Match a bill to a bank transaction

Matching tells TALISK_HQ that a bank transaction paid a specific bill, which records the payment and clears the bill from Accounts Payable. There are two ways in:

• From the bill (Ledger › Expenses): click the approved bill's purple Match pill, then pick the bank transaction that paid it.
• From the bank line (Ledger › Banking): open the transaction's match picker and choose the bill it paid.

The bill must be Approved first, and the bank transaction must still be unmatched. The Banking-side picker is single-select: one bill per transaction. It lists a bill that is already part paid too, so the next instalment can be matched from its own line. When a single bank payment covered several bills, start from the bill side instead and use the combine pane.

If you scheduled the payment on Bill Pay, matching its bank line is also what marks the scheduled payment Paid: there is nothing else to press. See "Schedule a bill payment".

Paying a bill in instalments from the bank line

A bill you are paying off in several payments stays in the Banking-side picker until it is paid in full. After its first payment it shows a Partly paid pill with what is left, for example "$600.00 left of $1,000.00", and the amount on the right is what is left rather than the bill's total. The variance filter compares the bank line with what is left too, so the next instalment is the bill that looks like a match.

Pick the bill on the next payment's line and TALISK_HQ adds that payment to it. When the payments add up to the bill, it closes as matched; until then it stays open for the rest, and the message after the match says how much is still owing. A bill that is fully paid leaves the list.

If a payment is more than what is left on the bill, TALISK_HQ asks which account the extra belongs to before recording anything, exactly as described under "When the bank amount is further off than that" below. A payment that is less than what is left is simply recorded as another instalment.

A bill in another currency paid from your CAD account works from the bank line as well, one payment at a time. Picking it asks how much of the bill's currency this payment settled, which is on the wire confirmation. This pays off the bill fills in everything still owing; it starts ticked when nothing has been paid yet and the payment looks like the whole bill. To match several wires at once, use the bill's Match pill: see "Pay a foreign-currency bill in instalments from your CAD account".

The combine pane on the bill side, which pays several bills with one payment, does not offer a bill that is already part paid.

Bills the picker deliberately leaves out

Two kinds of document never appear in the list, because matching is not how they get settled.

• A bill someone paid out of their own pocket, whether that was you personally or a team member. Your supplier was already paid at the till, so there is no supplier balance for a bank line to clear. What is still outstanding is what the business owes that person, so the bank line that settles it is the one repaying them: see "Pay someone back".
• A receipt, which is proof of a payment you already made. A receipt clears against its own bank line rather than through bill matching: see "Receipts vs bills".

Both stay out of the list permanently, so a reimbursed bill from months ago will not keep resurfacing against every payment you open.

A charge from before your books start

A bank or card charge dated before your opening balances is already counted inside them, so it cannot pay a bill that sits in your live books. When you match from such a bill, the picker leaves those charges out, and if one is chosen anyway TALISK_HQ refuses the match and records nothing. Uploading a receipt against one of those charges is refused for the same reason.

A bill that is itself from before your books start can still be matched to its own charge from that period. The match is for your records only: both sides are already inside your opening balances, so it posts nothing. TALISK_HQ also never makes that pairing on its own.

The same rule holds wherever a bank line settles something, not just a bill: a line from before your books' start date can't settle anything in your live books. That covers an invoice, a customer deposit, an ecommerce order or payout, and a repayment to a shareholder or team member. Its money is already counted in your opening balances, so TALISK_HQ refuses the match rather than count it twice. A line from on or after the start date can still settle something older, because that is new money.

Paid from an account with no bank feed

If the bill was paid out of an account that never sends statements (a customs or CARM import balance, a sales-tax balance, a line of credit your bank doesn't export), there is no transaction to pick. The bill's match picker offers Record the payment for exactly this case: choose the account, the date, and the amount, and TALISK_HQ creates the transaction, matches it, and records the payment in one step. The amount starts at what the bill still owes; enter less to record a part-payment, and the rest stays owing. You can't record more than the bill owes.

