Link your bank account to Zoho Books so the transactions come in through a daily bank feed. Match or categorise them as they arrive, then reconcile the account against your bank statement every month.

Applies to: Zoho Books – All clients

Background

If you spend about 5 minutes a day on your bookkeeping, month-end and your quarterly BAS become much easier. The simplest way to do this is to link your bank account to the daily bank feed.

Link a bank account

A linked account lets Zoho capture the daily bank feed, so you can check transactions each day and match them to invoices, payments or transfers.

1. Go to Banking and click Add a bank or credit card.

   

2. Select your bank. Australia's most popular banks are available for easy setup. If your bank isn't listed, you'll need to set up the feed manually; ask your bank how to do this.

   

3. Sign in to your bank and complete the authentication. Your bank feed is then ready, and the account's transaction list shows all transactions on that account.

   

Match and categorise transactions

1. Click the gear icon and select Refresh feeds. You can do this once a day. The latest transactions are imported with the status Uncategorised.
2. Click a transaction to open it. Zoho Books suggests the most likely match, such as a vendor payment or a customer payment. Once you accept it, the status changes to Matched.
3. Categorise transactions that have nothing to match, such as bank fees, manually.

Tip: You can set up a rule to categorise recurring transactions such as bank fees automatically.

Reconcile the account

Reconcile your bank account every month, for example on the first Monday of the month, up to the last day of the previous month. If you've matched and categorised transactions regularly (daily is best), this is quick.

1. Click the gear icon (the same one you use for Refresh feeds) and select Reconciliation history. Your previous reconciliations are shown with their closing balances.

   

2. Click Reconcile Account.
3. Enter the date to reconcile up to and the closing balance on your bank statement at that date. The start date is always the day after your last reconciliation.
4. Click Start Reconciliation. All transactions for the period are shown.
5. Match or categorise any remaining transactions in this screen.

6. When the bank and Zoho Books balances agree (the difference is 0), finish the reconciliation. Reconciled transactions in your bank feed show a small green tick next to Categorised or Matched.

   

Note: Reconcile at least once a month. If you still receive paper statements from your bank, reconcile each time a new statement arrives.