Reconcile Your Bank Statement: An Introduction

One important task of any lead financial admin is reconciling your bank statements to make sure that all the numbers balance out. (And if they don’t, choosing ignorance and throwing your computer in the trash is always an option, though we don’t recommend doing that 😂)

Before guiding you on how to reconcile your bank statements, let’s explore a bit of what we mean by “reconcile” and what this entails.

In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.

What Do We Mean By & Why Would We Need To “Reconcile”?

Before we explain what we mean by “reconciliation”, it’s important to start with the “why”.

Nucleus Giving partners with a card processor (CardConnect) who deposits in batch deposits. (We call these “Transfers”.) This means in many cases there will be multiple donations in a single deposit into your church’s bank account. But your bank statement will only have a single line item of how much was deposited and on what date. So how will you be able to figure out which donations were included in each Transfer?

That’s where reconciling your bank statements comes into play. Using the data presented in Nucleus Giving - and specifically with the records in your Financial Account in Church Settings - you can sort out which gifts were included in each Transfer if you want to keep track of them in detail 😎

Note: Nucleus generates annual tax statements, keeps track of all the donations in line with each donor - everything that you might need to do manually if you keep track of donors in another system. So if you don’t plan on keeping track of individual donor information in another platform, you might find reconciling your bank statements a bit redundant. But either way, we have great tools to help you reconcile your bank statements should you have the need to do so.

Transfers Include Payments From Flows

While you're likely reading this particular guide in the context of Nucleus Giving, it's important to note that if you also make use of Payments in Nucleus Flows, you can also see a mixture of payments and donations together in a single Transfer. This is because Payments in Flows utilizes the same processing account that your Giving account utilizes.

So any credit card donations that are ready to be deposited to your bank at the same time that credit card transactions from a Flow are ready to be deposited, they will be grouped together in a single Transfer. (Same goes for any donations and payments made via ACH that are ready to be deposited at the same time: they'll be grouped together in a single Transfer.)

Transfers Panel & Master Transactions List

While reconciling your bank statements, you might make use of both the Transfers Panel and your Master Transactions List.

To access both, go to your Financial Account in your Church Settings. This will take you directly to your Transfers Panel. Click here for a quick link.

To access your Master Transactions List, click on Transactions right beside the Transfers Panel. Click here for a quick link.

If you make use of Payments in Flows, your Master Transactions List will showcase all transactions processed through your processing account. This includes both donations and payments from Giving and Flows.

While viewing your Transactions Panel directly in Giving, you will only see donations made through your church's GivingFlow. While viewing your Transactions Panel directly in Flows, you will only see payments made through custom Flows.

Your Master Transactions List combines both of those lists together to help with seeing the big picture of all the transactions made through your Nucleus account, which can be helpful with reconciliation and overall managing your church's financials.

More in Depth Guide

This article is meant to give you a brief look into what it takes to reconcile your bank account. For a VERY in depth guide on how to reconcile your bank statements, check out the article below 🙂

What Next?

While reconciling your bank statements, you may come across some questions. We’ve already answered a couple of these for you:

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