Reconciliation

Reconciliation answers one question: do the transactions finura imported still add up to the balance your bank reports?

It matters because of the one problem no amount of reviewing transactions can catch. If a transaction never arrived, there is no row to look at. You can read every line in your account and see nothing wrong, because the thing that is wrong isn't there. Only the totals can catch it.

Give finura a starting balance

This is the one thing you have to do, and you only do it once per account.

Your bank doesn't hand over your whole history — usually about two years, and less for an account you've just connected. So finura can't work out what your account held before that, and adding up everything it has would disagree with your bank forever. Instead it starts from a balance you know was right.

Take both numbers from the same side of a statement. A statement summary usually prints two balances:

You want the closing balance and the closing date — the pair on the right. Taking the opening balance with the closing date is the easy mistake, and it goes wrong by exactly the amount that moved during the period, so it looks like a missing transaction rather than a mix-up.

Then:

1. Go to Transactions and select the account in the list on the left.
2. Open the Reconciliation panel above your transactions.
3. Enter the ending balance and closing date, and save.

Use a day that has finished settling rather than today. Everything dated on your closing date counts as already included in that balance, so a figure you read from your banking app this afternoon — with some of today's payments still landing — can't be matched exactly.

Reading the result

Once a starting balance is set, the panel shows three figures:

• Your transactions imply — your starting balance, plus everything since.
• Your bank reports — the balance your bank last told us.
• Difference — the gap, if any.

Balanced means every transaction is accounted for. Not "probably fine" — the two figures agree to the cent.

Off by an amount means something is missing, and which way tells you what:

• Your bank holds less than your transactions account for. Something that took money out probably never imported.
• Your bank holds more. Either something that brought money in is missing, or something came in twice.

What finura won't do

It won't point at a transaction and tell you that's the one. Naming a specific transaction would mean guessing, and a confident guess about your money is worse than an honest total. What it gives you is the amount and the date to search from — your transactions are right there underneath the panel, and the difference is usually enough to recognise what's absent.

Things that change the answer

Pending transactions are left out and shown separately. Banks disagree about whether their reported balance already counts pending activity, so including them would be wrong for about half of you without saying which half. If your difference is close to your pending total, that's timing rather than a missing transaction.

Credit cards work the same way, with the signs the other way round: spending raises what you owe rather than lowering a balance. You still enter the closing balance from a statement.

If you set an account's balance by hand, reconciliation has nothing independent to check against — comparing finura's figure with your own only proves it matches itself. It'll say so rather than pretend. Syncing replaces the manual figure with your bank's real one.

Accounts you've excluded from transaction tracking aren't reconciled, because nothing is being imported for them.

Correcting a starting balance

Open Update the starting balance in the panel and enter a new one. It replaces what was there — an account has one starting balance, not a history of them.

Where to spot a problem

You don't have to go looking. On Settings → Accounts, any account whose balance doesn't match its bank carries a Doesn't match bank marker, linking straight to that account's transactions.

Accounts without a starting balance aren't marked. Not being set up yet isn't a fault, and marking every account would just teach you to ignore the marker.