Reconciling is the check that your books match reality — that every transaction on your bank statement is in your books, and nothing is in your books that isn't on the statement.
Your Mercury accounts reconcile automatically, with no user intervention required. External accounts — anything linked through Plaid, Stripe, or a manual account you import by CSV — need to be reconciled manually.
How reconciliation works in Books
Reconciliation is configured one period at a time, in order. You choose the end date of each window, so it can cover whatever your statement covers — a calendar month, or any other range. Windows are contiguous and never overlap: each entry belongs to exactly one window, and a new one starts where the last one ended.
Mercury accounts reconcile automatically
Your Mercury accounts live in the same system as your books, so Books does this for you: as each monthly statement generates, it creates the reconciliation, marks every entry in the period reconciled, and records the statement ending balance. When you open Reconciliation for a Mercury account, you're looking at work that's already done.
Reconciling external accounts
Accounts linked through Plaid and Stripe, and manual accounts you import by CSV both reconcile in Books, but you drive the process: you get the statement from your bank, then work through the window in Books against it.
Reconciling an external account
- From your Books menu, select Reconciliation
- Select the account from the account picker dropdown
- Click Start reconciliation
- Provide the statement ending date and statement ending balance
- Click Start
- Compare the entries in the window against your statement for that period
- Deal with anything that doesn't match — see below
- Complete the reconciliation
When your balance doesn't match
Work through these in order:
- Check for missing transactions. Confirm the account is syncing and its connection is healthy on the Accounts page. For a manual account, check whether the CSV you imported covers the whole month
- Check for duplicates. An account imported by CSV and also linked automatically will have the same transactions twice
- Check the dates on transactions near the edges of the window. Books dates transactions from a linked account by when they were authorized; your statement dates them by when they posted. A charge authorized July 19 and posted August 3 sits in July in Books and in August on your statement. Edit the date on the entry to match your statement
- Check your opening balance. If the first month of an account has never reconciled cleanly, the opening balance is the likely cause
- Check for skipped entries. Look at your unreconciled entries for something that belongs in the window
- Check both sides of transfers. A transfer whose other side isn't in your books leaves a gap. See our Matching transfers between accounts article
Canceling a reconciliation in progress
You can cancel a reconciliation any time before you complete it by clicking the gear icon. Nothing is marked as reconciled, and your entries stay where they are.
Transactions that arrive after you've reconciled
A completed reconciliation stays as you completed it. If your bank returns a transaction later that's dated inside a period you've already reconciled, Books leaves that period alone rather than reopening it — so that transaction won't show up in your books for that period. To include it, delete the reconciliation for that period, add the transaction, and reconcile again.
Deleting a reconciliation
You can delete a completed reconciliation if you need to redo it by clicking the gear icon.
Note: Deleting a reconciliation also deletes every reconciliation after it. If you delete March, you're also deleting April onward. The transactions included in the period are not deleted.
Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC.