If you are using Zoho Books for your accounting, you probably figured that it is an easy package to use. If you have the discipline to spend 5 minutes per day to do your accounting, your end-of-month is a breeze, and your BAS at the end of the quarter will be a walk in the park. To keep things simple, you should link your bank account to the daily feeds. This article gives you some pointers.

Linking a bank account

You can link your account in Zoho Books, so Zoho can capture the daily feed. This is extremely useful, it allows you to daily check the bank transactions, and match these transactions to invoices, payments, or transfers. To link a bank account, go to Banking, and click "Add a bank or credit card".

A screen opens where you can select your bank. Australia's most popular banks are available for easy setup. If you bank elsewhere, you will have to set this up manually. Consult with your bank on the procedure to follow.

After you have successfully completed the process of logging on and authenticating, your bank feeds are good to go. Once you open your bank transactions list, you can see all the transactions made on that account. See (details blacked out) screenshot below:

Uner the gear button, you can click "Refresh feeds". you can do this once a day. All latest transactions will be imported. These will show up as "uncategorised". You can click the transaction to open it, and the system will prompt with the most likely candidate for matching (i.e. a vendor payment, or a customer payment). This will then have the status "Matched". If there are transactions that do not have a matching transaction (for example bank fees, you can categorise them manually. It is possible ot set up a rule for these transactions.

 Reconciliation

If you match and categorise your bank transactions regularly (I recommend daily), your end of month reconcilation should be a breeze. It is good form to reconcile your bank every month, usually the first Monday of the new month - reconcile up to the last day of the previous month. To do this, click the gear icon (the same one where you selected "Refresh feeds", and select "Reconsiliation history". 

Your previous reconcilations will show up with the closing balances. In order to reconcile the last month, click "Reconcile Account". A new form opens where you have to enter the date up to which you wish to reconcile (it always takes the start date as the first day after the last time you reconciled), and you have to enter the closing balance as per that date. Once you have both filled out, you can click "Start Reconciliation". 

A new form opens showing all transactions of the month. If you have followed the steps for daily bank feeds, and matched and categorised all transactions during the month, the reconcilation should have no, or only very few transactions that have not been categorised or matched. You can do this in this form. Once the balances of bank and Zoho match (there is a difference of 0), you can finalise the reconcilation. All transactions of your bank feed will have a little green tickbox next to categorised or matched, if they have been reconciled. 

NOTE: you should do this at least once a month, but if you still receive paper statements from your bank, you should do this every time you receive a new statement.