How to Reconcile a Bank Account in QuickBooks Online After a CSV Import

Importing a bank file gets transactions into QuickBooks Online. Reconciling proves they're right: that every transaction on the statement is in QuickBooks once, with the correct amount, and nothing extra. If you've just caught up on months of transactions with a CSV upload, reconciling is the step that tells you the catch-up worked.

This guide assumes you've already uploaded the file — if not, start with importing bank transactions into QuickBooks Online.

Before you start: what reconciling checks

A reconciliation compares three numbers for one account and one statement period:

• Beginning balance — the balance at the end of your last reconciliation. QuickBooks fills this in for you.
• Ending balance — the closing balance printed on your bank statement. You type this in.
• Cleared transactions — the transactions you tick as appearing on the statement.

When beginning balance + cleared money in − cleared money out equals the ending balance, the difference is 0.00 and the account is reconciled.

Step 1: Finish the For review tab

Uploaded transactions first land in Transactions → Bank transactions → For review. They don't appear in the reconcile screen until they're added to the register. Work through the tab and, for each transaction, either:

• Match it to something already in QuickBooks — an invoice payment, a bill payment, or a transfer you entered by hand; or
• Categorise it and add it as a new expense, deposit or transfer.

Matching matters. If you entered a customer payment manually last month and then also add the same payment from the CSV, the money is counted twice and the reconciliation will be out by exactly that amount.

Step 2: Check the statement you're reconciling

Have the bank statement open — the PDF or paper statement, not the CSV. You need its statement end date and closing balance. Reconcile one statement at a time, oldest first. If you imported a whole year, that means twelve short reconciliations, not one long one. Each month you finish narrows down where any problem is.

Step 3: Start the reconciliation

1. Open the reconcile screen. It's reached from the Settings (gear) menu → Reconcile, and in many layouts also from the Transactions or Accounting menu.
2. Choose the bank or credit card account.
3. Enter the ending date and ending balance from the statement. For a credit card, the ending balance is the amount owed.
4. Select Start reconciling.

QuickBooks lists every uncleared transaction up to the ending date, split into payments and deposits (or charges and payments for a card).

Step 4: Tick what's on the statement

Go down the statement line by line and tick the matching transaction in QuickBooks. Sorting the QuickBooks list by amount makes this much faster than sorting by date, because banks and QuickBooks don't always agree on the exact date of a card payment.

Watch the Difference figure in the top corner. When every statement line is ticked, it should read 0.00. Then select Finish now. QuickBooks saves a reconciliation report you can find later under Reports.

When the difference won't go to zero

Almost every stuck reconciliation after a CSV import comes down to one of six causes. Look at the size of the difference first — it is often a clue.

Wrong signs from the CSV

If a refund was imported as a purchase, the reconciliation is out by twice its amount. This happens when a bank's CSV uses a separate Type or Dr/Cr column that QuickBooks didn't read, or when a credit card export lists purchases as positive numbers. Our converters handle both, and the preview shows money in and money out separately so you can spot a reversed line before you upload.

Dates in the wrong month

A UK or Australian file read as US dates turns 03/04/2026 into 4 March instead of 3 April. Transactions then fall outside the statement period, so they don't appear on the reconcile screen at all. The bank formats by country guide explains how to spot this.

Reconciling a credit card account

Credit cards reconcile the same way, but the signs are reversed in your head: charges increase what you owe, and payments reduce it. Two things trip people up after a CSV import:

• The file went into the wrong account. If a card export was uploaded to a bank account, every charge is recorded as money leaving the bank. Undo the import from the bank account and upload the file again to the credit card account.
• The card payment appears twice. Paying the card from your bank creates two lines — money out on the bank import and a payment on the card import. They are the same transfer. Record it once as a transfer and match the other side to it, rather than adding it as an expense on one side and income on the other.

For the ending balance, use the statement's new balance (the amount owed on the closing date), not the minimum payment or the available credit.

Catching up several months at once

If you've just imported a long period, it's tempting to reconcile it in one go to the latest statement. Don't. Reconcile each statement in order. When month three won't balance, you then know the problem is in month three's transactions, not somewhere in the last year.

A practical routine:

1. Line up the statements oldest first, and note each one's closing balance.
2. Reconcile the first statement. If the beginning balance QuickBooks shows doesn't match that statement's opening balance, sort that out before going further — usually an opening balance entry that's missing or wrong.
3. Reconcile each later statement in turn. Each should take a few minutes once the transactions are reviewed.
4. After the last one, compare the QuickBooks register balance with the bank's current balance, allowing for anything still pending.

An example

Here's a small CSV that was uploaded for January:

The statement shows a beginning balance of 2,500.00 and an ending balance of 4,259.69. Beginning balance + 1,869.99 in − 110.30 out = 4,259.69, so with all four ticked, the difference is 0.00. If the refund had been imported as −19.99, QuickBooks would show a difference of 39.98 — exactly twice the refund — which points straight at it.

Checklist

• Every uploaded transaction has been matched or added in For review.
• Transactions you entered by hand were matched, not added again.
• You're reconciling one statement at a time, oldest first.
• The ending date and balance come from the statement, not the CSV.
• The difference is exactly 0.00 before you select Finish now.
• Any remaining difference has been traced, not adjusted away.