Reconciling an account

Reconciling is how you prove Trac agrees with the outside world. You take one account, one stretch of time and the statement that covers it, and you check three things: the cash ties, the positions tie, and every movement on the statement has a matching entry in Trac. When all of that clears, you complete the period — and from then on Trac treats those numbers as settled.

This guide walks the screen you land on when you pick an account from the Reconcile tab of Data Operations: what it shows, the order to work it in, and what has to be true before a period can be marked complete.

Find what you need#

A few ideas carry the whole screen:

One subject, one period. Everything below the timeline describes a single holding over a single stretch of dates. See One subject, one period.
The statement is the starting gun. Until one is imported, nothing can be compared and every check reads “not compared” rather than passing. See Importing the statement.
Three sections, always in the same order — Cash, Positions, Activity — and each one is Trac’s side beside the statement’s side. See Cash, Positions and Activity.
Matching is clicking. Click a card on one side, then a card on the other, and they are paired. See Matching by hand.
Completion is gated, not asserted. Five checks decide whether the Complete button is live. See Completing the period.

Who can do this, and where#

Reconciliation lives inside Data Operations, so the same roles apply: portfolio admins and wranglers can work it. Like the rest of Data Operations it is a web-only screen — the comparison is a two-column, side-by-side job that wants a wide window, so the Trac mobile app doesn’t carry it.

How you get here#

Three routes all land on the same workspace:

Data Operations → Reconcile → Accounts, then pick an account from the coverage table.
Data Operations → Overview, then the UNRECONCILED figure on any row — that column always opens the holding’s reconciliation.
A holding’s own view inside Data Operations, on its Reconcile tab.

Once you’re in, ← Change subject at the top left returns you to the list, and the account’s name beside it links through to the holding’s detail page.

One subject, one period#

The coverage timeline#

The strip across the top is the account’s whole reconciliation history, laid out left to right and loosely proportional to how long each stretch is. Every pill is clickable, and each one reads as one of four states:

Reconciled — a completed period, shown with a green tick.
In progress — a period someone has started but not completed.
Not reconciled — a gap. This is the actionable one: clicking a gap opens a reconciliation for exactly that stretch.
Open — the trailing period that hasn’t finished yet. It’s dimmed, but it is still clickable, because mid-period statements exist.

The strip scrolls, and it lands you on whatever needs attention: the period you’re working, or else the first gap, or else the most recent stretch. A small amber dot on a pill means that period overlaps another reconciliation — worth a look, because two records covering the same days will disagree about what has been accounted for.

+ New is pinned to the left of the strip, outside the scroll, so starting the next reconciliation is always one click away however long the history is.

Setting the period#

Under the timeline is the period bar, which reads Reconciling <period> and carries the exact From / To dates. You can:

Pick a whole period from the Period dropdowns — choose a grain (Month, Quarter or Year) and then the value. The list is newest-first, because you almost always reconcile the recent past.
Type the dates into From and To directly. That is the path for anything that isn’t a clean calendar period — a statement cycle running from the 18th to the 15th, say.

Editing the range shows an Apply button (or Start, on a brand-new reconciliation); nothing re-targets until you press it.

Two warnings can appear here, and both are worth reading:

“This statement covers <period>.” The statement you imported declares a different period from the one you’re reconciling under. Reconcile as <period> → switches to the statement’s own dates.
“Heads up: part of this range is already reconciled.” You are about to create a record that overlaps an existing one. Trac will let you, but you’ll end up with two records claiming the same days.

Importing the statement#

Until a statement is imported there is nothing to compare against, so the statement chooser leads the workspace. Each check reports not compared rather than passing, and the cash difference shows an em dash rather than $0.00 — a zero there would read as a computed tie.

What you can import#

A file already on the holding. Trac offers a one-click button for any file whose name or as-of date lines up with the period. Choose from N files on this holding… opens the full list — every file, searchable, with the period-matching ones grouped first — for when you know which PDF is which better than the filename does.
A new file, dropped or picked. PDF, CSV, TSV, XLSX and XLS are accepted.
Pull from bank. For a cash account linked to a bank connection, Trac can fetch the institution’s own statements directly — pick the one you want from the list.
Pasted text or a screenshot. or paste / screenshot activity… opens a box you can paste statement text into, or paste screenshots into page by page (repeated pastes accumulate, so a multi-page statement works). You can also give it the beginning and ending balances. Parse activity sends the lot through the same parser a file goes through.

While it parses#

A progress bar runs while the file uploads and then while the parse itself runs — it typically takes up to about 30 seconds. The bar is an estimate, not a report from the parser, so it decelerates as it goes rather than claiming to be done; the workspace snaps to the parsed result the moment the parse finishes.

When the parse completes, Traci Match runs automatically — see Letting Traci match.

If it fails you’re told so, with the error, and the parse button becomes Retry parse. A parse that started and never finished reads “The last parse didn’t finish — the statement may be too long”, and the fix is the same retry.

Is the parse trustworthy?#

Once a statement is in, a proof strip appears above the sections. Green reads ✓ Statement proven complete: everything the statement’s own totals can vouch for adds up. It carries three sub-checks — Cash identity, Qty tie (with how many holdings were checked), and No fabricated lines.

Amber reads ⚠ Statement parse can’t be proven complete, and it lists exactly which invariant failed. One case worth knowing: if the statement parsed no holdings at all while the account still holds securities, the positions section was almost certainly dropped by the parse rather than genuinely empty. In every amber case the advice is the same — re-parse, or fix the flagged lines, before trusting the tie-out.

Fixing a bad import#

The action bar under the period carries the escape hatches:

The statement’s filename is itself the control that opens it for reading.
The trash icon beside it removes the statement so you can choose another.
Re-parse runs the current file through the AI parser again, skipping the fast deterministic readers — the fix when a quick parse read the statement wrong.
Reset Matches clears the matches and accepted differences, and nothing else.
Delete Period removes the whole reconciliation record. Use it when a reconciliation was booked over the wrong range: the period disappears from the timeline and the account’s reconciled-through date is re-derived from what’s left.

Re-importing replaces the parsed statement wholesale, hand-corrected lines included.

Cash#

Two columns, Trac and Statement, each reading beginning balance, plus inflows, minus outflows, ending balance — with the number of entries behind each figure in brackets. Under them, a full-width DIFFERENCE.

That difference is the headline. $0.00 in green, captioned “Trac ties to the statement”, is what you’re aiming for. An em dash means nothing has been compared yet.

If the statement’s own figures were misread, the pencil on the Statement column opens an editor so you can correct the beginning and ending balances by hand.

When the beginning balances disagree#

A separate note appears when the two opening balances differ, and it says different things depending on what came before:

The stretch before this one is reconciled. Then a disagreeing opening balance is a real discrepancy — something moved in a period you already certified. Worth investigating before you accept it.
The stretch before this one isn’t reconciled. Then continuity simply can’t be verified yet. That is expected if you’re reconciling out of order.

Ignore beginning difference accepts the delta and takes it out of the tie. Undo ignore beginning difference puts it back.

For a first-ever period there is also Add Start Value at the top of the Trac column, which books the opening anchor from the beginning difference in one click.

Outstanding items#

Some Trac entries genuinely won’t be on this statement yet — a cheque written on the 30th that clears next period. On any unmatched Trac card, the eye icon marks the entry Outstanding (carry forward). Outstanding items stay inside Trac’s ending balance (they are real entries) but come out of the difference, and the cash column prints that bridge as a − Outstanding (n) line so the tie visibly adds up. They also stop blocking the match check — the next period is where they get retired, by matching them to the statement line that finally carries them.

Click the icon again to clear the mark.

Positions#

The Positions section appears only for holdings that carry units — brokerage accounts and unit-tracked assets. Cash accounts, liabilities and value-based assets are cash-only, and skip this section, its check and its gate entirely.

It reads like the Activity grid: Trac’s holdings on the left, the statement’s on the right, matched pairs as a settled record and unmatched cards floating above in two columns. Each card reads its unit flow across the period — begin, in, out, end.

When everything ties, the whole section collapses to one green line — “All N positions tie” — with Show to expand it.

What you can do here:

Pair by clicking. Click an unmatched Trac holding, then an unmatched statement position. The second click pairs them. Click a selected card again to deselect. Click the green tie on a matched pair to unpair it.
Accept a timing difference. When a pair is off by units that will settle next period, accept the delta so it stops blocking the tie.
Edit either side. Open the Trac holding, or correct a statement position the parse misread. Add on the statement column adds a position the parse missed.
Remap or delete. A duplicate holding created by a connection can be re-pointed at the real one; an empty or bogus holding can be deleted. If a delete isn’t allowed, Trac tells you why rather than giving you a dead button.

Activity: Trac beside the statement#

This is the main grid — TRAC on the left, STATEMENT on the right — and it is split into two sections:

MATCHED (n) — pairs that are settled, in date order. When one Trac entry covers several statement lines, the statement lines stack against the single Trac entry.
UNMATCHED (n) — everything still outstanding, on whichever side it sits, floated to the top as two independent stacks so the work reads first.

Unmatched work on the Trac side means Trac has a movement the statement doesn’t. Unmatched work on the Statement side means the statement has a movement Trac has never recorded.

Below the grid you may see a note that some prior-period statement lines do not affect this statement’s ending balance. Those are listed, not graded — Show reveals them, they carry no weight in the tie, and there is nothing to do about them.

Matching by hand#

Click a card on one side, then a card on the other side. The second click completes the match immediately — there is no confirm step. Clicking the already-selected card clears the selection.

To pair several statement lines to one Trac entry, match them one at a time against the same Trac entry; they collect into a single grouped row. Clicking the green tie on a matched row unmatches it, and a grouped row detaches as one.

