Banking
The Banking area manages cash and money accounts, internal transfers, transaction imports, categorization, and reconciliation.
- Finance teams and business owners
- Updated
In this guide
Where to find it: Sidebar > Banking
9.1 Cash & Money Accounts
Go to Banking > Cash & Money Accounts to manage bank, cash, petty cash, Mobile Money, wallet, and other reviewed money-holding accounts.
You can create a dedicated operational account or activate an eligible existing GL account. Activating an existing account snapshots its posted GL balance as the operational baseline and creates no journal.
When configuring a money account, provide:
- Name
- Money Account Kind
- Currency
- Opening Balance and Opening Balance Date for a new dedicated account
- A reviewed Activation Reason for an existing GL account
- Optional statement import and reconciliation capabilities
- Optional bank reference fields where relevant
Each money account is single-currency. If it is a foreign-currency account, Accounting preserves that source currency while translating reporting and ledger impact into GHS base amounts. Credit facilities are not transfer-eligible in this workflow.
9.2 Bank Transactions
Go to Banking > Transactions to view and manage bank transactions.
Manual transaction entry supports:
- Deposit
- Withdrawal
- Fee
- Interest
- Adjustment
- Optional Tags for lightweight classification
Reconciled transactions cannot be edited or deleted.
9.3 Internal Money Transfers
Use Transfer Money to move funds between any two active transfer-eligible money accounts. This includes supported Bank ↔ Bank, Bank ↔ Cash, Bank ↔ Mobile Money, Cash ↔ Mobile Money, and Mobile Money ↔ Mobile Money directions.
For a same-currency transfer, SikaBooks posts only:
- Debit the destination money account
- Credit the source money account
The transfer creates one outflow movement, one inflow movement, and one balanced journal. It never records income or expense. Cross-currency transfers retain the existing locked-rate and realized FX gain/loss treatment. Void a transfer to correct it; a transfer cannot be voided after either movement is reconciled.
9.4 Importing Transactions (CSV)
To import statement data:
- Open Banking > Transactions
- Click Import
- Select the bank account
- Choose a bank template if available
- Upload the CSV
- Review the preview
- Map columns if needed
- Process the import
- Review the import batch
- Commit valid rows
The import screen also provides sample and template downloads to help match the expected statement structure.
During review you can use:
- AI Cleanup for malformed rows
- New / Match / Review suggestions for likely duplicate detection during staging
- Valid / Invalid / Ignored row states before commit
- Row batch actions
- Update Tags for selected staged rows when Tags is enabled
- Commit once the import is ready
9.5 Categorizing Transactions
You can categorize one transaction at a time or use Bulk Categorize to assign a GL account to many rows. Category assignment typically maps a bank transaction to a revenue, expense, asset, or liability account.
9.6 AI Categorization
The transactions page also includes Check with Sika AI. This is separate from import-time AI Cleanup: cleanup repairs staged import rows before commit, while Sika AI suggests GL categories for existing bank transactions. Progress runs inline on the register; when the check finishes, a summary banner says how many suggestions came from your rules, from matched invoices or bills and past reviews, how many are model estimates to check, and how many movements got no suggestion. Every suggested row shows where its suggestion came from in words, never as a confidence percentage. Suggestions are reviewed before being applied.
Suggestions show their evidence method: an existing rule, an exact document match, previously reviewed tenant history, or a model suggestion. Model confidence is an estimate, not measured accuracy. Transfers, loans, employee advances, taxes, owner contributions, foreign-currency movements, and ambiguous matches require individual review. Generating a suggestion never assigns an account or posts a journal.
Open each row to inspect the movement, proposed GL account, evidence, and source links. Accept the account, correct it, reject the suggestion, or skip the movement. Only eligible, unchanged rows can be applied. If the underlying transaction changes, run the review again. Quality metrics reflect recorded review outcomes, not model confidence scores.
On the transaction register, evidence-backed rows (a matching rule or consistent past reviews, unchanged since the check) offer Accept inline, singly or together through Accept n on this page. Each acceptance is recorded in the audit trail and can be undone from the toast for 15 minutes by the person who accepted it, provided the transaction has not changed or been reconciled. Model estimates and document matches never apply inline: Review opens the complete review screen, and Open review opens the transfer, loan or settlement workflow. Changed tenant rules require a fresh suggestion, even after individual confirmation. Workflow links appear only when your permissions allow them. If a transfer or settlement needs another colleague's authority, the screen explains this instead of offering an inaccessible action.
Ask Sika AI is available from the header of every Accounting page (Ctrl+J or Command+J). The panel offers questions about the current dashboard, list, or record such as an invoice, and keeps your conversation while you move between pages. Selecting a suggested page question includes that page; for a typed question, choose Context → Include this page when it is relevant. Answers carry the same evidence checks as the Sika AI workspace; any draft it proposes is reviewed in the workspace, never applied from the panel.
9.7 Bank Reconciliation
To start a reconciliation:
- Go to Banking > Reconciliation
- Click New Reconciliation
- Select the bank account
- Enter the statement date and ending balance
- Mark matching transactions as cleared
- Complete when the difference is zero, or acknowledge a permitted variance with a justification
If a reconciliation is already in progress for a bank account, SikaBooks reopens that in-progress session instead of starting a second overlapping reconciliation for the same account.
9.8 Reconciliation Review and Approval
Depending on the configured reconciliation mode:
- Basic — No second-person review
- Dual Control — Separate review/approval step
- Full SOD — Stronger separation of duties
Completed reconciliations can then be reviewed, approved, locked, unlocked, or reopened according to permissions and policy.
The review flow also enforces separation of duties: the reviewer cannot be the same person who completed the reconciliation, and the approver cannot be the completer or reviewer.
9.9 Reconciliation Reports
Reconciliations provide:
- Statement download
- Detailed report
- Status report
- Aging report
- History report
These reports are available as dedicated reconciliation reporting pages in addition to the per-reconciliation statement and report downloads.