Your bank statement ends on Dec 29, not Dec 31: how to reconcile the year-end gap

Published 13 October 2026 · by Tekiba

Why the statement stops short

A statement ends on its cycle date, and the cycle date moves. U.S. Bank's help page on cycle dates says “The date can vary slightly from one month to the next”, and why: “statements won’t close on a weekend or holiday.” So a December cycle due to end on a weekend ends on another day.

One person on a Sage Community thread, still marked not answered, put it in one line: “My 2023 Dec actual RBC bank statement ends Dec 29th”. The last two days are on the next statement.

Two reconciliations, two dates

The reconciliation in your accounting program follows the statement. Intuit's reconcile page says to “Enter in the ending balance and the ending date from the bank or credit card statement you received”, and for the next one: “Your current account statement should start the day after this date.” December's reconciliation ends on 29 December, January's starts on the 30th, and no day is lost.

The year-end figure is separate: the bank balance at 31 December against the books at 31 December.

The steps

1. Get both statements. December's, and January's — which begins on the day after December's closing date. Until January's arrives you cannot know whether anything posted in the gap.
2. Check that they join. January's opening balance should equal December's closing balance, and its first date should be the day after December's last. If not, a statement is missing or the two overlap.
3. Convert both and put them in one file, December first. Keep each statement's rows in the order it printed them, and note which file each row came from.
4. Check the year on January's first rows. They are where a December–January statement can come out a year out (see “Dates without a year” below).
5. Cut at 31 December. Everything dated up to 31 December is the old year's; the rest is the new year's. On January's rows alone, with dates in column A and amounts in C, =SUMIFS(C:C,A:A,"<="&DATE(2025,12,31)) gives the total of its December rows.
6. Work out the bank balance at 31 December. December's closing balance plus that total. If the statement prints a running balance, the last row dated 31 December or earlier should show the same figure. Check the rows either side of the cut against the January PDF too: a statement that balances as a whole can still put an error on the wrong side of it.
7. Set it against the books. Take the book balance at 31 December and look at each difference. Some are items in the books that the bank had not put through by then — a cheque written but not cashed, a deposit made on the 31st. Others are errors: a bank fee never entered, or an entry made twice. Intuit's advice when a reconciliation will not balance is to check what was entered by hand “and ensure there are no errors or duplicates.” Correct the errors in the books; list the rest.
8. Check every difference is accounted for, then keep the workings. Bank balance, plus or minus the listed items, should equal the corrected books. Keep the figure, the list and both statements together.

With fictional figures, and books with no errors in them:

Where the year end goes wrong

Dates without a year. A January statement that starts on 30 December prints 12/30, and a converter that gives every row the year on the cover puts it in the wrong year — after the cut, not before it. Why your converted CSV shows the wrong year explains how to see it.

Two dates on a row. Some statements print a transaction date and a posting date. The bank's balance moves when the bank posts, so cut by the posting date when you build the 31 December bank balance. If your books record by transaction date, a card payment made on 31 December and posted on 2 January is in the books but not in that balance: it is one of the items in step 7, not a row to move across the cut.

December items in January's first days. Read January's first rows rather than only adding them up. If one relates to December — interest or a fee for the month, say — whether it belongs to the old year is a question for your accounting, not for the statement.

A different account. Each statement has its own cycle. Do this per account, with that account's two statements.

Keep both statements

The working file is yours; the statements are the record. The IRS page on how long to keep records starts from “Keep records for 3 years if situations (4), (5), and (6) below do not apply to you”. Keep January's statement with the year it closes, not only with the year it opens. If an older statement is missing, how far back you can download bank transactions covers what banks keep.

Doing it with LedgerDrop

LedgerDrop writes dates as YYYY-MM-DD, so the cut in step 5 involves no guessing at day or month order, and amounts signed with money in positive. The Balance column carries the running balance where the statement prints one, and is empty where it does not. Where a statement's two date columns are headed as a posting date and a transaction date, LedgerDrop keeps the posting date and leaves the other out.

The free version converts one statement at a time: convert December, then January, and paste January's rows under December's. LedgerDrop Pro takes both PDFs at once and writes one CSV in the order the files were given, with a column naming the file each row came from; merging 12 months of statements covers that file. Neither version cuts by date, checks that one statement follows another, or knows what is in your books: those steps are by hand.

What this page cannot tell you

Which year an item belongs to is an accounting question; this page shows how to find the figures, not how to treat them.

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