Balance Sheet Reconciliation Template
Every account with its support tiered by where the document came from, the unevidenced balance in dollars, and both figures on every leftover.
Free download · No account needed
Account Substantiation
[Entity] — balance sheet at [__ ___ 20__]
There is no Reconciled column and nothing will add one. Two of these columns are dollars, and together they add back to the balance.
| Acct | Name | GL balance | Tier | Evidenced outside the ledger | Unevidenced | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1010 | Operating cash | — | — | — | — | — |
| 1100 | Accounts receivable | — | — | — | — | — |
| 1400 | Prepaid expenses | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2100 | Accrued liabilities | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2400 | Deferred revenue | — | — | — | — | — |
The four verdicts, and there is no fifth
| Supported | The whole balance is evidenced by tier 1 or tier 2 support |
| Supported in part | Part of it is. The rest is a number, not a caveat |
| Self-referential | The only support came out of the ledger being supported |
| Unsupported | Nothing, or something stale enough to be nothing |
Four states where every downloadable grid has a tick box.
Every balance sheet reconciliation template hands you the same six columns: account, ledger balance, supporting balance, difference, explanation, and a tick box. Fill it honestly and you still cannot answer the question a lender or an incoming audit partner actually asks, which is not whether the accounts tie but what they tie to. An accounts receivable aging and its control account come out of the same system. A zero difference between them proves the software works. It says nothing about whether a customer owes you anything.
Kestrel Fluid Systems closes May with receivables at 2,410,882.40 and an aging that agrees to the cent. Account Substantiation records that as zero evidenced, because the aging came out of the ledger holding the control account. Trace June cash invoice by invoice to a bank statement and 1,940,110.00 becomes real, leaving a stated gap of 470,772.40 to talk about. That gap is the review conversation, and the evidence hierarchy in AS 1105 is why a tick box never produces it.
Whatever will not tie carries two figures rather than one. SAB 108 works an accrual of 100 dollars built at 20 a year over five years, quantifies it as 20 one way and 100 the other, and declines to accept either alone. On Kestrel's sheet the largest single period effect is 1,925.00 and the accumulated total is 69,106.38. Feed the pack from a normalized trial balance and bank statement PDFs, or run it beside the monthly close pack.
What's in the pack
Account Substantiation sheet
One row per balance sheet account carrying the ledger balance, the best support tier, the dollars evidenced outside the ledger and the dollars that are not. Those last two add back to the balance.
Support Index sheet
One row per document rather than per account, with who produced it, how it reached you, original or conversion, and the period it actually covers. That last column is what catches a prior-year memo running a live estimate.
Aged Unreconciled Items sheet
Every leftover with the period it first appeared, what it did to this period, and what it has grown to on the balance sheet. Both figures, on every row, totalled at the bottom.
Accrued Liabilities Detail sheet
Line level substantiation for the account that carries the most invented numbers, with a column for when each recurring accrual was last compared to a real bill.
Prepaid Expenses Detail sheet
Vendor, invoice, the service period printed on the invoice, and the balance at period end, so an amount with no invoice behind it appears as its own line instead of hiding in a total. The prepaid and accrual rollforward pack is where that balance is built, month by month, rather than checked once here.
Substantiation Standard
The three conditions an account has to meet, the four verdicts and no fifth, and why the rollover and iron curtain views both go on every residual.
Support Tiers
The four tiers with the calls people get wrong in a table: an aging is tier 3, a screenshot of a bank balance is tier 2, a statement you downloaded yourself is tier 1.
Substantiation Record
The per-account write-up for anything carrying judgement, with a filled example on accrued liabilities that names the lease escalation nobody caught for sixteen months.
Review Sign-off Note
The six checks a reviewer runs and the two questions they leave behind, written so review starts at the dollar columns and reaches the verdict column last.
Space rule
Support cannot come from the ledger it supports. It governs every prompt here, and it is why nothing in this space will tell you an account is fine.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or download it
Open the pack in River and let the agent build it from your own trial balance, or download the blank Word and CSV files instantly with no account.
- 2
Send the trial balance and everything behind it
Statements, agings, accrual worksheets, count sheets, prepaid invoices, the fixed asset rollforward, last year's audited statements. Scans and phone photographs are fine, and half a folder is a normal starting point.
- 3
Tier the support before you tie anything
Decide each document's tier from who produced it and how it reached you. The account list then totals what rests on something outside your own ledger, which is the number that changes the conversation.
- 4
Give every leftover both figures
This period's effect and the balance sheet accumulation, side by side. Read the second column as a total before the reporting date rather than after somebody else does.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Download the whole pack as Word documents and CSV sheets, with no signup and no credit card. Edit with AI is a separate, optional path for anyone who wants the agent to tier their own support and fill the sheets. The template library holds the rest.
Why is there no Reconciled column?
Because it collapses two different facts into one tick. The pack carries the dollars evidenced outside your ledger and the dollars that are not, and those add back to the balance. A verdict of Self-referential is a legitimate published state that a tick box has no way to express.
How is this different from the close checklist?
The monthly close pack records the activity of a close: what ran, what it produced and when the period locked. This proves the balances that close left behind. Run both and the reconciliation log feeds this sheet directly.
Is a subledger aging really not support?
It is excellent for composition and useless as evidence. A ledger disagreeing with its own subledger is a defect, not a control, so a zero there is arithmetic. The fix is cheap: trace the following month's cash to the invoices and the balance moves into the evidenced column.
What format are the downloaded files?
Word documents (.docx) for the standard, the tiers, the substantiation record and the sign-off note, and CSV (.csv) for the five sheets, zipped into one file. They open natively in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets.
What does Edit with AI actually do?
It creates a free River account and installs this exact pack as a private workspace. The agent opens ready to read your trial balance, tier every document you send by where it came from, and total what your balance sheet rests on. Nothing is written until you send something.
Who is this template for?
Controllers, accounting managers and fractional CFOs heading into an audit, a lender review or a diligence request. Firms scoping a new client's books first want the books diagnostic, and card and processor balances get evidenced through settlement reconciliation. Firms inheriting books somebody else kept start with the takeover tie-out instead.
Prove the balance sheet, not just that it ties
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open this exact pack in River and let the agent tier your own support.
Edit with AI