Bank Reconciliation and Restricted Funds

This article covers two things: importing bank statements (and what happens to them once they land), and managing restricted funds for grants, designated donations, and ring-fenced savings.

For a higher-level walk-through of how the Bank Inbox and Ledger fit together, start with Accounting and Bookkeeping.

How imports flow into your books

A quick refresher before we dive in:

Bank Inbox — where every imported line lands. Untouched until you review it.
Ledger — your books. Only reviewed lines (Matched, Created, or Transfer) make it here.

You promote a line from Inbox to Ledger via one of four actions in the Reconcile drawer: Match, Create, Transfer, or Park (with Ignore as a soft fifth option). That's reconciliation for anything that arrives on a bank statement — there's no separate "month-end ceremony", matching is the thing.

Cash you hold outside the bank is the exception. There's no statement to match against, so those transactions are marked as reconciled directly from the Ledger — see Cash accounts: money that never hits the bank below.

Importing bank statements

Open Finance → Accounting, then Finance Actions → Import Statement to launch the Import Bank Transactions wizard.

Step 1 — Upload

Pick the Bank Account you're importing into, then drag and drop (or browse for) a CSV exported from your bank. The wizard supports formats from most major UK banks including Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds, HSBC, Starling, and Monzo, plus generic CSV exports.

Step 2 — Map columns

Scoutworks detects your bank's format and suggests which CSV columns map to Date, Description, and Amount. If the auto-detection is wrong, correct it from the dropdowns. A preview table shows how the first few rows will be interpreted.

Step 3 — Review and import

Review the summary:

Total rows to import and how many are valid.
Duplicate detection — rows that match a previous import are skipped automatically.
Any parse errors (unreadable dates, malformed amounts).

Click Import to proceed. A success screen confirms how many transactions were created — and how many were skipped as duplicates.

Reconciling: getting lines into the Ledger

Once imports have landed, open the Bank Inbox tab. The count badge tells you how many lines need a decision. Anything you've parked is excluded from the badge — those are explicitly "for later".

Filtering the Inbox

The chips along the top of the Inbox table:

Needs action — the default. New imports awaiting review.
All — everything in the Inbox.
Imported — fresh lines with no suggested match yet.
Suggested — Scoutworks has spotted a likely match in the Ledger; high-confidence suggestions float to the top.
Parked — lines you've set aside with a note.
Ignored — lines you've marked as not relevant. Kept for the audit trail, never deleted.

Reviewing a line — the Reconcile drawer

Click any row to open the Reconcile drawer. The bank line is on one side; your options on the other. Pick exactly one:

Verb	When to use it	What you provide
Match	The bank line matches a transaction you've already recorded — a manual entry, a settled expense claim, or a system-generated payout.	Confirm the suggested match, or pick a different one from the list.
Create	The bank line is something genuinely new — a one-off donation, a venue hire fee, an item you bought directly.	Counterparty, category (required), description.
Transfer	Money moving between two of your own bank accounts.	The destination account. Scoutworks handles both sides as one transfer.
Park	You don't know what this is yet — needs a chat with a volunteer or a paper receipt to check.	A short note. Stays in the Inbox under "Parked".
Ignore	Should never reach the books — duplicate, fee already accounted for elsewhere, personal transaction in the wrong account.	Nothing. Hidden from the books but kept under "Ignored".

Confidence chips on suggestions:

Green chip — high confidence (90% or more).
Amber chip — medium confidence (50–89%).
No chip — no suggestion. Match opens with a search field so you can find the right Ledger entry yourself.

One bank line, several payments

A single Direct Debit collection often covers subs from multiple parents. In the Match panel, tick every Ledger entry that this bank line covers. A running total at the bottom shows:

If the total doesn't tie out, click Split remainder to leave the unmatched amount on the bank line for next time.

Bulk actions

Select two or more rows and a sticky action bar appears at the bottom with Categorise, Park, Ignore and Cancel. Handy for sweeping out a batch of repetitive bank fees or other recurring noise.

Auto-Match

If your Inbox has lots of high-confidence suggestions (green chips), the Auto-Match button at the top confirms them all in one go. Only lines Scoutworks is 90% or more sure about are auto-confirmed — the amber and no-chip ones still wait for your eyes.

