For the end of the week, and the accountant
How to match your sales to your bank statement
Why the figures never match on the first try: settlement timing, charges taken at source, reversals and part payments, and a repeatable way to work through a month without losing an evening.
Start here
Your sales and your bank statement are two different documents
A sales record says what you sold and when. A bank statement says what arrived in your account and when. Those are not the same event, and expecting them to agree line for line is why reconciliation feels impossible.
Once you accept that they differ for a handful of predictable reasons, the job stops being a hunt and becomes a checklist. The reasons are below, in the order they usually bite.
Why they differ
Six reasons the figures do not agree
Almost every difference you will ever find is one of these.
Settlement lands later than the sale
A card or in-app payment taken on Friday reaches the account afterwards, so Friday's sales sit in Saturday's statement. Compare the same events, not the same dates.
A day arrives as one lump
Gateway collections usually settle in a batch rather than line by line. One credit of ₦412,500 is forty sales, and it will never match a single order.
Charges come off before you see it
If a fee is deducted at source, the credit is smaller than the sales it represents. That gap is a cost, not a missing sale, and it belongs in your figures as one.
Refunds and reversals move backwards
They appear as debits or as a reduced settlement, usually days after the sale they undo.
Part payments split one sale in two
Half in hand and half by transfer is one order and two records, in two different places.
Transfers that were never sales
A refund from a supplier, a loan from a relative, a transfer between your own accounts. Credits are not income just because they are credits.
The routine
How to work through a month
Give it one sitting a week rather than one panic a quarter.
Fix the window
Pick a period and hold it on both sides, sales and statement. Most confusion comes from comparing a calendar month of sales against a statement that runs to a different cut-off.
Separate the credits first
Split the statement into settlements from your gateway, direct transfers from customers, and everything else. Only the first two are sales, and they reconcile differently.
Match settlements to days, not to orders
Take each settlement figure and tie it to the day it covers. If it agrees with what you closed that day, every order inside it is accounted for and you never need to open them.
Work the direct transfers by reference
These are the ones that need the order number, which is why asking for a narration at the counter pays for itself here.
List the differences and name each one
Charges, refunds, a late settlement, a part payment. Write the reason beside each. A difference with a name is finished, and next month it takes a minute.
Keep the leftovers where you can see them
Anything unexplained goes on a short list you carry into next month, not into your head. Most of them resolve themselves when the following settlement arrives.
The part people skip
Deposits are not earnings
It is tempting to treat total credits as what the business made. It is not: it excludes your costs, includes things that were never sales, and is reduced by charges you may not have recorded anywhere.
The figure that actually runs a business is what you sold, at what price, against what it cost you. Reconciliation confirms the first half arrived. It does not tell you the second half, and the two should never be confused.
Where TAB fits
One mention, then you can go
TAB attaches each payment to the order it paid for, so a day's collections add up to a figure you can compare against a single settlement rather than forty. Gateway collections arrive by T+1 as one settlement that matches the day you closed on. The checklist above is still the checklist, there is just far less of it left to do by hand.
Questions we get
The ones worth answering plainly
- How do I reconcile my sales with my bank statement?
- Fix the same window on both sides, split the credits into gateway settlements, direct customer transfers and everything else, match settlements to the day they cover rather than to individual orders, match direct transfers by their reference, then name the reason for every remaining difference.
- Why is the amount in my account less than what I sold?
- Usually charges deducted at source, refunds that reduced a later settlement, or sales whose settlement has not landed yet. Each is a normal difference with a name, and none of them means a sale went missing.
- When do card payments settle to my bank in Nigeria?
- Collections taken through TAB settle to your bank account the next day, arriving as one settlement for the day rather than as individual credits per order.
- Why does one credit cover many orders?
- Gateway collections are paid out in a batch, so a single credit represents a day of sales. Reconcile it against the day's total, and you do not need to open the orders inside it.
- How often should I reconcile?
- Weekly is enough for most small businesses and keeps each sitting short. Monthly works if volume is low. Quarterly means you are investigating events nobody remembers, which is what makes it painful.
Think TAB might help?
Tell us what you run and we will say plainly whether it fits, including when it does not.
More guides
For anyone already selling in the chat
How to sell on WhatsApp without losing track of orders
Read the guideFor shops, restaurants and anyone paying terminal rent
How to take card payments without renting a POS machine
Read the guide