If you accept payments, you know the bookkeeping problem: the money that lands in your bank account never looks like the invoices you sent. Deposits arrive in daily batches, processing fees come out on their own schedule, and the occasional chargeback or returned ACH payment pulls money back. Matching all of that to your accounting records by hand is slow and error-prone.
Automatic Batch Reconciliation (ABR) makes your accounting software tell the same story as your bank statement, automatically. It works with QuickBooks Online and with QuickBooks Desktop through MagicCarpet. Support for Xero is coming later.
Finding Automatic Batch Reconciliation in the Add-on Marketplace
Life without ABR: Undeposited Funds
Without ABR, payments sync to QuickBooks the traditional way: each payment lands in Undeposited Funds, and you (or your bookkeeper) manually group those payments into deposits to match what actually hit the bank, work out fees by hand, and reconcile any clawbacks yourself.
ABR replaces that manual matching. Same money, same accounts payable to you, but the grouping and matching happen on their own.
How it works: the sweep account
ABR uses a simple clearing account pattern built around a Settlement Sweep Account (the "sweep"). The sweep is a holding account in your books, not a real bank account. It represents money in transit between your payment processor and your bank.
- When a payment is recorded, the money is booked into the sweep.
- When your gateway settles a batch and deposits the money, ABR posts a journal entry that moves the batch total out of the sweep and into your real bank account.
- If everything matched, the sweep returns to zero.
A sweep balance that does not return to zero is your signal that something needs attention, and the Batch History screen shows you exactly which transactions to look at.
What ABR expects from your processor (separate settlement)
ABR's journal entries assume the most common way processors move money. It helps to know these assumptions up front:
- Daily deposits. Each day's batch is deposited to your bank, either gross (fees billed monthly) or net of that day's fee (daily discount). Both models are supported natively.
- Monthly processing fees are a separate withdrawal. If your processor bills fees once a month, that withdrawal is not part of any batch. ABR deliberately does not post an entry for it; you book the month-end withdrawal as an ordinary fee expense, the same way you always have. If your fees are instead taken out of each day's deposit, switch the module to Daily Discount, which handles that natively.
- Chargebacks are a separate withdrawal. When a cardholder disputes a sale, the money leaves your bank account as its own debit, not as a reduction of your daily deposit. ABR records chargebacks against your bank account to match. If your processor nets chargebacks out of the daily deposit instead, see Reconciling When Chargebacks Are Netted From Your Deposit.
- ACH returns come straight out of the bank account. This is the normal ACH clawback pattern, and it is exactly how ABR records them.
What to expect day to day
- As payments settle, batches appear on the module's Batch History grid with a settle date, gross amount, and a sync status.
- Each settled batch becomes exactly one journal entry in QuickBooks, moving that batch's money out of the sweep and into your bank account.
- Your mapped accounts show live balances pulled from QuickBooks, so a quick glance tells you whether the sweep has cleared. A zero sweep after batches have synced means everything reconciled.
- Voids never show up as money in a batch, because a voided payment never settles. Refunds ride inside the day's batch and are handled automatically, even on a refund-heavy day when the batch total is negative.
The Automatic Batch Reconciliation add-on after installing
Which payments are covered
- Credit card: batch reconciliation, daily discount, and chargeback recording.
- ACH: batch reconciliation and ACH reject handling for payments returned after settlement.
- Check: batch reconciliation for check payments processed through Biller Genie.
- PayPal transactions are not part of batch reconciliation.
A note on chargebacks and returned payments
Recording a chargeback or an ACH reject in Biller Genie is bookkeeping only. It keeps your ledger in agreement with your bank; it does not dispute, represent, or arbitrate anything. You still manage the actual dispute process directly with your payment processor.
Getting started
Install the add-on from the Add-on Marketplace in your Merchant Portal, then map your accounts and activate the payment types you want. The full walkthrough is in Setting Up ABR: Account Mappings and Balances.