What is bank reconciliation?
Every account tied to the statement, with discrepancies explained rather than plugged.
In Australia the mechanics are the same — proving the bank balance inside Xero or MYOB equals the actual statement, transaction by transaction, every account, every period — but what brings an owner here is usually a BAS quarter closing in and the software showing a variance nobody can explain. Most small businesses lodge a Business Activity Statement quarterly (monthly above $20 million GST turnover, or for larger PAYG withholders), and each deadline forces a reckoning: the accounts tie out, or the BAS gets built on numbers nobody can defend.
The largest source of variance is payment-processor settlement, and here it carries a GST wrinkle the US version does not. Stripe, Square, and PayPal deposit what is left after fees, refunds, and chargebacks, usually as one lump sum for several days of trade. The fee carries GST, a creditable acquisition, so the gross sale, the fee and its GST component, any refund, and the net deposit are five numbers that all have to land correctly, coded to the right tax code, before the BAS labels for sales and GST collected mean anything. Book only the net deposit and the fee GST credit disappears with the gross sale; book both and revenue is doubled.
Why it matters
| Without a system | With CapEasy |
|---|---|
| Month-end arrives whenever someone gets to it | Books closed on a fixed date, in the same shape every month |
| Unexplained transactions pile up in a suspense account until year-end | Every account reconciled to the statement, with discrepancies explained not plugged |
| Your accountant bills you to fix bookkeeping before they can do their own work | A short questions list instead of a year-end archaeology project |
| You cannot answer "how did we do last month" without a week of digging | Whoever files opens a finished file |
What we need from you
Financial
- Bank and card statements
- Sales invoices
- Supplier bills
- Expense receipts
- Payroll summaries
- Loan statements
System
- Chart of accounts
- Opening balances
- Accounting software access (read/write, least privilege)
- Multi-currency details if applicable
Context
- Prior period financial statements
- Your accountant’s coding preferences
- Anything unusual we should expect
How it runs, step by step
- Transaction recording & classification
- Daily transaction entry
- Revenue and expense categorisation
- Capital vs operating classification
- Ledger & trial balance
- General ledger review
- Sub-ledger reconciliation
- Chart of accounts restructuring
- Reconciliation
- Monthly bank and card reconciliation
- Discrepancy investigation, with a written explanation
- Multi-account and multi-entity reconciliation
- Catch-up & clean-up
- Working back from the last clean period
- An honest read on how far back the records support
- Rebuilding to current
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | Bank reconciliation, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your registered BAS or tax agent | Everything that carries a licence in Australia — rendered exactly as written: work out what goes on your bas, or advise you on it — under tasa 2009 that requires registration we do not hold. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
Bank reconciliation in Australia
What reconciliation is not: TASA 2009 s.90-10
Section 90-10 of the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 defines a BAS service as one that ascertains or advises on a liability, obligation, or entitlement under a BAS provision. Matching a register to a statement is not that — it is bookkeeping mechanics. We reconcile the accounts and code transactions to GST tax codes for the registered BAS agent to review; determining what those codes mean for the liability, and lodging or dealing with the ATO, stay with your registered BAS agent.
A processor deposit has to split cleanly before it feeds G1 and 1A
BAS label G1 (total sales) and label 1A (GST on sales) are built from the gross sale and its GST component, not the net amount landing in the bank. Booked at the net figure, the GST in the gross sale and the credit on the fee both disappear from the trail, leaving the registered BAS agent guessing at the true taxable-sales figure instead of confirming it.
A super guarantee clearing-house lag can look like a missing payment
Employers using a clearing house — commonly the ATO Small Business Superannuation Clearing House — see one lump-sum debit leave the bank, distributed to each employee's fund on its own timetable, sometimes days later. Reconciled against the bank alone it looks unexplained; matched to the remittance advice, it ties cleanly. Whether super was paid on time for SG charge purposes is a call for the registered agent.
A payroll clearing account has to tie before Single Touch Payroll finalisation
Net pay, PAYG withholding, and super typically post through a clearing account each pay run, feeding the STP report the registered agent lodges with the ATO. If the account is not reconciled to what left the bank, the STP figures and the ledger disagree — and a mismatch caught at finalisation can mean re-tracing months of pay runs instead of one.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- A reconciliation report for every bank and credit-card account, for every BAS period, tying cleared balance to statement balance to the cent.
- An itemised list of items still outstanding at period end — cheques not presented, deposits in transit — dated and explained, never carried forward silently.
- A processor-clearing reconciliation for Stripe, Square, and PayPal separately: gross sales, the GST component of fees, refunds, and net deposits tied to the bank.
- A duplicate-transaction log: what was found duplicated from a bank-feed reconnect or double entry, and how each was removed or voided.
- The suspense and uncategorised accounts cleared to zero, or an itemised note of what each remaining entry is and why.
- A superannuation clearing-house reconciliation tying the lump-sum debit to the per-employee remittance advice, for the agent to assess SG timing.
