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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-05-15
Setup Considerations: Automatic Bank Statement Reconciliation

Setup Considerations: Automatic Bank Statement Reconciliation

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of automatic bank statement reconciliation. It explains:
  • Why to set it up.
  • How it fits into the rest of Workday.
  • Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
  • Security requirements and business process configurations.
  • Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What It Is

Workday offers 2 types of automatic bank statement reconciliation, basic and advanced. Basic matches bank statement lines to operational transactions based on only amount and date. Advanced uses matching rules with additional matching attributes. This topic includes considerations for configuring advanced automatic bank reconciliation.

Business Benefits

With advanced automatic bank reconciliation, you can:
  • Reduce errors and manual effort.
  • Manage exceptions of unreconciled transactions as they occur.
  • Define suggestion rules that automatically identify potential matches.
  • Create first-notice item rules to reconcile bank statement items that you don't record in Workday, such as bank fees.

Use Cases

You can set up Workday to automatically reconcile:
  • Multiple supplier payments that are grouped into 1 payment on the bank statement.
  • Multiple electronic payments that are paid on different dates and settled on multiple bank statements.
  • Bank statement lines and reconcilable items that occur after the initial bank statement upload.
  • Ad hoc bank transactions from a predefined template matching with miscellaneous first-notice items.

Questions to Consider

Question
Considerations
How can you match bank statement lines with reconcilable items using parsed data?
You can identify, extract, and modify specific data values from bank statement fields using bank statement parsing. You can then use the parsed data in condition rules for matching.
Example: You parse a value from the
Addenda
 field and move it to the
Reference
 field of your bank statement. You can create a matching rule to match on this value during reconciliation.
How can you use worktags to match bank statement lines with reconcilable items?
You can map bank statement line types to worktags, and then set up condition rules to use the worktags to match specific bank statement lines to operational transactions.
When you specify the worktags in first-notice item condition rules, Workday assigns the worktags to corresponding ad hoc bank transactions to reconcile with the first-notice items on bank statements. Use an ad hoc bank transaction template and select
Assign Worktags from Bank Statement Line
.
How can you reuse matching rules across companies?
You can assign matching rule sets containing the same rule to 1 or more bank accounts.
Do you need to manually reconcile large volumes of statement lines and reconcilable items?
For bank accounts that use automatic reconciliation with matching rule sets, you can enable AI bank reconciliation features to help increase the accuracy and efficiency of bank statement reconciliation. See Concept: AI Bank Reconciliation.

Recommendations

  • To increase reconciliation accuracy:
    • Define amount tolerances as match-on criteria in matching rules. Workday uses the amount tolerances to filter the reconcilable items.
    • Schedule automatic reconciliation only when necessary, and avoid running multiple reconciliations simultaneously.
  • Create rules to suggest matches for bank statement lines that don't exactly match operational transactions.
    Example: The
    Reference
     and
    Date
     fields match, but the amounts don't match. Define rules to suggest matches based only on the reference and date.
  • To reconcile bank statement lines and operational transactions with different amounts, select the
    Create Ad Hoc Bank Transaction
     check box on 1-to-1 matching rules with an amount tolerance. Workday automatically creates an ad hoc bank transaction for the difference between the bank statement line and transaction amount.
  • To reconcile a bank statement line to an operational transaction with different dates, you can configure a date tolerance for these matching rules:
    • 1-to-1 rule: On the
      Match On
       grid, specify a
      Within Number of Days
       value for the statement line date.
    • 1-to-many rule: Define a condition rule that includes a date tolerance for the statement line date.
  • When you create matching rule sets, place the most specific rules before the more general rules. Workday considers bank statement lines using specific criteria before reconciling more general statement lines. Example: Workday reconciles a bank statement line for 500.00, with type code 495 and an addenda value of supplier payment before reconciling a different statement line on only amount.
  • When you create first-notice condition rules, verify that:
    • The delivered or calculated report field results are accurate for your conditions.
    • You format all attributes in condition rules correctly. Example: All open parentheses are followed by closed parentheses.
    • You've configured all required parameters correctly for your account posting rule values used in your conditions.

