Reconciling payments: making the bank agree with the till

Cash reconciliation happens every evening because the money is right there. Card reconciliation gets skipped because the money is somewhere else and arrives later — which is exactly why it is where money goes missing.

The three things that must agree

1. What the POS says was taken by card — the sum of card transactions per day
2. What the payment provider says it processed — their transaction report
3. What arrived in your bank — the settlement deposit, net of fees

When all three agree, you are done. When they do not, the difference between which two tells you where the problem is.

Why they disagree even when nothing is wrong

Settlement timing. A Thursday sale may settle on Sunday. Weekends and holidays shift the cycle. Confirm your provider's timing and expect it, rather than treating it as an anomaly each time.

Net settlement. The deposit is net of fees, so it will never equal the gross sales figure. This is why card sales should post to aclearing account and not directly to the bank account in your accounting — seeaccounting integration.

Batching. Several days may arrive as one deposit.

Refunds. A refund reduces a settlement, sometimes in a different batch from the original sale.

Why they disagree when something is wrong

A transaction authorised but not captured. The customer's card was approved, the sale completed in the POS, and the transaction was never submitted for settlement.This is money you sold and were never paid for. It is the single most valuable thing reconciliation finds.

A fee that is not the agreed fee. Rates quoted are not always rates charged, and a small discrepancy across thousands of transactions is material.

A duplicate charge, which becomes a customer complaint and often a chargeback.

A settlement that simply did not arrive. It happens, and if nobody is looking, it stays not arrived.

The weekly routine

Fifteen minutes, once a week:

1. Pull card totals per day from the POS for the week
2. Pull the provider's transaction report for the same days
3. Compare the daily totals. They should match exactly, before fees.
4. Check the bank for settlements received, and tick each one off against the provider report
5. Check the fee on two or three settlements against your agreed rate
6. Investigate anything unmatched, this week, while the provider can still help

Step 3 is where authorised-not-captured transactions appear. Step 5 is where rate drift appears.

What makes this easy or hard

Integrated payments make it a report. When the payment runs inside the sale, each transaction carries its provider reference and the POS can produce the comparison itself.

A separate terminal makes it a manual comparison between two systems that know nothing about each other. Doable, and the reason many shops skip it.

This is one of the practical arguments for taking payments inside the POS rather than beside it. Seemada fees.

Multiple providers

If you offer cards, SoftPOS and BNPL through several providers, each has its own cycle and its own report. The work multiplies.

Two rules that keep it manageable:

• Record the provider per transaction in the POS, so the comparison can be filtered
• Reconcile each provider separately. A combined comparison hides which one has the problem

What to escalate

• A missing settlement more than two cycles old
• Any authorised-not-captured transaction — chase immediately, these have time limits
• A fee that does not match the agreed rate, with the evidence
• A pattern of failed transactions at one terminal — usually a hardware or connectivity problem, and it is costing you sales

The monthly number

Total fees as a percentage of card revenue. Track it beside your other KPIs. If it moves and you changed nothing, something changed at the provider. Seeretail KPIs.