The balances in your Wave account may not always match the balances in your bank accounts. Or, you may be seeing discrepancies in account balances between different pages in Wave. This article will walk you through the different scenarios where the balances may not match, and the steps you can take to resolve the problem.
Why are my account balances in Wave not matching my bank balances?
What to do if the balances are not reflecting correctly between different pages?
Why are my account balances in Wave not matching my bank balances?
The account balances on the Transactions page in your Wave account may not always match the true balance in your bank accounts at all times. If you have connected your bank accounts in Wave to import transactions, you will notice that imports only happen at fixed intervals, not in real time. This is a common reason why your balances in Wave may not match the balances you see on the Wave dashboard, the Connected accounts page, or your online banking portal. Another reason for a mismatch in balances could be, missing or duplicate transactions in your Wave account.
The first step to ensure your balances in Wave are accurate is to reconcile your accounts if you haven’t already done so. When you compare your bank statement with the transactions in Wave, you will be able to identify any discrepancies and correct them.
If all the transactions on your statement match what you see in Wave, check if you have a starting balance entered for the account. A starting balance is the amount in an account at the beginning of a period. For example, if you start using Wave for bookkeeping from a specific period and you don’t want to record all your historical transactions since you opened your bank accounts, you would enter a starting balance. This balance represents the amount in the bank account prior to the period you start with Wave. An incorrect or missing starting balance can result in an incorrect account balance in Wave even if all transactions recorded in your Wave account match the transactions on your statement.
What to do if the balances are not reflecting correctly between different pages?
If you notice an inflated amount for income accounts on your Account Transactions report or Profit and Loss report (cash basis), and if these transactions are tied to an invoice, check if you may have edited the invoice to include a negative line item. If you created an invoice, marked it as fully paid, then later added a negative line item, this can cause discrepancies and inflate the values on some of your cash basis reports. You may have entered this negative line item at some point to prevent the invoice from showing as overdue after recording a refund on the invoice. Deleting the negative line item on the invoice will resolve the issue. And to ensure the invoice does not appear as overdue, follow these steps to write off the invoice. If you do not want to use the write off method, an alternative is to create a new invoice to record the negative line item equalling the amount you refunded. Mark this new invoice as paid, or categorize the expense transaction associated with the refund on the Transactions page to Refund sent for an invoice sent in Wave, and select the invoice.
There are rare occasions when your Wave pages might not communicate with each other. This can cause reports and balances in Wave to display incorrect information, or you may see inconsistent numbers for the same account between different reports. In cases like that, a data refresh may be required on the back end.
Here is what you need to look for to identify if this is happening in your Wave account:
- You see a different number for the same account when you compare the balance of the account on your Account Transactions report with the Balance Sheet or Trial Balance reports (the report types should be consistent when comparing reports).
- You added new transactions, but the balance widget at the top of your Transactions page isn’t updating.
Future dated transactions will not be included in the account balances on the transactions page or the reconciliation page. However, the transactions will be included on the account transactions report.
- The Wave Balance on your reconciliation page does not match the balance on your Account Transactions report for the same account.
- On your reconciliation period, the Wave balance after the last transaction entered, does not match the Wave balance at the top of the page.
If you notice any of the above issues, open Mave, Wave’s automated chatbot, and type data refresh. Mave will help collect any relevant details and direct you to the appropriate support. Learn how to open Mave in Get support with Wave.