Merchant account reconciliation is the process of checking and ensuring that your sales are accurately reflected in your merchant statements, that the correct funds are in the bank and that your daily transaction activity is reported correctly.
Why Should I Reconcile my Merchant Account?
Reconciling your bank accounts every day or month allows you to identify any discrepancies or errors in your data entry. For example, it could flag any missing transaction that appears on your bank statements which haven’t been recorded in your accounting program. Merchant account reconciliation can also help you avoid any excess fees and loss of revenue and help protect you against fraud as well as improve your customer service.
How do I Reconcile my Merchant Account?
There are a number of ways to balance/reconcile your merchant account. The reconciliation process can also be as formal or informal as you like so long as you remember the most important thing, to review each transaction from each source (your records and the bank’s records) and match the transactions with your account balance.
The frequency and way in which you reconcile your merchant activity will depend on your merchant environment.
Reviewing Daily Merchant Activity
Anyone reviewing the company’s daily merchant activity where a point of sale (POS) terminal is used will need access to one or more of the following:
• Access to the terminal and user terminal password
• Transaction receipts
• Batch totals
For daily card-not-present (CNP) environments where a payment gateway is used for mail orders/telephone orders (MOTO) or e-commerce:
• Access to the payment gateway linked to the merchant account
Reviewing Monthly Merchant Activity
Anyone completing monthly merchant reconciliation will require access to the following Payment Processor statements:
• Online monthly merchant statements
• FDS trial balance
• Reconciliation template
Monthly reconciliation usually takes place four to six days following the last day of each month.