks. If everything matches, you know your accounts are balanced and accurate. We recommend reconciling your checking, savings, and credit card accounts every month. Here's how to get started.

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How to reconcile with AI

This feature is available for QuickBooks Online Plus, Advanced, and Intuit Enterprise Suite as part of your Accounting Agent features. 

QuickBooks now offers AI-powered reconciliation, which can automatically import your bank statement and compare it to what's in QuickBooks. It then helps detect reconciliation issues, eliminating guess work and saving time. Other enhancements include improved layout for efficiency: collapse and expand your summary table, and see your statement and QuickBooks transactions all in the same view for quick comparison.

Start an AI-powered reconciliation

Note: If you have QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced, your Reconcile page will have the AI-powered reconciliation features built in. Upload your bank statement or enable automatically imported statements for extraction to begin. You can still manually reconcile by choosing not to upload a bank statement and selecting Start reconciling after filling in the ending date and ending balance information. 

Follow this link to complete the steps in product.

1. Go to Transactions and select the Reconcile tab. 
2. Select the account you'd like to reconcile.
3. Verify that the beginning balance in QuickBooks matches the statement you are about to upload.
4. Upload your bank statement. 
5. While this feature is in its early stages, a human reviewer may verify that the AI statement extraction was accurate. Human reviewers provide quality assurance to improve accuracy. You may need to leave and return to reconciling an hour or so later while this process completes. 
6. Once complete, the Accounting Agent extracts the information from your bank statement and fills in the statement ending balance and ending date for you. Select Start reconciling to continue. 
7. If there are any potential issues, your Accounting Agent will let you know at the top of the page. Each transaction with a potential issue will also show "Review" in the status column. 
8. Use the details in the Explanation column to help assess what action you may need to take to resolve any issue.

How to reconcile manually

Note: If you have QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced, your Reconcile page will have the AI-powered reconciliation features built in. You can still manually reconcile by choosing not to upload a bank statement and selecting Start reconciling after filling in the beginning and ending balance information. 

When you have your account statement in hand, you'll compare each transaction with the ones entered into QuickBooks. If everything matches, you know your accounts are balanced and accurate.

Prerequisites

If you're reconciling an account for the first time, review the opening balance. It needs to match the balance of your real bank or credit card account the day you decided to start tracking transactions in QuickBooks.

Tip: You don't need to connect a bank or credit card to QuickBooks Online to reconcile. However, it automatically downloads transactions and enters the starting balance for you.

Once you have your monthly account statement, you can start reconciling. 

Start a manual reconciliation

If you're reconciling multiple months, do them one statement at a time, starting with your oldest statement:

Follow this link to complete the steps in product.

1. If you're reconciling for the very first time, select Get started.
2. From the Account ▼ dropdown, select the account you want to reconcile. Make sure it's the same one on your statement.
   Important: If you see a message about a past reconciliation, you need to fix this before you start. Select We can help you fix it and follow the instructions.
3. Make sure the Beginning balance in QuickBooks matches the one on your statement. If they don’t, you’ll need to fix any errors. 
4. Enter the Ending balance and Ending date on your statement. Some banks call the ending balance a "new balance" or a "closing balance."
5. If your account isn't connected to online banking, you can add service charges or interest earned during this period.
6. If you see it, review the Last statement ending date. This is the end date of your last reconciliation. Your current account statement should start the day after.
7. When you're ready to start, select Start reconciling.
8. One by one, compare the transactions on your statement with what's in QuickBooks.
   1. If the listed transaction in QuickBooks matches your statement, check it off. This marks it as reconciled.
   2. If you're sure you've found a match but something small is wrong, like the recipient, select the transaction in QuickBooks, then select Edit. Make edits so the details match your statement.
   3. If a listed transaction in QuickBooks isn't present on your statement, leave it unchecked.
9. When you reach the end, the difference between your statement and QuickBooks should be $0.00. If it is, select Finish now.

Note: If you have connected a bank account to QuickBooks Online, your transaction info comes directly from your bank. In some cases, your accounts may already be balanced.

Troubleshooting for manual reconciliations

If the difference amount isn't '0', here are a few things you can do:

Make sure the dates entered for each transaction in QuickBooks match the dates for each transaction in your account statement. If there are any missing QuickBooks transactions:

1. Select + New.
2. Add the transactions you need.

If there are more QuickBooks transactions:

• Select Cleared date to show all the transactions that have been manually added into QuickBooks. This is where you will normally find discrepancies in your reconciliation. You can even use the audit log to help you when you edit or delete transactions.

If the total number of transactions match:

• Make sure that the amount of each QuickBooks transaction matches the amount of each transaction in your account statement.

Next steps

Each time you finish reconciling, QuickBooks Online automatically generates a reconciliation report for that session. You can review the report in your settings.

Follow this link to complete the steps in product.

1. Select History by account.
2. Find a report in the list and select View report. You can filter by date range or account.

If you want to print a reconciliation report to share elsewhere, from the View report ▼ dropdown, select Print report. However, these reports can’t be directly exported.

Related links

• Learn the reconcile workflow in QuickBooks
• Enter and manage opening balances in QuickBooks Online
• What to do if you didn't enter an opening balance in QuickBooks Online
• Undo or remove transactions from reconciliations in QuickBooks Online
• Use the audit log in QuickBooks Online
• How do I view, print, or export a reconciliation report?
• Fix issues the first time you reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online
• Connect bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks Online