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Version: 2.4.3

Periodic Reconciliation

Reconciliation is the habit that keeps your ledger trustworthy — regularly checking that what Beancount thinks an account holds matches what your bank (or wallet, or brokerage) actually says. This page is the practical, "do this every month" version; for the full mechanics of the feature, see Reconciliation.

1. Set an interval per account, once​

When you open an account (or any time after, via Edit), set a reconciliation interval that matches how often you realistically check it:

  • Checking/credit card accounts you actively use: 7–14 days
  • Savings, brokerage, less-active accounts: 30 days
  • Cash or accounts you rarely touch: leave it unset, or a long interval — no point being nagged about something that never moves

This is what powers the overdue/up-to-date tracking in the Snapshot sidebar.

2. Make it a recurring ritual​

Pick a cadence — monthly, right before you'd consider "closing the books" for the month, works well for most people. When that time comes:

  1. Open the Snapshot sidebar → Reconciliation tab.
  2. Toggle Only overdue so the list is just what needs attention.
  3. Work through the list top to bottom.

3. For each overdue account​

  1. Pull up the real-world balance (your bank's app or statement).
  2. Click Balance on that row — it opens + → Balance tab pre-filled with the account. Enter the real balance and save.
  3. If it passes, you're done with that account. If it shows Failing, something in your ledger doesn't match reality — time to investigate.

4. When an assertion fails​

Click the account name (plain click → Transactions tab, Ctrl/Cmd+click → Journal tab), both filtered to that account since your last successful reconciliation — see Inter-Tab Navigation. Look for the obvious culprits first: a transaction you forgot to enter, a duplicate, or a typo'd amount.

Only reach for Force reconcile once you're confident the gap is genuine and unrecoverable (e.g. an old, untracked transaction you can't fully reconstruct) — it plugs the gap with a pad directive rather than explaining it. See Reconciliation → Actions for the full warning on when this is and isn't appropriate.

5. Why bother​

Every dashboard number — Net Worth, the Income Statement, budget progress — is only as accurate as your ledger. A monthly reconciliation habit is what turns "probably right" into "verifiably right," and it catches data-entry mistakes while they're still easy to remember and fix, instead of six months later when you're trying to figure out why last January's numbers look wrong.