When collecting or paying an invoice, it is common for the bank or payment gateway (PayPal, Stripe, Square, or GoCardless) to charge you a fee for their services. In such cases, the amount you will see on your bank statement will not match the invoice total, as this fee has been deducted.
To correctly reconcile such a transaction, you will need to use a bridge account that allows you to account for both the payment or collection and the bank fee.
1. Create the bridge account (gateway for bank commissions)
Go to Treasury > Accounts.
Click on + Add account (top right corner).
Select Payment gateway.
At the bottom of the pop-up window, click Add manually (offline).
Assign an easily recognizable name to the account, for example “Bank Fees”.
Click Add account.
Once created, locate it in the list of accounts and click on it.
Click on the three dots button ( ⋮ ) at the top right and choose Edit account information.
Associate the accounting account 62600000 - Bank charges.
Click on Save.
2. Reconciling the transaction
A. Payment with commission (total expense higher than the invoice amount)
Let's suppose that you pay an invoice of 100 ¤, but the bank charges you a commission of 5 €, so that in your statement appears a transaction of -105 €.
Go to Treasury > Accounts and enter the bank account from which the payment was made.
Click on Reconcile at the top right.
On the left side (transactions), check the box for the -105 € transaction.
On the right side (documents), locate and check the invoice for 100 €.
At the bottom, you will see that there is an outstanding amount of -5 €.
Click on Reconcile.
In the list of transactions, you will see that the transaction has been partially reconciled.
To complete the reconciliation:
Back in the document list (right), click Transfer.
Select the accounting account 62600000 Bank charges.
Click on Transfer and reconcile.
In this way, the transaction will be 100% reconciled, and the commission will be correctly recorded.
B. Charge with commission (amount received less than the invoice amount).
Let's suppose you issue an invoice for 100 €, but you only receive 95 € because the bank has deducted 5 € of commission.
Go to Treasury > Accounts, access the account where you received the charge.
Click on Reconcile at the top right.
On the left side (transactions), mark the +95 € transaction.
On the right (documents), select the invoice of 100 €.
You will see that there is still -5 € pending. Click on Reconcile.
In this case the opposite happens as in the previous one: the transaction is completely reconciled, but the invoice is still outstanding for those 5 €.
To settle it:
Filter by “Reconciled” in the list of transactions (left).
Mark the corresponding transaction and access the invoice from the list, on the right side.
In the Payments section, on the right side, click on Add payment.
Enter €5 as the amount.
In “Account”, select Bank charges.
Click Save.
With this, the invoice will be fully paid and the corresponding accounting entry will be generated: the bank (572) on the debit side, and the commission (626) on the credit side.
☝🏼 This procedure is valid for commissions without VAT. If the commission carries VAT, you must register a purchase invoice and use an account other than 626 to correctly reflect the VAT.