Reconciling

Reconciling is checking Climb against your bank and confirming they agree. It's the habit that makes every other number in the app trustworthy: an envelope is only useful if the money it claims is really there.

Cleared, then reconciled

Each transaction has two levels of "confirmed":

Cleared: the transaction has posted at your bank; you've matched it against your statement or online banking.
Reconciled: it was part of a balance check that came out exact. Reconciled transactions are locked: the amount, account, and cleared status can't change, so a past reconciliation can never quietly drift.

How it works

Reconciling an account is three steps:

Enter your bank's balance: the posted balance from your bank, pending transactions excluded.
Clear transactions until the difference reads zero. Import a statement file to match them in bulk, or clear them one by one against your statement.
Confirm and lock. Climb marks everything cleared as reconciled, and that becomes solid ground you never have to re-check.

When it doesn't balance

A stubborn difference almost always means one of three things: a transaction you never entered (importing your statement will surface it), a transaction entered with the wrong amount, or a duplicate. Climb highlights uncleared transactions that exactly match the difference; those are the usual suspects.

Don't force it with a made-up adjustment unless you've truly given up finding the cause; an unexplained difference usually resurfaces next time, bigger.

How often?

We suggest weekly. A weekly five-minute reconcile is easy because only a handful of transactions are in play; a quarterly one is an archaeology dig. Ten transactions are easy to check; three hundred are not.