Glossary
Short, precise definitions of the terms you'll meet when converting and reconciling bank statements.
- ACH transfer
- An electronic bank-to-bank payment in the US processed through the Automated Clearing House network.
- Bank reconciliation
- Comparing your records with the bank statement to make sure balances agree and every transaction is accounted for.
- Bank statement
- A periodic record from a bank listing every transaction on an account plus its opening and closing balances.
- Bank statement OCR
- Optical character recognition applied to bank statements to turn scanned images into text and structured transactions.
- Chart of accounts
- The list of accounts a business uses to categorise transactions in its general ledger.
- Closing balance
- The account balance at the end of the statement period, also called ending, new or carried-forward balance.
- Credit (bank statement)
- On a bank statement, money coming into the account — a deposit, refund, interest or incoming transfer.
- CSV bank statement
- Bank transactions saved as comma-separated values — one row per transaction, readable by spreadsheets and accounting software.
- Debit (bank statement)
- On a bank statement, money leaving the account — a withdrawal, payment, purchase or fee.
- Deposit in transit
- A deposit recorded in your books that the bank hasn't processed by the statement date.
- FITID
- The unique transaction identifier inside OFX, QFX and QBO files used to prevent duplicate imports.
- IBAN
- International Bank Account Number — a standard format identifying bank accounts across borders.
- NSF (non-sufficient funds)
- When a payment is returned or a fee charged because the account didn't have enough money.
- OFX (Open Financial Exchange)
- An open standard file format for exchanging bank and investment transactions between institutions and finance software.
- Opening balance
- The account balance at the start of the statement period, also called beginning, previous or brought-forward balance.
- Outstanding check
- A check you've written and recorded that hasn't yet cleared the bank, so it's not on the statement.
- PDF bank statement
- A bank statement delivered as a PDF document — readable by people but not directly importable by accounting software.
- QBO (QuickBooks Web Connect)
- QuickBooks' OFX-based file format for importing bank and credit card transactions.
- QFX (Quicken Financial Exchange)
- Quicken's branded variant of OFX used for Web Connect downloads.
- QIF (Quicken Interchange Format)
- An older plain-text format for financial transactions, still supported by some desktop finance tools.
- Running balance
- The balance printed after each transaction (or each day) on a statement.
- Statement period
- The date range a bank statement covers, usually one calendar month or a billing cycle.
- Transaction categorization
- Assigning each bank transaction to a category or ledger account.
- Value date
- The date funds are actually available or start earning/costing interest, which can differ from the posting date.
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