Reconciling Your Committee Bank Account with SEEC Filings
Every SEEC statement reports a balance on hand — and that number has to match your committee’s actual bank balance. Reconciling is the routine of making sure your records and your bank agree. Done a little at a time it’s trivial; left until filing night it’s where errors and stress come from. Here’s a simple approach.
Why reconciliation matters
Your filing’s ending balance on hand should equal what your committee bank account actually holds at the end of the period. If they don’t match, something is missing or miscoded — a contribution never recorded, an expense entered twice, a bank fee no one logged. A filing whose balance doesn’t reconcile is a red flag both to you and to SEEC, so catching the gap before you file is the whole point.
What throws a committee’s books off
- Unrecorded bank fees and, for online donations, processing fees deducted before the money lands.
- Deposits recorded on a different date than the bank posted them.
- Checks that haven’t cleared yet, so your records and the bank temporarily disagree.
- Duplicate entries — the same donation recorded twice, or an expense counted from both a receipt and the bank line.
- In-kind contributions counted as cash — they’re reported, but they never touch the bank account.
A simple reconciliation routine
- Pick a period — reconcile at least once per filing period, ideally monthly.
- Compare your recorded balance to the bank statement’s closing balance.
- Match line by line — every bank deposit should tie to a recorded contribution, every withdrawal to a recorded expense.
- Investigate the difference — anything on the bank statement but not in your books (or vice versa) is what to fix.
- Adjust and re-check until the two agree, then you’re ready to file.
Make it nearly automatic with bank sync
You can do all of this by hand against a paper statement, but it’s far faster to connect the account. CT Committee Treasurer Suite links your committee checking account through Plaid — the same secure connection standard used by Quickbooks and TurboTax — imports transactions automatically, and lets you match each one to the contribution or expense it belongs to. Your dashboard balance stays current, so when a filing period closes, reconciling is a quick review instead of an evening with a calculator.
Keeping balances reconciled also keeps your filing periods honest, since each period’s beginning balance carries forward from the last.