Reconciling transactions

Reconciliation is telling Arvello what each bank transaction actually was: a client paying an invoice, a supplier being paid, salary, tax, or money moving between your own accounts. Each answer creates the right bookkeeping entry behind the scenes — which is what keeps your reports and VAT figures truthful.

Every transaction sits in one of three states: Needs review (nothing decided yet), Done (matched or categorised, with a journal entry behind it) and Personal / Excluded (not business activity). The aim: nothing left in Needs review.

The Needs Attention screen

Banking → Needs Attention is where reconciliation happens. Two counters show how many transactions need review and how many already have a suggestion attached. Below them, Arvello presents one transaction at a time — date, amount, who paid or was paid, the reference — with Previous, Next and Skip controls. When the queue reaches zero you get an "All caught up" message and a brief burst of confetti, which is as excitable as accounting software ought to get.

Matching a transaction

When Arvello has a likely invoice, a "Possible match" banner shows it. Confirm records the payment, creates the journal entry and marks both as done; Not this dismisses the suggestion. If the reference matches but the amount doesn't, it's flagged as a possible partial payment — confirming records a part-payment, and a progress bar tracks what remains to allocate.

If you already recorded the payment by hand (with Record Payment on the invoice) and the same money then arrives through a bank feed or import, Arvello notices: the banner offers Link to existing payment instead of Confirm, so the movement is attached to the payment you already have rather than recorded a second time. The same guard appears in the manual matching form — selecting an invoice that carries an identical unlinked payment shows a warning with the link option, and Confirm stays available for the rare case where the movement genuinely is a separate payment of the same amount. When more than one unlinked payment of that amount is equally close to the movement's date, Arvello can't tell which one this is, so it asks you to open the invoice and link the correct payment rather than confirming a new one.

With no suggestion (or after rejecting one), the "What is this payment?" grid lists the realistic options for the money's direction — for money out: a business expense, a bank fee or other simple charge, a match to an existing expense, salary or board fees, a tax payment to EMTA, dividends, loan repayments, an equipment purchase and so on; for money in: an invoice payment, owner investment, tax refund, other income or asset sale. Each opens a short form and Arvello takes care of the journal entry. Recording a business expense opens an expense form pre-filled from the transaction that reconciles itself on save, and an invoice payment with no invoice yet can create one inline.

Bank Fee / Simple Charge is the shortcut for the small stuff: a monthly service charge or card fee doesn't need a supplier or an expense document. Pick the expense account (Bank Fees is preselected), optionally tick create a rule so future charges from the same counterparty categorise themselves, and the whole amount is booked straight to that account. Because there's no purchase invoice behind it, no input VAT is claimed — expenses with deductible VAT still belong on a recorded expense.

What auto-matching does on its own

Auto-matching runs after every import and sync, and again whenever you finalise an invoice or expense. It acts without asking only when the evidence is strong:

• the invoice number appears in the payment reference or description and the amount equals exactly what's outstanding, or
• exactly one open invoice matches the amount and the counterparty's name or IBAN agrees with the invoice contact.

Payments to EMTA are recognised from the tax board's official account details and recorded as tax payments automatically, with interest and penalties routed to their own account. Auto-matched transactions carry a note saying so, and like everything else here, they can be undone. Anything with weaker evidence — an amount that matches but nothing else, a reference against a different amount — is only ever suggested, never decided for you.

Foreign currencies

Arvello keeps the books in euros, and bank accounts are euro accounts — a transaction in any other currency can't be reconciled, though it can still be excluded. For a multi-currency account such as Wise, connect or import the EUR balance; conversions that arrive in euros keep a note of the original currency on the transaction.

Invoices issued in another currency are fully supported. When a euro payment settles an invoice issued in, say, US dollars, Arvello converts the amount at the European Central Bank rate for the payment date to work out how much of the invoice was settled — and where the euros received differ from the invoice's booked value, the difference is recorded automatically as an exchange-rate gain or loss. A received amount within 2% of what's outstanding (the usual bank spread) settles the invoice in full. Because amounts in two currencies rarely match digit for digit, foreign-currency invoices are never auto-matched — a reference hit appears as a suggestion for you to confirm.

Working through a busy account

There is no tick-box bulk select — deliberately. The bulk work happens before you arrive: auto-matching clears invoice payments, EMTA payments handle themselves, and reconciliation rules absorb the repeating costs, leaving the spotlight queue for what genuinely needs a human. From All Transactions, Categorise on any pending row jumps into the queue at that transaction.

Excluding transactions

Some movements aren't business activity at all. Not business / Exclude marks a transaction as excluded: it stays visible in the history, but no journal entry is created, so it never touches the profit and loss, balance sheet or VAT return. Excluded by mistake? Undo Exclude puts it back.

Transfers between your own accounts get their own treatment, because they move money without being income or spending. Once any of your bank accounts has its own ledger account (see Connect your bank), choosing Transfer Between Accounts books the movement through a Money in transit account: the outgoing side parks the money in transit, the incoming side collects it, and once both legs are reconciled the transit account returns to zero — so each account's book balance stays truthful and reports are still untouched. This applies to both legs, even when one side is an account without its own ledger account (that leg is booked against the shared bank account instead). If both accounts are in Arvello, each side of the transfer has its own transaction: mark both legs as transfers. Companies not using per-account ledger accounts at all keep the old behaviour — the transaction is simply excluded.

The full history

Banking → All Transactions is the ledger-eye view: totals for inflows, outflows, net and unmatched, then every transaction with its status and category. Filter by status, direction or bank account, or search by text. The category column shows what each transaction became — "Invoice Payment" for matched invoices, otherwise the account it was posted to — and each row offers the relevant undo (Undo Match, Undo Categorise, Undo Exclude), returning the transaction to Needs review without drama, with a fresh suggestion attached whenever one still applies. Undoing a match reverses the payment it recorded; undoing a link to a manually recorded payment only detaches the movement — the payment itself stays exactly as you recorded it. The unreconciled counter on your dashboard links here, pre-filtered to pending.