Connect a bank or add a statement

TALISK_HQ gets your bank transactions two ways, on two tabs under Ledger › Banking:

If you keep more than one book, connecting starts with a quick check: "Connect a bank" first asks which book this bank belongs to, and shows the book it thinks you mean. The bank, its accounts, and every transaction it brings in will belong to that book, so glance at the name before you continue. Connecting from the desktop app hands off to your browser, and the browser asks the same question with the book you were working in already selected.

• Connect a bank (Plaid): on the Accounts tab, in the Connected Banks section. Connect your bank and TALISK_HQ syncs transactions automatically. This is being enabled account by account. Most banks sign you in on their own website, so the page moves to your bank and comes back to TALISK_HQ once you've approved the connection. TALISK_HQ never sees your banking password.
• Upload a statement: on the Statements tab. Drop in a CSV, OFX/QFX, or PDF statement and TALISK_HQ reads the transactions from it.

The Accounts tab is also where each bank account's opening balance and currency live, which is why connecting a bank happens there: a connection creates the accounts that screen manages. Once transactions are in, you can match them to bills and reconcile the month.

Already uploaded statements for the same account? Connecting is safe: TALISK_HQ recognizes transactions it already has and merges each new copy onto the existing row instead of booking it twice. Anything already categorized, matched, or reconciled is never altered, and the rare unclear case goes to a review list rather than being guessed at. TALISK_HQ also tries to recognize the account itself, using its name and the last digits of the account number. If the bank reports a name TALISK_HQ can't match, you may see a second copy of the account appear on the Accounts tab. When that happens, use "Same as an existing account?" on the new copy: pick the account you already had, and TALISK_HQ moves the connection and its transactions onto it, cleans up any doubled-up rows, and archives the extra copy.

What each connected account feeds

The connection row lists every account your bank included, and names what each one feeds in TALISK_HQ. The names rarely match: your bank may call it "Current Account" while your books call it "RBC Chequing", so the row spells out the destination rather than leaving you to guess from the last four digits.

Three things a line can say:

• The name of a TALISK_HQ account. Transactions from that account land there.
• "No transactions yet". The account is connected and nothing has come through it. TALISK_HQ creates its account with the first transaction, so there is nothing for you to do.
• "Balance only". Your bank included a savings or investment holding, such as a GIC. TALISK_HQ does not run those through a bank feed, because their movements are not spending and would land in the wrong place if they were treated as cash. The holding stays in your books as the ledger account it already sits on, and it will not gain a bank feed later.

In the accounts table below, an account fed by a connection wears a purple Connected pill showing the last four digits, which is how you trace a row back to the line above.

Checking a GIC or other holding

A balance-only account still tells you what it holds, and TALISK_HQ refreshes that figure on every sync. Use "Compare to a ledger account…" on the line to say which of your own accounts tracks it, for example your 1010 GIC. From then on the figure the bank reports appears beside your own under Other balances on the Accounts tab, dated, and TALISK_HQ says so when the two disagree.

That is a check, not a correction. TALISK_HQ never adjusts your books to the bank's number here: if they differ, the entry your books are missing is a real one and belongs in the ledger, usually as interest earned. Ask your accountant if you are not sure what the difference is.

What your bank says it holds

Every connected account reports its balance, not just a holding. In the accounts table on the Accounts tab, a Bank says column shows the figure your bank reported at the last sync, dated, beside the balance your books hold. When the two differ, the column says by how much.

The column appears only once you have a bank connected. Uploading statements does not produce it: a statement tells TALISK_HQ what already happened, and only a live connection can say what the account holds right now.

A difference is normal and is not an error. A cheque you wrote may not have been cashed yet, or a deposit may still be in transit, and both figures are correct. What is worth acting on is a gap that keeps growing, which usually means transactions are sitting in Banking waiting to be categorized. See Your books don't match the bank.

Two cases where TALISK_HQ shows the figure and holds the comparison back:

• Your connection needs attention. The figure is frozen at the last good sync, so measuring today's books against it would mislead you. Reconnect the bank and the comparison comes back.
• Several banks share one ledger account. The balance in your books is their combined total rather than this one account's, so there is nothing here to compare it against. Giving the bank its own ledger account, below, fixes that.