Cash accounts: money that never hits the bank

Most groups hold a bit of cash — a subs tin, a float for the tuck shop, coins collected at an AGM. No bank issues a statement for a biscuit tin, so cash transactions could never be reconciled the usual way. They'd sit unreconciled forever and clutter your year-end.

Flagging the account as a cash account fixes that.

Flagging an account as cash

Open Finance → Accounting → the Settings tab, and expand Bank Accounts. Click Add Bank Account, or open the three-dot menu on an existing account and choose Edit Details. Tick This is a cash account and save. For everything else on that screen, see Managing Your Bank Accounts.

Accounts flagged this way show an amber Cash badge beside their account type.

What changes

	Ordinary bank account	Cash account
Statement import	Appears in the Import Statement account picker.	Hidden from the picker — there's no statement to upload.
Reconciling	Match each line against the imported statement in the Bank Inbox.	Mark transactions as reconciled directly from the Ledger.
Prompts	Unreconciled entries nudge you to import a statement.	No statement prompts — none is coming.
Year-end	Unmatched lines are flagged at close.	Reconciled rows clear the same checks, so the period closes cleanly.

Marking cash transactions as reconciled

From the Ledger tab:

One at a time — open the three-dot menu on the row and choose Mark as reconciled. The same menu offers Mark as unreconciled if you need to undo it.
In a batch — tick several rows, then click Mark reconciled in the action bar at the bottom. The button shows how many of your selected rows are eligible.

Only transactions you recorded by hand on a cash account reconcile this way. Anything that arrived from a bank statement or a Direct Debit collection still belongs to the Bank Inbox, even if it landed on a cash account.

How to handle cash in practice

Most cash reaches your books the moment it's paid into the bank, where it reconciles against the statement like anything else. You don't need a cash account for that, and banking it is the tidiest way to work.

Use a cash account for money you hold and spend before it reaches the bank — the float that buys the sausages on the way to camp, the tin that pays for badges at the district shop. The catch: cash spent this way only ever appears in your accounts if you record it. Nothing else will catch it.

Restricted Funds

Restricted funds track money received with specific conditions — grants, designated donations, fundraising for a stated purpose. UK charity accounting requires these to be tracked separately from general funds.

Viewing Restricted Funds

Open the Funds tab on the Accounting page. The Restricted Funds section shows:

A Funds Summary panel with three cards: Total Allocated, Total Spent, and Remaining.
A table listing each fund with Name, Allocated, Spent, Remaining, % Used (with a progress bar), and Status.

Fund statuses:

Status	Meaning
Healthy (green)	Less than 60% spent
Warning (amber)	60–79% spent
Critical (orange)	80–99% spent
Overspent (red)	Spending exceeds the allocation
Closed (grey)	Fund has been closed; no further spending

Creating a Fund

Click Create Fund (toolbar or empty state). Fill in:

Field	Required	Description
Fund Name	Yes	A short name, e.g. "Camp 2025 Fund" or "Equipment Reserve"
Description	No	What the fund is for
Allocated Amount	Yes	The budget ring-fenced for this purpose (can be increased later)

Click Create Fund to save.

Editing a Fund

Open the three-dot menu on any active fund row and select Edit. You can update the name, description, and allocated amount. Changes take effect immediately.

Closing a Fund

Select Close Fund from the three-dot menu. A confirmation dialog warns you of the consequences:

The fund will no longer appear in transaction selectors.
Existing transactions keep their fund association.
The fund remains visible in the closed funds list.
This action cannot be undone.

If the fund still has a remaining balance, a warning highlights it so you can transfer funds before closing.

Period close and year-end

At the end of your financial year, close the accounting period from Finance Actions → Close Period (or via the year-end reminder banner on the dashboard).

The Close Accounting Period dialog checks for blockers first:

Uncategorised transactions must be categorised.
Unresolved expense claims must be approved or rejected.
Unreconciled Inbox items are flagged as recommended (Parked items can stay parked — they don't block close).

Once blockers are resolved, the dialog shows a balance summary (opening balance, net change, closing balance) and a toggle to Create next period automatically. Click Close Period to lock the period. This action can't be undone.

What's next

Accounting and Bookkeeping — the wider workflow: imports → Bank Inbox → Ledger.
Chart of Accounts — customise the categories used across your accounting.
Attaching Receipts to Transactions — keep the paper trail your independent examiner expects.