Transfers, cheques and bank reconciliation

Three tools keep your cash balances honest: a transfer moves money between your own accounts, cheques track what has not cleared yet, and bank reconciliation matches your books against the bank statement.

Transfers

A transfer is an internal movement: cash box to bank, bank to bank, or into a float. From the Accounting panel open the Transfers card — image 1 — then New Transfer as in image 2:

• From account and to account — once an account and date are chosen, the system shows the source account's approximate balance on that date.
• Amount — for asset and expense accounts it cannot exceed the available balance while that balance is positive.
• Date, description and an optional reference.
• Attachment — proof of the transfer (PDF or image).

Who made the transfer is recorded automatically, so there is no need to type your name into the description.

Cheques

The Cheques card — image 3 — tracks cheques in both directions: received cheques from customers and issued cheques written to suppliers.

To add one — image 4 — you enter the number, the party, the bank, the amount, the cheque date and due date, and the status: pending, cleared, or bounced.

Keeping the status current is the whole point: a pending cheque is money that has not arrived, and a bounced one puts the debt back where it was. This is why the reports panel shows "pending cheques" among its indicators.

Bank reconciliation

Reconciliation answers one question: why does the bank balance in your books differ from the one on the statement? From the Bank Reconciliations card — image 5 — press Add to open the reconciliation screen — image 6 — which has two sides:

• Book side — the account balance in your records at the statement date, fetched automatically.
• Bank side — the balance as shown on the statement, entered by you.

You then add adjustment items that explain the difference: bank charges not yet recorded, bank interest, uncleared cheques, deposits in transit, or a bank error correction. With each item the adjusted balances on both sides converge until the difference is zero — at which point the reconciliation is complete.

A suggested monthly routine

1. Update the status of pending cheques from the bank statement.
2. Create a reconciliation for each bank account at month end.
3. Record the charges and interest the reconciliation revealed as an expense or income.
4. Then close the fiscal period.