Reconciling bank transactions in SamBooks

How to import your bank statement into SamBooks and match every transaction to an invoice, to an open due item or to a new journal entry.

What it is for

Reconciling the bank means ticking off, one by one, the transactions on your bank statement against your books: every transfer, direct debit, bank charge or incoming payment must have its own journal entry, and the other way round.

The work happens on one page: Banking, tab Reconciliation. There you upload the statement and decide what each transaction stands for — an invoice being collected, a supplier being paid, an F24 tax payment, a bank fee. When you match a transaction yourself, SamBooks writes the accounting entry and, if it settles an open item, closes that due item in Open items.

Before you start

• You need a role with write permissions: Manager or Administrative. A Viewer can read everything, but any attempt to post is rejected as not allowed for the current role.
• You need a cash or bank account linked to a bank account record. Press Cash & bank accounts in the top bar: if the account was created without a link, use Link manually on its row (Name and IBAN are optional) and confirm with Link. This is what makes it selectable during the import.
• Only accounts that have a statement can be reconciled: bank, card, POS, PayPal, Stripe and similar. Cash accounts do not appear in the selector.
• The automatic bank connection is not live yet: the Connect bank button only opens the notice "Bank connection coming soon". Until Open Banking is available, the only way to bring transactions into SamBooks is to import the statement file.

Step by step

1. Import the bank statement

Open Banking from the Finance block of the left menu, go to the Reconciliation tab and press Import statement.

1. Upload the file by dropping it on the "Drag the file here or click to choose" area. CSV, Excel (.xlsx), CAMT.053 (.xml) and MT940 are accepted, up to 15 MB, exactly as your online banking exports them. The preview shows the number of Transactions and, when the file carries balances, Opening balance, Closing balance and the Balanced / Out of balance / Balances unavailable badge.
2. Fix the mapping if needed. With CSV and Excel the columns are not always recognised: you get the notice "I couldn't recognise the columns automatically" and the Column mapping section, where you point out Transaction date, Amount (signed) (or the Debit / Out and Credit / In pair), Description and Counterparty, plus the date and amount formats. Then press Refresh preview.
3. Pick the account. The Bank account (required) field decides where the transactions land: without it the import button stays disabled, and if the list is empty you get "No liquidity account: create one from «Liquidity accounts»". If the file carries no balances, the optional Statement closing balance feeds the "Statement balance" card.
4. Confirm with Import N transactions.

The outcome comes in three tiles: Imported, Duplicates, Reconciled. Duplicates are your safety net: SamBooks recognises transactions already on file from the bank's own reference (or from date, amount, description and counterparty), so re-importing the same file by mistake does not create duplicates. The 120-character CBI statement format is recognised but cannot be imported: export the statement again as CSV, Excel or CAMT.053. And importing is the only operation in this area you cannot ask Sam to do.

Read the Reconciled tile carefully: it counts the matches found, not the entries posted. A transaction the import matches to an invoice on its own leaves the queue with the Reconciled (AI) badge, but no journal entry is written and the due item does not close. So after every import, check in Open items the invoices you believed settled: if the item is still open, record the receipt or the payment from that page.

2. Read where the reconciliation stands

The Account selector on the top left filters everything below it. On the right there are three figures: Book balance (what your journal entries say), Statement balance (the last balance known to the bank, read from the CAMT/MT940 file or declared during the import) and Difference. Treat them as a guiding indicator, not a formal reconciliation: the statement balance does not follow the period you are looking at, and SamBooks does not produce a month-by-month bank reconciliation statement.

Below are two queues side by side, each with its own counter: on the left Transactions to reconcile, the statement rows still to be assigned (date, description, amount — green for money in, red for money out — and Status); on the right Entries to link, the journal entries on cash and bank accounts not yet tied to a statement transaction, each with a selection checkbox. They are the measure of progress: when both reach zero you get Bank in line — "Every bank statement transaction is reconciled with the journal and there are no entries left to link."

A transaction can be in one of five states:

At the bottom, Import history lists the uploaded files: use it to check whether a statement is already loaded.

3. Run the automatic check with "Reconcile now"

Reconcile now looks for invoice matches and posts on its own only the ones it is confident about (90% confidence or more); everything else stays in the queue. At the end you get a message such as "Processed: 12. Posted to journal: 4." It only picks up transactions that carry no classification at all, and the import gives one to every transaction: right after you load a statement it almost always answers "No transactions to process." and posts nothing for those transactions.

When a transaction carries the AI proposal badge, the page does not show which invoice was proposed and has no button to accept it in one click: you can confirm it from the chat by asking Sam, or match it yourself using one of the three routes below.

4. Assign a transaction: the three routes

Click a row in the Transactions to reconcile queue: Assign the transaction opens, with a summary of the transaction on top and three tabs.

Link to entry — when the accounting entry already exists: a payment recorded from Open items, or a manual journal entry. Nothing new is written, only the link. Select one or more rows in the Entries to link column and watch the Selected sum indicator, with its Exact sum or Off by X badge: the Link button only lights up when the sum of the selected rows matches the transaction amount exactly (one cent of rounding is tolerated). This is how you handle a single transfer that settles several invoices: record the individual payments from Open items first, then tick here the entries that make up the transfer.

Close due item — when the transaction settles an open item. SamBooks lists the due items compatible with the direction of the transaction: for money out the items to pay (supplier payables and taxes, with the F24 badge), for money in the items to collect, sorted by nearest due date; the list loads the first fifty open items and has no search box.

