Reconcile Your Bank Statement: US Edition

If you’re like most financial administrators, you appreciate double and triple checking to make sure all the data you have matches and is as accurate as possible. Learning how to reconcile your bank statements with the data in your Nucleus Dashboard is an excellent way to cross reference between what’s in your bank account and what Nucleus says should be in your bank account.

So let’s see what this looks like in practice!

Note: Nucleus generates annual tax statements, and keeps track of all the donations in line with each donor - essentially everything that you might need to do manually if you keep track of donors in a separate 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.

To begin, go to your Financial Account in Church Settings. Click here for a quick link.

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

A Quick Refresher

This article builds upon the knowledge of a few different mechanisms and pieces of information about how Nucleus Giving & Payments works. Below is a quick crash course on the most important items to know before reconciling your bank statements.

Transfers (Batch Deposits)

Nucleus deposits funds to your church’s bank account in batch deposits. We like to call these Transfers because the funds are being transferred to your bank account. How frequently you’ll see funds deposited to your account and the difference between credit card and ACH deposits can all be found here. But for now, let’s quickly explore where the Transfers Panel is and how to manage it.

Note: You will need to have at least Financial Assistant level admin access in order to view this. If you don’t, you’ll need to request that access be given to you by whoever set up your Nucleus account.

You should already be on your Transfers Panel, but here’s a quick link just in case.

The Transfers Panel should feel familiar to other transactions tables you’ll likely have seen in Nucleus Giving or Flows Transactions, including showcasing helpful stats at the top (specifically regarding your batch deposits).

Below this, you can see a list of each individual batch deposit that has landed in your church’s bank account.

To learn more about exploring the Transfers Panel, and how to Manage & Track Financials, click here.

Transaction Statuses

Knowing how to reconcile your bank statements also requires knowing what transaction statuses to look out for in your Nucleus Dashboard. These are:

  • Pending
  • Successful
  • Paid Out
  • Refunded
  • Failed

You can review what each of these means in-depth here.

But specifically, if a transaction has a paid out status, then the transaction has successfully been processed and has been sent from our card processor to your church’s bank account. This means, when looking at a transactions table (whether your Master Transactions List here, or the Transactions Panel in Nucleus Giving or Flows), if a transaction has been paid out, it should shortly (within 24 hours) land in your church’s bank account, as well as also appear in a Transfer in your Transfers Panel.

Note: It’s possible that a deposit lands in your bank account before the information is present in your Transfers Panel. (Or vice-versa, where information is present in your Transfers Panel before it appears on your bank statement.) But don’t worry! This doesn’t happen too often, and you should see that “missing” information within 24 hours.

Handling Of Fees

While it’s best to review our entire guide on Transaction Statuses & Payout Schedules (Credit Card Vs. ACH) here, one of the most important items to remember is that credit card transactions and ACH transactions are always deposited in separate Transfers.

Further, our card processor handles the transaction fees covered by your donors differently. For credit card transaction fees, they are processed in what is known as “net daily deposits”. This means fees that donors cover stay with the card processor, and the donors’ intended gift amounts are deposited directly to your bank account.

For ACH transaction fees,the fees donors cover are deposited with the donors’ intended gift amounts in each ACH Transfer. Then once a month (usually around the 5th-7th), all the ACH transaction fees for the prior month are extracted from your church’s bank account in one lump sum.

This is important to note when reconciling your bank statement because for some Transfers you will be counting the transaction fees along with the transaction amounts (this is ACH) and for others, you’ll be counting just the transaction amounts (this is credit card).

Again, to learn more about the intricacies of this (including visuals), click here.

Transfer Payout Schedules & Statement Line Item Descriptions

Just as the fees are handled differently between credit card and ACH transactions, the Transfer payout schedule for each type of transaction also differs.

Each Transfer is solidified at 9:30pm EST. At that time, all available credit card transactions that are ready to be paid out will be batched together. The same is true for all ACH transactions that are ready to be paid out. These will then be deposited into your church’s bank account the following day.

Typically credit card transactions are deposited the day after they are given.

Credit card Transfers appear on your bank statement with Merchant Bankcd Deposit (usually along with a portion of your church’s name). Credit card Transfers may land in your bank account all 7 days of the week, but typically M-F.

Typically ACH transactions are deposited between 5-7 business days.

ACH Transfers appear on your bank statement with Fiserv Pmnt Svcs Payout (usually along with a portion of your church’s name). ACH Transfers only land in your bank account on business days.

For a more detailed explanation (including visuals) of transaction payout schedules, click here.

Definite Withdrawals To Expect

It’s important to note that there are withdrawals you can always expect to see, but you might see some surprising ones along the way. Let’s begin with the expected:

ACH Transaction Fees

Because ACH transaction fees are deposited alongside ACH donations, anytime you receive at least one ACH donation or payment, you can expect to see those fees extracted from your bank account the following month. Typically this happens between the 5th-7th of each month.

NACHA Bank Account Validation Fees

As explained here, bank account validation fees are not guaranteed. In fact, in our experience, a fairly low percentage of all ACH transactions see this additional fee added. But there’s a likely chance you will encounter these fees eventually.