How TALISK_HQ proves the feed is complete

A bank feed is fast but provisional: recent charges can arrive a day or two late, and occasionally one never arrives at all. TALISK_HQ does not ask you to trust it. On every sync it checks the transactions it holds against your bank's own reported balance, the same way a paper statement is checked against its closing balance.

When the two agree, the account's Bank says cell adds a line: feed verified to the cent, with the date. That means every transaction since your last verified statement is provably accounted for.

When they disagree, the line says exactly how much is unaccounted for, such as feed short by $120.16. A young difference is usually a charge still on its way from the bank and clears by itself within a few days. One that stands for longer becomes a card on your books health, because at that point a transaction has likely gone missing from the feed. Check the amount against your online banking; a statement covering the period settles it definitively and fills the gap safely.

You never need to upload anything for this. The check arms itself a few days after you connect, once the first days of activity have settled, and carries itself forward from there: each day the account verifies re-proves everything since, automatically.

If you have imported statements, TALISK_HQ uses your newest verified one as the starting point instead, because it reaches further back: it also covers the history from before you connected. That is a bonus, not a requirement. A business that never uploads a statement gets the same continuous verification from the day it connects.

TALISK_HQ never adjusts your books to the bank's figure. It reports what the bank said and leaves the bookkeeping to you.

A bank that still shares the pooled 1000 · Cash / Bank account can be given its own line: "Give this bank its own ledger account…" in the Ledger account column of the Accounts tab. TALISK_HQ creates a ledger account just for it, so the balance sheet shows the bank on its own line and its reconciliation ties to that account alone. Before anything happens, TALISK_HQ tells you exactly what it will do.

If it is your only bank, you get two ways to do it. Move its history too puts everything the account has ever done onto the new ledger account, its opening included, so reports and drill-downs show the account from day one, as though it had always been set up that way. Amounts, dates, totals and anything you have filed do not change; the only thing that moves is which line of your books carries the cash, which is why entries in closed periods come along as well. Start fresh from today leaves the history where it is: if the bank's opening balance was already posted it is re-recorded against the new account, and the money sitting in Cash / Bank moves across with one entry.

With more than one bank sharing Cash / Bank, whose money each entry carries is something only you know, so TALISK_HQ can't move the history for you: it creates the account and you move each bank's share with Move balance.

If you imported your accountant's trial balance, your chart may already hold the ledger account a bank should post through, with no bank account attached to it yet. Use "Link to an existing ledger account…" on the connected account and pick your accountant's account: from then on its transactions post there, so your balance sheet shows the bank on the line your accountant expects. The list only ever offers accounts that can actually take the link: control accounts, accounts another bank already uses, and accounts of the wrong kind aren't shown. This works while the account hasn't posted money yet. Once transactions have posted through an account's ledger account, the link is locked to protect your history: at that point, move the balance with Move balance instead of relinking.

Connected a bank into the wrong book? Use "Move to another book" on the connection row (Connected Banks, on the Accounts tab). Pick the right book, and if that book already tracks the same real-world accounts (from statement uploads), match each connected account to the one you already have so the histories merge instead of duplicating. TALISK_HQ clears what the connection brought into the wrong book and re-syncs everything into the right one. Bookkeeping you have already done is never deleted: if any of the connection's transactions are categorized, matched, or reconciled, the move refuses and tells you to undo those first.

Transfers TALISK_HQ spotted on its own are the one thing the move undoes for you, and that is not an exception to the rule above. Nobody decided them: TALISK_HQ pairs a card payment with the matching charge automatically whenever new transactions arrive, so it undoes those pairings before the move and finds them again in the other book once the transactions land there. A transfer you marked yourself is your work, so the move refuses on it like anything else. The dialog tells you how many it is about to undo before you confirm.

The Set up your books wizard also reaches this from its Your bank step, which offers the same connect and statement-import routes.

Switching from other software? Import your trial balance first (Import from accountant documents), then connect the bank or upload statements: the import sets up each bank account on the ledger account your accountant already used, so a connected bank links to the account it belongs to instead of creating a second one.

Do it in that order for a second reason: post your opening balances before you connect a feed. Posting them sets your conversion date, the line between history and live activity. After that, transactions your bank sends that are dated before your start date are kept as reference and never posted twice, because those amounts are already inside your opening balances. Connect first and there's no start date to compare against, so that older activity posts as though it were new and your books count it twice.

Switch from another accounting system sets out that whole path, from the trial balance upload through to this step.