Requirements

  • Upload or manually record prior day bank statements.
  • Create or upload operational transactions.

Limitations

  • You can only automatically reconcile bank statement lines and operational transactions with different amounts using a 1-to-1 matching method. For the other matching methods, you must manually reconcile by creating an ad hoc bank transaction for the difference.
  • You can't reconcile many bank statement lines to many reconcilable items within a specified date range. To reconcile across an unspecified date range, create a many-to-many matching rule without match-by-date criteria. When you exclude dates in the rule, Workday considers all outstanding bank statement lines and operational transactions. Example: Your bank settles a group of electronic supplier payments across multiple days.

Tenant Setup

Update the reconciliation configuration for a bank account with these settings:
  • Select the
    Advanced Mode
     check box to assign a matching rule set and first-notice item rule set to the bank account. By default, Workday uses a basic reconciliation based on transaction amounts and dates.
  • Assign a parsing rule set to the bank account, if you're using parsed data in your matching condition rules.
  • Select the conditions for initiating an automatic bank reconciliation.
  • Select the conditions for initiating a first-notice item reconciliation.

Security

Domain
Considerations
Set Up: Bank Reconciliation
 in the Banking and Settlement functional area
Provides access to set up the bank reconciliation infrastructure and view related reporting.
Process: Ad Hoc Bank Transaction (New)
 in the Banking and Settlement functional area
Provides access to process ad hoc bank transactions and view related reporting.
Set Up: Ad Hoc Bank Transaction Template
in the Banking and Settlement functional area
Provides access to process ad hoc bank transaction templates and view related reporting.
Access Matching Rule Set (Segmented)
 in the Banking and Settlement functional area
Provides access to restrict which users can create and maintain matching rule sets for bank statement and not journal line reconciliations.
Process: Matching Rule Set
 in the Banking and Settlement functional area
Provides access to run automatic bank reconciliations using matching rule sets.
Set Up: Matching Rule Set
 in the Banking and Settlement functional area
Provides access to create matching rules and rule sets.
Process: Bank Reconciliation
 in the Banking and Settlement functional area
Provides access to run automatic bank reconciliations using bank reconciliation or matching rule sets.
Set Up: Tenant Setup - Worklets
 in the System functional area
Provides access to view and configure the Bank Statement Reconciliation dashboard.

Business Processes

Business Process
Considerations
Ad Hoc Bank Transaction Event
Sends new or edited ad hoc bank transactions for approval.
Bank Statement Event
Sends your bank statement reconciliations for approval. Example: You require approval of bank statement reconciliations for specific bank accounts.

Reporting

You can use these key reports for your reconciliations.
Report or Dashboard
Considerations
Book to Bank
 report
After running bank statement reconciliations, you can use this report to evaluate discrepancies between your bank statement balances and ledger balances.
Book to Bank by Bank Account Currency
 report
Displays the transactions posted to the ledger in a single bank account currency. Workday converts multicurrency transactions using the specified translation rule set and bank account currency.
Uncleared Items
 report
You can use this report to identify operational transactions that are outstanding as of a particular date.
Bank Statement Reconciliation dashboard
Provides graphical report worklets for tracking the bank statement reconciliations in your organization.
From the dashboard, you can adjust rule definitions or remove rules that aren’t performing well.

Integrations

You can upload your bank statements in these formats using the bank statements connector:
  • BAI2.
  • BTRS.
  • ISO 20022.
  • MT940/942.
  • Custom formats such as comma-separated value (CSV).

Connections and Touchpoints

You can automatically reconcile these Workday transactions from outside of cash management:
  • Customer deposits, payments, and refunds
  • Expense payments
  • Miscellaneous payments
  • Payroll payments
  • Student payments
  • Supplier payments
You can also automatically reconcile transactions created from Accounting Center that you've enabled for reconciliation. See Edit Accounting Source.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.