The description is what the new line is called in that account's list of transactions. It starts as the supplier's name and invoice number, but you can change it to whatever you'll recognise later.

If the account you pick does import statements, TALISK_HQ warns you: the same payment will arrive again with the next import, so it's usually better to wait and match the imported line instead.

When TALISK_HQ asks instead of matching for you

TALISK_HQ matches a bill to a charge on its own only when it has more than the amount and the date to go on: the charge also has to look like it came from that supplier. Two unrelated things can land on the same amount on the same day, and booking a payment against the wrong supplier is not a mistake you would notice.

So when the amount and date line up but the supplier does not, TALISK_HQ puts the pairing in Suggested matches needing review instead of recording it. You confirm it with one tap, and nothing is recorded until you do.

The usual reason a supplier "does not look like" itself is that your statement calls it something else: Amazon appears as AMZN MKTP, Wayfair as WF/. Add those under Statement names on the vendor (Ledger › Expenses › Vendors) and TALISK_HQ will match them on its own from then on.

Some charges can never be recognised by name. An e-transfer to a person is the usual case, where the statement shows the person's name and the bill shows their business. Those stay one-tap confirmations, which is the right outcome: they are exactly the pairings worth a human glance.

Checking what TALISK_HQ matched on its own

When the amount, the date and the supplier all agree, TALISK_HQ records the payment without asking. That is usually what you want, but it means some payments get recorded while you are not looking, so there is a place to see them.

On Ledger › Expenses, open What TALISK_HQ matched for you. Each row shows the pair on two lines, Bill above Bank line, each with its own date and amount, plus the bill's number and the account the charge landed on. Under them is the evidence TALISK_HQ used: whether the supplier name agreed, how many days apart they were, and whether the amount was exact. A pairing where the supplier name did not agree is marked check this one.

Click either line to open it. The Bill line opens that bill on this page, even when it is dated outside the period you are viewing; the Bank line opens the charge on Ledger › Banking. That is how you check a pairing you are unsure about before deciding.

• Looks right marks it reviewed and takes it off the list. This only records that you looked. It changes no amounts and posts nothing.
• All clear does the same for everything showing at once.
• Not right undoes the match: the payment is reversed off that bill and the bank line goes back to your unmatched list. The bank line itself is kept, because the money did leave your account.

Nothing here is a deadline. The list is a place to look, not something to get to zero. Tick Show items I already cleared to go back to something you cleared earlier and put it back on the list.

Both lists follow the period at the top of the page, on the bill's date, the same way the list of bills below them does. Set the period to a past year to go back and check that year's matches. A line above the list says how many sit outside the period you are viewing, so narrowing it never hides anything quietly. The count in the panel's own header ignores the period on purpose: it is your reminder that something is waiting somewhere, and it should not go quiet because you were looking at last quarter.

Nothing ever leaves the cleared list, so on a busy account it grows long. Tabs beside the tick box choose how many to show: 10, 25, 50 or All, newest first, starting at 10. Whenever some are being held back, the same line says how many there are in total, so you always know what you are not looking at. All tops out at 500 within one period, and says so; narrow the period to reach the rest.

Why it is worth an occasional glance: if a payment is recorded against the wrong bill, your books still balance, because the money left your account either way, so nothing looks broken. What you would notice instead is the other bill still sitting unpaid weeks later. Checking here is quicker than that.

When a bank line is already accounted for

Some bank lines look open but their money is already in your books, or may be. TALISK_HQ will not suggest, auto-match or let you confirm a bill against one of them, and the Match picker refuses one too when you choose it by hand:

• a deposit that a recorded store payout has already put in your books, or one that is a payout from your online store (match it under Ecommerce › Payouts);
• a deposit that matches money waiting in Undeposited Funds, such as a customer receipt or a store sale;
• a charge or deposit that may be a duplicate of another bank line and is waiting in Ledger › Banking › Review.

