Importing bank statements and automatic reconciliation (MT940, CAMT.053, CSV)

Nothing consumes more time in an association's administration than retyping bank transactions. The good news: every Dutch bank exports statements in a format your bookkeeping can ingest directly — and modern software then reconciles most lines automatically.

Which format to choose

• MT940 — the classic SWIFT format; virtually every business bank portal exports it.
• CAMT.053 — the modern ISO 20022 XML variant with richer data; preferred when available.
• CSV/XLSX — the universal fallback. Column layouts differ per bank, so good software lets you map columns once and reuses that profile.

Deduplication and confidence-scored reconciliation

Importing overlapping periods is harmless: transactions are recognised by date, amount, IBAN and reference, and existing lines are skipped. Reconciliation then compares every imported line to known internal payments (a dues debit, a donation, a payment request) on the same four attributes. High-confidence matches confirm automatically; medium ones are suggested for one-click review; the rest remain as new entries to categorise.

The double-count trap

When a payment already exists in your system and its bank line is imported too, the same money could appear twice. Matched bank lines are therefore explicitly marked as non-reporting: visible for audit, excluded from totals, annual accounts and exports.

Bank import and reconciliation are part of Aqlemy's complete cashbook. See the overview on the bookkeeping page.

Free tools for this article: the free cashbook template (Excel). Curious whether the rest of your governance is in order? Take the free board scan — 8 questions, 2 minutes, with the template that solves each open point.