Any bank account validation fees incurred will be withdrawn in the same extraction as the typical ACH transaction fees as described above. So it will not be a different withdrawal to look out for. It’s just a combination of these two fees.

Possible Withdrawals To Expect

Credit Card Transaction Fees

From time to time, you might see a seemingly random withdrawal for an odd amount. This is likely linked to either a single credit card transaction that is being withheld, or a group of credit card transactions (an entire Transfer) that is being withheld. The withdrawal would equate to the amount of transaction fees associated with the withheld transaction(s).

After our card processor has given the green light on whatever red flag had been raised, you will see the transaction (or group of transactions) land in your bank account, along with the transaction fees that were previously withdrawn. This cancels the transaction fees previously withdrawn and leaves you with 100% of the intended donation(s).

To learn about the possible reasons for this and for a visual example, click here.

Refunds

And of course, as much as we hope that people don’t need to request a refund from your church, it’s possible an error is made and someone might request to be refunded. In this case, you would also see a withdrawal from your church’s bank account for the amount refunded.

Click here to learn more about refunds.

Reconcile Your Bank Statement

Now that you have all the prior knowledge you need to reconcile your bank statements - and do it quickly and efficiently! - let’s explore how to actually do it.

Reconcile Deposits

As Transfers begin to land in your church’s bank account, you’ll see a record for those batch deposits in your Transfers Panel in the Financial Account of your Church Settings. Click here for a quick link.

Your Transfers Panel will showcase a variety of details for each Transfer:

  • Date: This is the date the Transfer was released from our card processor to your church’s bank account. While these dates should match the date on your bank statement, it’s possible for them to be off by +/- a day. This is because, once the funds have left our card processor’s system, we are unable to determine exactly when the funds actually land in your church’s bank account. So we use the date that the funds are paid out to your church’s bank account from our card processor’s system.
  • Type: This tells you what type of transactions are included in that specific Transfer: either credit card transactions or ACH transactions.
  • Amount: This is the total amount of the Transfer with any transaction fees included that were covered by the donor(s).
  • Adjustments: This column includes any potential modifications that our card processor made to your total Transfer amount. In our experience, most cases of an adjustment is actually an extra amount that is added to your Transfer, as a rebate from Discover (a credit card company). Yay for free money 🤑
  • Fees: This is the amount that is taken out of the Transfer before it lands in your bank account, specifically regarding any fees covered by the donor. You should only ever see this for credit card Transfers, since the fees covered by the donor on credit card transactions are sent directly to our card processor. Since ACH fees are deposited alongside ACH donations, this column should always say $0 for ACH Transfers.
  • Total: This tells you the final amount that you should see on the line item on your bank statement.
  • Gifts: This number tells you how many transactions are included in any specific Transfer. Because Transfers can include multiple transactions, this can be helpful to keep track of every transaction that you receive through Nucleus.

To reconcile your bank statement:

  1. Start with the earliest Transfer that has not been Marked As Done yet.
  2. Check the date and amount.
  3. Look at your bank statement for a match of that date and amount.
  4. Once found, click the Mark As Done button on that Transfer.

Is that it? Yes, it truly is that simple 😎

Note: As stated above, it’s possible that the date listed in your Transfers Panel might be off +/- a day as it appears on your bank statement. So if you can’t find the deposit on your bank statement for a particular date, try looking at the date directly before and after.

Now, some financial administrators might want to do more tedious reconciliation and match what specific transactions were included in each Transfer with other giving records. This is likely only helpful in instances where you are keeping track of donations in a separate platform, where you need to manually update giving records when donations have landed in your church’s bank account.

In that case, you can click to view a Transfer and see a list of all the transactions included in that particular Transfer so you can match the information in your Nucleus account with whatever other platform you’re using to keep track of your financial information.

Reconcile ACH Fee Withdrawals

Once a month, (usually around the 5th-7th), all the ACH transaction fees for the prior month are extracted from your church’s bank account.

Note: To refresh yourself on the handling of fees of credit card transactions versus ACH transactions, click here.

These fees include both all the typical fees that donors cover each time they donate via ACH as well as any NACHA bank account validation fees. (Click here for a refresher on these fees.)

To know how much to expect to be withdrawn from your bank account (or to ensure that the correct amount has been withdrawn), go to your Master Transactions List in the Financial Account of your Church Settings. Click here for a quick link.

Note: The following will rely on knowledge of how to manipulate and filter your transactions table. Click here for a refresher on this.

1. Click on Columns and toggle on the NACHA Fee column.

2. Filter for the Date Given for the entire previous month.

3. Filter to only show ACH transactions.

4. Click to Gather Additional Stats.

5. Multiply the number of transactions in the Stats by $0.25. (Save this number.)

6. Add up all the NACHA fees from the NACHA Fee column.

7. Combine the NACHA fees with the amount from Step 5.

The total dollar amount you end up with should match exactly the amount that will be (or has already been) withdrawn from your bank account for all ACH fees around the 5th-7th of each month. (Again, this withdrawal is accounting for all the fees for the prior month pertaining to ACH transactions.) So this amount should match exactly the withdrawal you see on your bank statement around the 5th-7th. (A bonus is that this amount will always be a multiple of $0.25, so it’s usually easy to spot on your bank statement.)

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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