> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.nyumbazetu.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Bank accounts

> The accounts money moves through — setup, ledger mapping, payment routing and payer-facing checkout.

**Finance → Accounting → Bank Accounts → `/banks`**

Every receipt, expense payment, refund, disbursement and wallet top-up names a bank account. The
bank account record is what connects that movement to the general ledger and, for collections, to
the paybill a tenant actually pays into.

## What a bank account record holds

| Field                           | Purpose                                                                                  |
| ------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Account name**                | The display name staff will choose from. Make it unambiguous.                            |
| **Account number**              | The account identifier.                                                                  |
| **Bank name / display name**    | The institution.                                                                         |
| **Account type**                | The kind of account.                                                                     |
| **Ledger account**              | The chart-of-accounts account this bank maps to. Without it, cash movements cannot post. |
| **Paybill**                     | The mobile-money paybill or till used for collections into this account.                 |
| **Payment reference separator** | How a payer's account reference is composed, for automatic matching.                     |
| **Automated**                   | Whether receipts into this account arrive automatically through an integration.          |
| **Status**                      | Active or inactive.                                                                      |

## Adding a bank account

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create the account">
    Name, bank, account number and type.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Map it to the ledger">
    Choose the chart-of-accounts cash/bank account. This is the step that makes reconciliation
    possible.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Configure collection details">
    Paybill and reference separator, where tenants pay into this account.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set automation">
    Mark it automated if receipts arrive through an integration rather than being keyed in.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Activate it">
    Only active accounts appear in payment, refund and disbursement forms.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Active and inactive accounts

Accounts can be deactivated rather than deleted. An inactive account:

* no longer appears when recording new payments, expenses, refunds or disbursements;
* keeps every historical movement, so past reconciliations and statements stay intact.

<Warning>
  Never delete a bank account with movements. Deleting breaks the link from historical payments to
  the ledger and makes prior-period reconciliation impossible.
</Warning>

## Payer-facing checkout

Where tenants pay through a portal or a checkout flow, the set of accounts they may pay into is
derived from your bank accounts. Which accounts are exposed to payers is a deliberate choice — an
account intended for owner disbursements should not appear as a rent-collection destination.

Review the payer-facing list whenever you add an account, so a new internal account does not
quietly become a tenant payment option.

## Reference matching

Automatic matching of an incoming mobile-money or bank payment to a lease relies on the payer
using the right reference. The **payment reference separator** defines how that reference is
constructed, so the receipt can be attributed without a human reading it.

Communicate the reference format on invoices and in reminders. Most unmatched receipts are payers
using a reference nobody told them to use.

## Reconciliation

<Steps>
  <Step title="Work one account and one period at a time">
    Mixing accounts is how items get double-counted.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Match on reference, not amount">
    Amounts repeat; references do not.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Check all four directions of movement">
    Receipts in, expense payments out, refunds out, owner disbursements out. A bank line with no
    counterpart in any of the four is an unrecorded transaction.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Confirm the ledger balance">
    The mapped ledger account's balance should equal the reconciled bank balance.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Common problems

| Symptom                                      | Cause and fix                                                                         |
| -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Bank account not selectable                  | It is inactive, or belongs to a different branch.                                     |
| Cash postings missing from the trial balance | The bank account has no ledger account mapped.                                        |
| Receipts arriving unmatched                  | Payers using the wrong reference, or the reference separator is misconfigured.        |
| Tenant paid to the wrong paybill             | An account exposed to payers that should not have been. Review the payer-facing list. |

## Next steps

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Receiving payments" icon="credit-card" href="/guides/payments-receive-pay">
    Capturing receipts into these accounts.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Expense wallets" icon="wallet" href="/guides/expense-wallets">
    Funds bound to a bank account.
  </Card>
</Columns>