Letting Traci match#

Traci Match in the action bar reviews the unmatched lines and applies the matches it finds straight into the grid — there is no staged list to approve. It runs automatically once a parse finishes, so a fresh import usually arrives with the obvious pairs already made; the button is there for a second pass. When it finds nothing, it says so.

Matched statement lines carry a confidence chip so you can see how each pairing was reached:

EXACT — the amounts and dates line up exactly.
LIKELY — a strong but not exact match.
AI PICK — a judgment call. These are the ones to eyeball.

Anything Traci got wrong unmatches the same way anything else does — click the tie.

Statement lines Trac has never seen#

For statement lines with no Trac entry at all, the + on the card (Add to Trac) books it into Trac. Add Unmatched to Trac, pinned to the top of the statement column, does the same for every such line at once.

Two things to know about what lands:

The other side goes to suspense. A statement says what moved and when; it never says which account the other side belongs to. So the second leg is parked on the suspense account until someone classifies it — which is what the Unclassified queue is for. Until it is classified, that entry blocks completion.
The activity type is left blank, for the same reason: a statement doesn’t say what kind of activity a line was, and guessing would be worse than leaving it to be filled in.

Lines that moved no cash — an in-kind unit transfer, say — are skipped by the bulk action and need entering by hand.

Recommendations#

Recommend mines the periods this book has already reconciled and proposes classifications for the entries in this one: what activity a line should be, what account the other leg belongs on, which holding it should be attributed to.

Proposals are grouped by the activity being proposed, so you make one judgment about a dozen similar lines instead of a dozen judgments. Each row shows its evidence — what it proposes, how many certified events back it, what kind of match it was (security, merchant, category, description, transaction type), and, when precedent disagreed, the runner-up it beat.

Accept or reject a row, a whole group, or everything at once. Accept all deliberately skips the weaker matches — the ones keyed on description text, which are right roughly four times in five — and tells you how many it skipped. Rejections are not remembered: run Recommend again and they come back.

Fixing entries directly#

Every card has a pencil that opens the underlying record. On the Trac side that is the activity itself, where the activity type, posting accounts and attributed holding can be edited inline. On the statement side it opens the statement line, which is the escape hatch for a parse that misread an amount, a date or a description; a statement line can also be deleted outright, and Add at the top of either column adds an entry the parse or the import missed.

Data issues#

Above the completion panel, Trac lists the data-quality issues on this period’s activity, headed N data issues block <period>. It is hidden entirely when there are none.

Issues are grouped by type, for the same reason recommendations are: one judgment about twelve missing cost bases beats twelve judgments. Each row gives you three choices:

Fix — opens the activity so you can correct it.
Resolve — re-runs the check against the activity as it now stands. If the check has gone quiet the row clears. If it still fires, the row says Still detected in place and names the description, so you know it wasn’t a silent no-op.
Ignore — accepts the issue and stops it blocking the period. Ignore all N does the group at once.

Re-check all re-runs the checks across every activity in the period.

Issues on entries carried in from an earlier period are listed under Carried in · N · not blocking — visible so you know they exist, but they don’t gate this period.

Note that data issues are the one check that doesn’t wait for a statement. They are known from Trac’s own records, so you can clear them before the statement lands — which is the right order to work in anyway.

Completing the period#

The panel at the bottom reads To reconcile <period> and carries the checks as chips: a green tick for a check that passes, an amber ring for one that doesn’t, and a quiet grey ring for one that hasn’t been evaluated yet.

Everything must clear:

Cash difference $0 — Trac’s ending balance ties to the statement’s, after any outstanding items and any accepted beginning difference.
Positions tie — every position agrees, or its delta has been accepted as a timing difference. Skipped for cash-only subjects.
All postings matched — nothing unmatched on either side, apart from entries you carried forward as outstanding.
None unclassified — nothing in the period is still parked on suspense.
No data issues — nothing open and blocking on this period’s activity.

When all of them pass, the panel turns green and reads <period> ready to complete. Complete <period> is live only then; until it is, the button is dimmed. Completing is the point at which the period is written down as settled, and the period’s activities become read-only.

Force reconcile#

Force reconcile is offered only while the checks are failing, and it locks the period anyway. Use it for a period that will never cleanly tie — but know that a forced period is marked as one: its receipt is amber, headed <period> force-reconciled, and carries a FORCED badge, so a period that didn’t actually tie can never be mistaken for one that did.

After it’s complete#

A completed period shows a receipt instead of the working sections: who reconciled it and when, the custodian and account number the statement came from, the ending balance, how many postings were matched, how many positions tied, and how many items were carried forward. View full detail expands the cash, positions and activity sections underneath it, read-only.

Two controls sit on the receipt:

View statement reopens the statement the period was reconciled against.
Un-reconcile reopens the period so its activities can be edited again. This is the way back — a completed period is otherwise locked.

Completing a period also updates the account’s standing in Data Operations: its reconciled-through date moves, its UNRECONCILED count drops, and an account that was BEHIND on its statements can go back to CURRENT or ALL CLEAR.