Contents

Introduction

Reconciliation is the accounting practice of comparing two sets of financial records to ensure that they are accurate and consistent. Essentially, when you reconcile an account, you validate whether its current balance is correct and identical everywhere. If you are not familiar with reconciliation, we recommend this article, published by one of our supported payment processors: Stripe.

Terminology

Let’s explore some of the terms we will be using throughout this guide:

Reconciliation

Reconciliation is the process of comparing external financial records (such as bank statements, general ledger accounts, or invoices) with internal accounting records to ensure they match and are accurate. The goal is to identify and resolve discrepancies, thus preventing errors, fraud, or financial misstatements.

Beginning Balance

The Beginning Balance is the account balance or the total transaction amount that has already been reconciled and that you start from when reconciling. In ChMeetings, the Beginning Balance for your entire account is automatically calculated as the total of all previously reconciled transactions in the bank account. If this is the first reconciliation, the balance will be 0. This value cannot be manually edited.

Ending Balance

The Ending Balance is the account balance shown on the bank statement for the reconciled period or the total transaction amount during the period that you want to reconcile. ChMeetings automatically calculates this value. To be able to reconcile, the Ending Balance on your external document must be equal to the value calculated by ChMeetings. This value cannot be edited manually.

Total Transaction Amount

The Total Transaction Amount refers to the sum of all transaction amounts during a specific period or corresponding to selected transactions. For example, if you are reconciling an entire account, the Total Transaction Amount is the sum of all transactions performed during the reconciled period. If you are selecting specific transactions to reconcile, the total is the sum of the amounts in those selected transactions.

Why Is Reconciliation Important?

Reconciliation helps your church maintain accurate accounting. It ensures that your records are the same at your bank and in your accounting, no matter your methods or the systems you use. It is a well-recognized practice that helps mitigate errors and accurately manage an organizations’ finances.

As a church, it is key to perform reconciliation regularly. It helps make sure that financial resources are well managed, reporting is accurate, and financial transparency is easier, particularly since most funding comes from giving.

Reconciliation is not mandatory, but if accounting errors occur, you may spend more time fixing them than performing reconciliation. Long periods of unreconciled record-keeping increases the risk of financial mismanagement.

Recommendations

During reconciliation, we recommend that you validate all unreconciled transactions on the account you’re working with. This means reviewing and potentially adjusting existing transactions so that your ChMeetings transactions exactly match your bank statement or financial report you use to reconcile. Please see Manage Accounts (in particular, the sections: Add Transactions and Work with Your Account Transactions List) for more about working with Transactions in ChMeetings Accounting. Once validating your transactions, you may proceed to reconcile the account.

We recommend that you perform reconciliation on a monthly basis.

Additionally, it’s important to have your bank statement or an equivalent financial report on hand to ensure a smooth process. It should include the following information:

The opening balance at the beginning of the month you’re reconciling;
Income transactions within the month: e.g.: deposits, any amounts with which your account was credited.
Expense transactions within the month: e.g. withdrawals or payments made from the account; any amounts with which your account was debited.
Any applicable interest income or bank fees.
The ending balance for the month.

Perform Reconciliation in ChMeetings

You can reconcile your accounts within ChMeetings by going to Accounting > Reconciliation. Here is where you will find a list of all your existing Accounts, along with their current balances.

Click the desired account to reveal the number of new transactions since the last reconciliation; as well as the Reconcile button.

Click Reconcile to continue.

In the Reconcile window, enter the following:

Ending Balance Date: The last date of your reconciliation period; for example, 01/31/2025.
Ending Balance Amount: The ending account balance shown on the bank statement for the reconciled period.
- To reconcile an entire account, the ending balance from your bank statement must be the same as your ChMeetings account balance. This means that the Ending Balance must be equal to the Beginning Balance plus the total transaction amount during the reconciled period.
- To reconcile specific transactions, then the ending balance from your bank statement should be the same as the total amount of those transactions within ChMeetings.

Click Add when you are ready to proceed.

The Reconciliation screen that comes next will let you select the transactions that you want to reconcile. It can be all transactions (as in the screenshot below), or just some of them.

There are two scenarios that may occur at this point: either your Ending Balance in ChMeetings is different from your external document Ending Balance (in which case the Reconcile button is inactive), or it is the same (this time the button is active). If it is different, you must correct the differences. If the amounts are the same, then you can proceed to reconciliation.

Correct Reconciliation Differences

If the Reconcile button is inactive, either there is no transaction selected or your ending balance and total transactions amount are not equal. In this case, the selected transactions will not reconcile so you cannot complete the process.

At this stage you must compare your ChMeetings transactions with the statement or records you’re using for reconciliation, and ensure that all transactions are accurate and amount to the same total balance. From the dedicated screen in ChMeetings, you can resolve this issue through one of the following methods:

Add or import the transactions that are potentially missing from your accounting. You can manage the import rules directly from this screen as needed.
Edit existing transactions to adjust amounts if required.
Delete transactions that are potentially duplicate or not found on your reconciliation document or bank statement.

Complete Reconciliation

When there is no difference between your ending balance and the total transaction amount, then the Reconcile button at the bottom right will be active. If so, then click it to complete the process.

Once done, you will be taken back to the main Reconciliation section. Here is where you can reconcile any remaining transactions on your accounts, view reconciled transactions, or undo a reconciliation.

In your Accounts section, reconciled transactions will be shown with a Reconciled status and will no longer be editable. To edit such a transaction, you must undo the reconciliation. See below for details.

View Reconciled Transactions

You can view reconciled transactions from the main Reconciliation screen, by selecting the desired account, then clicking View.

Clicking View will show you the list of all reconciled transactions and balances corresponding to the Account you’re working with. You can export these transactions if you need to.

Undo Reconciliation

You can unreconcile transactions by clicking the Undo button corresponding to the respective reconciliation.

You must confirm your choice. Before you do, keep in mind that this will affect all transactions that were reconciled as part of the operation you selected to undo. So all transactions reconciled within the selected period will become unreconciled again and you must go through another reconciliation process.