AWRA Help Center

Open Accounting → Journal and choose Bank Reconciliation in the accounting sidebar. The first screen lists each bank account you reconcile with its ledger balance, how many statement lines are still unmatched, and when it was last reconciled. This is a different screen from Reconciliation in the same sidebar, which is the ledger’s internal integrity check.

Adding A Bank Account

1. Press Add a bank account. Give it a name, and optionally the bank and the last digits of the account number.
2. Choose the Ledger account your payments already post to, usually Bank. Each ledger account can be linked to one bank account only. Leave it empty and AWRA creates a new asset account for this bank.
3. Set Reconcile from to the first day of your first imported statement. Ledger entries before that date are taken as already reconciled.

Importing A Statement

Open the account and use Import a statement. AWRA reads CSV, OFX (including QFX) and MT940 files up to 5 MB. OFX and MT940 import straight away. A line already imported — from an earlier upload, an emailed statement or the M-Pesa feed — is skipped, so importing an overlapping statement does not double anything.

The first CSV from an account stops at Which columns are which?. AWRA guesses from the header row; check it and choose:

• Date (required), plus Description, Reference and Balance if the file has them.
• Either one signed Amount column, or separate Money in and Money out columns.
• The Date format, or leave it on Work it out.

Press Import. The mapping is remembered for that account, so the next CSV imports in one step; Change CSV column mapping clears it if your bank changes its layout. The file waits for the mapping for an hour; after that, upload it again.

Matching Lines To The Books

Statement lines are listed under Unmatched, Matched, Ignored and All. Money in is a debit to the bank’s ledger account and money out a credit, the same sign the statement uses. For each unmatched line you have four choices:

• Match. AWRA suggests up to three unmatched ledger entries on that account with the same amount and direction, dated within ten days, best first — words shared between the statement narrative and the entry’s reference count in a suggestion’s favour. Press Match on the right one. A ledger entry can clear only one statement line.
• Match the obvious ones. This matches, in one go, every line that has exactly one candidate entry that no other line is competing for. Anything ambiguous is left for you.
• Post & match. For a line that is not in the books yet — a bank charge, interest, a direct debit nobody recorded — open Not in the books yet, choose the account it belongs to, add a description and post it. The entry is dated on the statement line’s date and matched at once. A line in a closed month is refused; reopen the month, or post a manual journal in an open one.
• Ignore this line. For a line that should never reach the books. Restore brings it back.

Unmatch undoes a match, until the line is part of a completed reconciliation.

Completing A Reconciliation

1. Under Reconcile, enter the Statement date and the Closing balance on the statement, and press Check.
2. AWRA shows the balance in the books, less receipts not yet on a statement, plus payments not yet on a statement — what the statement should say — against what it does say, and the difference.
3. When every statement line on or before that date is matched, posted or ignored and the difference is zero, press Complete reconciliation.

Completing locks every line it cleared: they can no longer be matched, unmatched or ignored. Each account reconciles forward only — a date on or before the last completed one is refused. Past reconciliations are listed under Reconciled statements, and each completion is recorded in the audit log.

The M-Pesa Feed

On the Bank Reconciliation screen, Connect M-Pesa (with an optional Start from date, today by default) brings the M-Pesa money AWRA itself moves — paybill and till collections in, supplier and payroll payouts out — into reconciliation automatically every 30 minutes. It creates an M-Pesa account to reconcile against the M-Pesa ledger account those same payments post to. On the account page you can Check now, Pause or Resume. Money moved on the till outside AWRA reaches reconciliation when you upload Safaricom’s statement alongside; overlapping lines are skipped.

The Statement Inbox

An account can also have a private email address that reads your bank’s scheduled statement email (CSV, OFX or MT940) when it arrives. This is a setting your administrator or AWRA support has to switch on for the server first; until then the account page explains that inbound email is not set up yet. Once it is on, Set up the statement inbox shows the address to give your bank, you can limit it to listed sender addresses or domains, and New address replaces the address if it leaks — the old one stops working straight away. A CSV statement by email uses the column mapping saved from your last upload, so do one manual CSV import first.

Permissions And Plans

• Bank reconciliation is on the Premium and Enterprise plans.
• Reconcile transactions — open the screens, import, match, post, ignore, complete, and manage the feeds.
• Manage accounts — needed as well to add a bank account.

Common Mistakes

• A difference left over. Usually a payment recorded on a different date or account, or a bank charge still unposted. Open the list of entries in the books not yet on a statement, under the check.
• Reconcile from left empty on an account with years of history: every old entry then counts as outstanding.
• Bank payments from a payment run reach the ledger only when they are confirmed on the run — confirm them before reconciling. See Payment Runs.

Related

• General Ledger — the entries a statement line is matched to.
• Journal Entries — manual journals and closing a month.
• Payments Register — money in and out across modules.
• Bank reconciliation and bank feeds — the feature pages.