Bank reconciliation: matching payments to their invoices

What bank reconciliation does

Every payment on the account belongs to an invoice or a supplier invoice. Reconciliation finds that match, settles the invoice and keeps the open items current. What stays open is either not paid yet or needs a decision.

CAMT.053, MT940 or CSV

You download the statement from your online banking. CAMT.053 is the XML format under ISO 20022 that is gradually replacing the older MT940; both carry every transaction with its payer, amount and reference. If a bank offers neither, a CSV file works too.

If you import a statement twice by mistake, TWT Banking still counts every transaction once.

How matching works

• Invoice number, payer, amount and reference are weighed together.
• A part payment settles its invoice in part, and one transfer can be split across several invoices.
• Supplier payments are matched just like customer payments.
• You confirm one by one, or all certain matches at once.
• Small differences up to your limit are written off, and the VAT is corrected in proportion, as § 17 UStG requires.

Open items and supplier payments

Receivables and payables are in one list, with their ageing from not yet due to over 90 days. The payment proposal knows for every supplier invoice the last day it can be paid with the early-payment discount; a payment run needs its own approval and goes to your bank as a SEPA file (pain.001).

Protection against changed bank details

A well-known fraud is the invoice with new bank details. TWT Banking reports when a supplier names a new bank account, and a payment run pays only to bank accounts a named person has confirmed.

Traceable under the GoBD

Every import, every match, every confirmation and every payment run is in the activity log with person and time. Banking is part of TWT Accounting, together with the journal in SKR03 or SKR04, the VAT pre-return and the DATEV export.

DATEV export for your tax advisorVAT pre-return over ELSTER