What It Looks Like When a Month Won't Close

It's close to midnight, and the spreadsheet doesn't agree with the bank statement.

You're the treasurer because somebody had to be. The last treasurer left you a spreadsheet and an email folder. Every month since, you've kept your own list of what came in and what went out, and checked it against the bank statement. There's always a figure that's off. You scroll both line by line looking for what you missed. Eventually you close the laptop and decide the numbers are close enough. Close enough isn't the same as right, and you're the one who answers for it when a neighbor asks.

Here are the screens in ForgeHOA built for that moment, and the exact place where one of them stops you. Every figure below is sample data from a test community, Willow Creek Condominium Association. No real association has closed a month in ForgeHOA yet.

Getting the statement in

The Upload bank statement screen asks for three things: which bank account, the period, and the statement's ending balance, the number printed on the statement itself. You choose the PDF and press Upload and extract. ForgeHOA pulls the transactions out of the PDF and compares the ending balance it extracted with the one you typed, allowing a difference of up to fifty cents.

If the two don't tie out, nothing is imported. The screen asks you to double-check the balance you entered or try a clearer scan. The PDF is kept in storage for audit, but to try again you select the file and upload it again after correcting the balance.

When the balances agree, the transactions are added to that bank account's feed.

Starting the reconciliation

Open the Reconcile screen for that account and the first thing you see is a short form, not a finished report. You enter the statement's start and end dates and its starting and ending balances, then press Begin reconciliation.

Only after that does the screen show its three buttons and the summary card.

Where the month stops

At the top of the screen, three buttons sit together: Auto-match, Add adjusting JE, and Complete reconciliation.

Auto-match first pulls any new Plaid transactions, if the account is linked. It then applies the matches the app scores as high-confidence, pairing bank transactions with payments or journal entries. It does not wait for you to approve each one, and you can unmatch any of them afterward. Add adjusting JE lets you post a correcting journal entry by hand. Complete reconciliation closes the month.

That last button is faded and cannot be clicked while the variance is anything but zero.

Below the buttons is the summary card. Here is how to read its figures:

• Bank ending is the statement ending balance you entered.
• Ledger ending is the statement's starting balance plus the bank transactions you have matched so far.
• Variance is the statement ending balance minus that Ledger ending figure.
• Matched shows how many bank transactions have a match out of the total.

In the sample, Bank ending is $42,318.42 and Ledger ending is $42,134.42, so the variance is $184.00, shown in red. Matched reads 26 / 29, and the Bank transactions column lists the three that still have no match.

Match those three, and the variance reaches $0.00. Then Complete reconciliation becomes available.

Why we show it this way

A volunteer treasurer should be able to defend a closed month to the neighbors it affects. This screen keeps the month open until the matched transactions account for the statement's ending balance, with a variance of zero. Reading it takes nothing more than the card and the button.

The screens above are live in the app today. The figures are test data.

Does your bank give you anything but a PDF? Reply with the bank and we will tell you whether the upload path or Plaid fits you better.