How to Reconcile a Bank Account in QuickBooks Desktop

Steps checked against Intuit’s help article “Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Desktop” (updated August 2026). Menus can differ slightly between Desktop versions.

Before you start

• Have the bank or card statement for the period in front of you: you need its end date, beginning balance and ending balance.
• Make sure every transaction for the period is in QuickBooks. If some months are missing, import them first: download the statement as QBO (Web Connect), or convert a CSV or PDF with CSV to QBO or PDF to QBO, then follow importing a .QBO file into QuickBooks Desktop.
• Reconcile one statement at a time, oldest first.

Step by step

1. Go to the Banking menu and select Reconcile.
2. In the Account field, choose the bank or credit card account.
3. Check the Statement Date. It fills in automatically and should be the end date on your statement.
4. Check the Beginning Balance. QuickBooks takes it from your last reconciliation, so it should match the beginning balance on the statement.
5. Enter the Ending Balance from the statement.
6. Enter any Service Charge or Interest Earned that isn’t already in QuickBooks. Don’t enter fees you’ve already recorded, or they’ll be counted twice.
7. Select Continue to open the Reconcile window.
8. For each transaction on the statement, put a checkmark next to the matching one in QuickBooks.
9. When the Difference is 0.00, select Reconcile Now.

If you use bank feeds or Web Connect

For accounts connected to online banking, Intuit suggests selecting Matched and entering the statement ending date: QuickBooks then ticks the transactions it downloaded and matched. Matched transactions show a lightning bolt in the register, which turns into a checkmark once reconciled.

Tick Hide transactions after the statement’s end date so you only see the current period.

When the difference won’t go to zero

• Select Locate Discrepancies for reports that show changes to previously reconciled transactions, a common cause.
• Check the beginning balance first. If it doesn’t match the statement, a past reconciliation was changed, and no amount of ticking this month will fix it.
• Look for a duplicate: a transaction both downloaded and entered by hand. Our guide to fixing duplicate bank transactions covers the usual causes.
• If you need to start again, Undo Last Reconciliation unclears the transactions and returns the beginning balance to the previous reconciliation.

For a difference you can’t trace in QuickBooks, a spreadsheet can help: our bank reconciliation in Excel guide has a free template that matches statement lines to your ledger.

Catching up on several months

Reconcile each statement in date order, rather than one big period. That way service charges and interest land in the right months, and a mistake shows up in the month it happened instead of somewhere in a year of transactions.

Frequently asked questions