Matching a bill or a supplier credit note to it would count that money twice. While such a line is the closest fit for a bill, TALISK_HQ also holds back from matching that bill to a weaker one. Resolve the line the way the message says, and the bill is matched on the next run.

When the bank amount is a few cents off

Sometimes the money that left your account is a cent or two away from what the bill says. A supplier rounds differently, or a refund comes back marginally larger than the credit note. TALISK_HQ still clears the bill in full and puts the small difference on 4890 Cash Over/Short, so the payable ends at exactly zero and nothing is left hanging against that supplier.

You will see that as an extra line for a few cents when you open the journal entry behind the match. It is doing what it says: recording that the bank moved slightly more, or slightly less, than the document asked for.

This only happens for differences of five cents or under, which is the same closeness TALISK_HQ uses when it decides two amounts are the same amount. Anything bigger is left alone deliberately, because a larger gap is usually a genuine partial payment or a match to the wrong charge, and quietly writing it off would hide that from you.

When the bank amount is further off than that

A match always records the payment at the amount that actually left your account, because that is the figure your bank statement shows and the one your bank balance has to agree with. When the bill says something different by more than five cents, TALISK_HQ does not guess what the difference was. It stops and asks, and nothing is recorded until you answer.

• The bank paid less than the bill. Choose Leave $17.70 owing (with your own amount in place of $17.70). The payment is recorded at the bank's figure and the rest stays owing on the bill, which then shows as part-paid. If the bill's own amount is wrong, for example the supplier gave you a discount, correct the bill instead and match again.
• The bank paid more than the bill. Pick the account the extra belongs to, such as a bank fee, and choose Book $5.00 there (again with your own amount). The bill is paid in full and the extra is recorded on the bank line itself, under that account. If the line already had a category, it is offered first.

The same applies when one payment covers several bills and comes to more than all of them together, and when you add a payment to a bill that already has some paid. A payment that would settle nothing at all, because the bill is already fully paid, is refused rather than linked to it.

Confirming a suggested match follows the same rule for a bill in your own currency. When the suggested bank line is more than five cents above what the bill still owes, the confirm is refused and nothing is recorded: open the bill's Match pill instead, where you choose the account the extra goes to. A suggested line a few cents off either way clears the bill through 4890 Cash Over/Short, and one well below the bill is recorded as a part payment, leaving the rest owing.

When TALISK_HQ matches a bill in your own currency on its own (when you approve it, when you press Run Matching, or as new bank lines arrive), it does so only when the bank line comes within five cents of what the bill still owes, either way. A bill in another currency that is already part paid is never matched on its own. A line from the same supplier that is a little further off, such as $100.50 against a $100.00 bill, waits as a suggestion for you to confirm instead of being recorded unseen.

Back closes the question without recording anything.

Taking one bill off a payment that paid several works the same way in reverse. If the bank line has a category, the freed part goes back onto it. If it has none, TALISK_HQ asks whether to unmatch the whole payment instead, because the freed part would otherwise be recorded nowhere.

A payment from a foreign-currency account

A line from a bank or card account held in another currency, such as a USD account, can pay one bill in that same currency, for the line's whole amount. A USD 600.00 payment matches a USD 600.00 bill, and TALISK_HQ records any difference between the exchange rate on the bill's date and the rate on the payment's date as a foreign-exchange gain or loss. When a supplier deposit already paid part of the bill, the line for the balance matches the same way: it is compared with what the bill still owes.

TALISK_HQ refuses two other pairings and records nothing. A bill in a different currency, such as a CAD bill on the USD line, is refused because the two amounts are not in the same money. A bill for less or more than the line is refused too, because the part of the line the bill does not cover would have nowhere correct to go. If a bank fee or a discount explains the difference, correct the bill so it matches what was paid, then match again. Splitting one foreign-currency payment across a bill and something else, or across several bills, is not supported yet.

A foreign-currency bill paid from your CAD account, in one wire or several, is matched one wire at a time from the bank line, or several together from the bill's Match pill: see "Pay a foreign-currency bill in instalments from your CAD account".