Select the row and confirm with Close due item. Note that the whole transaction amount is used: it is not an editable field. If the transaction is smaller than the outstanding amount, a partial payment is recorded and the item stays open with the balance updated, to be closed later with another transaction. If it is larger, the operation is rejected because the amount exceeds the outstanding balance of the item: that transfer covers more than one item, so record the payments from Open items and use Link to entry instead. If the due item is an F24, a preview of the tax payment entry appears with the suggested account for each tax line and the button becomes Register F24 payment; if a tax line has no account, a warning blocks the confirmation until you complete it from the F24 page.

Create journal entry — when there is no document behind the transaction: bank charges, account fees, stamp duty, interest, a collection without an invoice. Add one or more offset lines with Account, Amount and an optional Note, and compare the Offset total with the transaction amount. A difference of up to 2 euro is closed by ticking "Post the … difference to bank charges/income"; above 2 euro saving is blocked. Confirm with Create journal entry.

5. Fix a wrong match

If you open a transaction that is already linked you no longer see the three routes, but two actions. Unlink — "Removes only the link: the journal entry stays unchanged and the transaction goes back among those to reconcile" — is for when the entry is correct but tied to the wrong transaction. Reverse and unlink reverses the linked entry and breaks the tie: the item reopens in Open items and, if it was an F24, the form goes back to Generated. Both ask for explicit confirmation; if the financial year is closed or that VAT period has already been settled, the reversal is refused.

6. Exclude a transaction that must not be reconciled

At the bottom of the assignment window there is Exclude from control, for transactions that should neither enter the books nor clog the queue: an anomalous duplicate produced by the bank, a technical movement, an internal balancing row. The transaction leaves the queue and is ignored by the automatic check too (if it is already linked, unlink it first).

Decide before you confirm: there is no way back from the page. The confirmation text mentions restoring it, but no command puts an excluded transaction back into the queue: treat it as final — when in doubt, leaving it among the unreconciled ones does no harm.

What reconciling produces in your books

• Link to entry: no new entry, only the link with the bank transaction.
• Close due item on an invoice: a double-entry posting — for a collection the cash or bank account in Debit and trade receivables in Credit, for a payment trade payables in Debit and the cash or bank account in Credit; the item becomes paid or stays partially paid. On an F24: the tax payment entry (one account per tax line, against the bank), the form set to Paid and the tax due item closed.
• Create journal entry: an entry with the bank causal, with the offset accounts you chose against the cash or bank account, plus the rounding line on bank charges or income when needed.
• Reconcile now: for confident matches, the same collection or payment entry you would write by hand; if the payment had already been recorded it only creates the link, so nothing is counted twice. On freshly imported transactions, though, it finds nothing to process.

You find the resulting entries in the Posting journal and in the Transactions tab of the Banking page, where the Reconciliation column says whether each row is Reconciled, Not reconciled or "Account without bank statement — not applicable" (cash accounts).

Ask Sam

Almost all of the reconciliation can be done in the chat with Sam, with the same accounting effects as the buttons: "Show me the unreconciled bank transactions for June", "Run the automatic reconciliation", "Close the due item of invoice 128 with the transfer dated 5 July", "Undo the match on that transaction". The chat is also the only way to accept an AI proposal, while importing the bank statement is the one thing Sam cannot do.

If something goes wrong

• The "Link" button stays disabled: the sum of the selected entries does not match the transaction amount. Add or remove rows — signs matter, money out is negative and money in is positive.
• A transaction reconciled by the import has no journal entry: both Unlink and Reverse and unlink answer that there is no link to remove. There is nothing to undo, the entry is simply missing: close the item from Open items.
• The transaction's bank account is not linked to a financial account in the chart of accounts: open Cash & bank accounts, link the account and try again.
• A transaction with a green badge is still in the queue: this happens with costs and charges posted without an invoice — the entry exists, the transaction simply stays listed. If you open it, only Unlink and Reverse and unlink are offered: it is already settled.

Frequently asked questions

How do I reconcile bank transactions with invoices? Import the statement, then click each transaction in the queue and choose Close due item, picking the invoice to collect or to pay.

What does "Reconcile now" actually do? It analyses the transactions not yet classified and posts only the invoice matches it is confident about; uncertain proposals stay in the queue. It processes nothing right after an import: those transactions are already classified.

I imported my bank statement — are the matched invoices settled? No: a match found during the import writes no journal entry and closes no due item. If the item is still open in Open items, record the receipt or the payment there.

Why does a bank transaction find no invoice to match? Usually the amount differs (fees, currency conversion), the invoice is not recorded yet, or the counterparty written by the bank does not resemble the one in your records.

How do I record a bank fee or stamp duty, which have no invoice? Open the transaction and use Create journal entry: cost account, amount, confirm. A difference of up to 2 euro goes to bank charges or income by ticking the dedicated box.

Can I match only part of a transaction? A transaction smaller than the outstanding amount records a partial payment and leaves the item open with the balance updated; a larger one cannot be split across several due items.

I matched the wrong transaction: how do I undo it? Open it again: Unlink removes the link only, Reverse and unlink also reverses the entry and reopens the due item.

"Exclude from control": can I undo it? No: there is no way to put an excluded transaction back into the queue from the page. Use it only when you are sure.

Related features

• Deadlines and ageing of receivables and payables — the open items reconciliation closes.
• Recording a collection or a payment — the other way to close an open item.
• Recording journal entries — where the entries produced here end up.
• Chart of accounts — the accounts for fees, charges and direct costs.
• Purchase invoices and sales invoices — the documents that generate due items.
• The Sam assistant — the same operations asked in chat.