Account statement

A statement is the story of one counterparty account. It opens with the brought-forward balance, runs through invoices, receipts, credit notes, offsets and exchange difference entries, and closes with the period-end balance. Each row carries a date, a document type and number, a description, a debit or credit amount and a running balance, with currency and rate columns added where the account trades in foreign currency. Every accounting package and ERP produces this report, but column names, date formats and the debit-credit sign convention differ from system to system. With iFinances both routes for getting the data across are ready and chosen with you during setup: upload the statement as Excel or CSV, or use the direct connection the system offers. On an uploaded file the column names and sign convention are recognised automatically, and anything the reader cannot identify is put back to the user as a question.

Reconciliation works from two statements: yours and theirs. What you call a credit they call a debit, so the two documents should mirror each other line for line. In practice they do not, because the same event is booked on different dates by the two sides, a credit note is processed by one party and still pending with the other, or a foreign currency invoice is translated at two different daily rates. Turkey adds two local wrinkles worth knowing: invoices subject to VAT withholding, where part of the VAT is paid to the tax office by the buyer rather than the seller, so gross and net read differently on the two statements, and e-invoice, the electronic invoicing system that is mandatory above certain turnover and sector thresholds, which fixes the document number but not the posting date. The statement also travels as the attachment to a reconciliation letter, so the counterparty receives the lines behind the balance and not just the balance itself. Under Article 94 of the Turkish Commercial Code a month's silence can amount to acceptance of a statement, but only where a written current account agreement exists; without one the form requirement in Article 89 is not met and no automatic consequence follows.

The most common mistake is reducing a statement to its closing figure. If you send only a balance, two totals can agree while neither side knows which invoices were mutually recognised, and two offsetting errors will make the reconciliation look clean when it is not. The second is the date range: statements without a brought-forward balance, or cut at different dates by the two parties, never agree, and the difference gets hunted where it does not exist. The third is format. A statement taken as a PDF turns comparison back into manual work; pulling the same report as Excel or CSV is the precondition for matching at line level.