Bank, treasury and cheques

Bank accounts

The GL account link is what lets posting rules resolve the right account automatically — a payment rule says "the bank account's GL account" rather than naming one, so a single rule serves every bank. See Posting rules.

Two rules are enforced when you link one:

• The GL account must not be multi-currency. A bank operating in two currencies is set up as two bank accounts, each with its own single-currency GL account.
• The GL account must not already be claimed by another bank account or by a treasury account. Each is one-to-one.

An account already linked also cannot be edited — so get its code, name and type right before linking it.

Bank statements and reconciliation

A bank statement belongs to a bank account and holds lines:

Matching

Each statement line is matched to the journal line or lines that represent it. Once matched, the journal line records the statement line it belongs to and the time it was reconciled.

This is the control that proves your ledger agrees with the bank. Three points worth knowing:

• Match, do not re-key. A statement line that has no journal behind it means a transaction was never recorded. Find and post it, rather than creating an entry to make the line disappear.
• Unmatched journal lines are the mirror problem: something you recorded that the bank has not seen. Old ones are usually a duplicate, an error, or a payment that never actually left.
• The memo is evidence. When a match is not obvious, the bank's narrative usually says who paid.

A bank reconciliation report presents the position — see Financial reports.

Treasury accounts

A treasury account is a cash location — a safe, a petty cash box, a branch till.

Treasury transactions

Deposits and withdrawals move value between two accounts you control and must be recorded as such. Recording a bank deposit as cash out alone loses the money: it leaves the till and arrives nowhere.

Treasury balances should be counted physically and agreed to the ledger on a regular cycle. Cash is the one balance that can be verified absolutely, and the one most worth verifying.

Cheques

Cheques have a lifecycle of their own, because a cheque is a promise that may not be kept.

Status and dates

Each status change posts its own journal entry, driven by posting rules with the cheque source and the accounts configured for received, deposited, cleared and bounced cheques — see Tax, tariff codes and configuration.

Received is not paid. A cheque in your drawer is a receivable in a different form, not cash. The distinct statuses exist so the balance sheet can say so, and so a bounce is a recorded event rather than a quiet reversal.

When a cheque bounces

Set the status to bounced rather than deleting or editing the cheque. The bounce posts its own entry, restores the receivable and leaves the history visible — which matters, because a customer whose cheques bounce is a credit decision, and that decision needs evidence.

Remaining amount

Remaining amount tracks what is still outstanding where a cheque has been partly applied. Watch it when a single large cheque settles several invoices: a cheque fully applied should show zero remaining, and one that does not means an allocation is incomplete.

Cheque and statement history

Both cheques and bank statement lines have a history view showing everything that has happened to them. Use it before concluding that a figure is wrong — usually the record explains itself.

Last updated 15 September 2026