Manual Reconciliation of Bills and Payments

Most of the time, payments are automatically reconciled when you use the Pay button on a bill. However, there are scenarios where you need to manually reconcile a bill with an existing payment:

• A payment was created independently (not from the bill)
• You received an advance payment receipt before the bill arrived
• A payment was applied to the wrong bill and needs to be moved
• Partial payments need to be matched with specific bills

When to Use Manual Reconciliation

Scenario	Action
Paying a new bill with immediate payment	Use Pay button (auto-reconciles)
Paying multiple bills with one payment	Manual reconciliation
Linking an advance payment to a later bill	Manual reconciliation
Fixing a mis-linked payment	Reset and re-reconcile

How Reconciliation Works

In Odoo, "reconciliation" means linking two or more journal items (lines) that offset each other. For vendor bills and payments:

• A posted bill creates a credit on Accounts Payable (vendor owes money)
• A posted payment creates a debit on Accounts Payable (money paid out)
• When you reconcile them, the bill's credit and the payment's debit cancel out — the balance becomes zero, and the bill is marked Paid

Method 1: From the Vendor's Ledger

The easiest way to manually reconcile is from the vendor's Accounts Payable ledger.

1. Open any bill or payment for the vendor
2. Click the Accounts Payable account link on a journal entry line
3. This opens the Accounts Payable view filtered to this vendor
4. You'll see all open (unreconciled) items — both bills (credits) and payments (debits)
5. Select the bill and the matching payment(s)
6. Click Reconcile (or it auto-reconciles once the selected items balance to zero)

Method 2: From the Bill Itself

1. Open the unpaid posted bill
2. Look for "You have outstanding debits for this vendor" message at the top

3. This means there's an existing payment/credit for this vendor that's not yet matched
4. Click Add next to the outstanding debit to apply it to this bill
5. The bill will be marked Paid (or Partially Paid if the amounts differ)

Method 3: OCA Bank Reconciliation

For bank statement reconciliation (matching bank statement lines to bills and payments), ARE18 uses the Account Reconcile OCA module.

Navigate to: Accounting Dashboard > Bank journal > Reconcile

From the dashboard, each bank journal card shows:

• Number of pending transactions to reconcile
• Bank balance
• Link to reconciliation view

In the reconciliation view:

1. Each bank statement line is shown
2. Odoo suggests matches based on amount, partner, and reference
3. Accept suggestions with a click
4. Or manually search and select the bills/payments to match
5. Click Validate to post the reconciliation

Unreconciling (Undo Reconciliation)

If you reconciled incorrectly:

1. Open the bill or payment
2. Go to the Journal Items tab
3. Find the reconciled line (usually highlighted)
4. Right-click or click the unlink icon to unreconcile
5. The bill/payment returns to its unmatched state

:::warning Before Unreconciling Unreconciling affects the payment state of both the bill and the payment. Make sure you understand what you're undoing before proceeding. It's generally safer to create a reversing entry than to unreconcile posted entries. :::

Verifying Reconciliation

After reconciling:

• The bill shows Paid (green badge) or Partially Paid
• The payment shows Paid status
• Both are linked — clicking one shows the other
• The Aged Payables report no longer shows the bill as outstanding

:::tip Reconciliation Tips

• Always check the amounts match before reconciling (or use partial reconciliation for partial matches)
• Use the Subsidiary Ledger report to see each vendor's unreconciled items
• For complex reconciliations, consider creating a journal entry to clear residual amounts :::