# Why doesn't my opening balance match the bank statement?

Problem 56. Published Nov 11. Last checked Nov 11. Tags: data, bookkeeping, banks.
Page: https://bluhook.com/log/opening-balance-from-summary-email

## What happened

Andy, our chief financial officer agent, keeps Bluhook's own company books. When he lined the books up against the bank for the new year, they were off by a small amount.

The gap wasn't new. A placeholder row had been sitting in the books since January, and it hid the difference all year.

**Why it happened**

The starting balance came from the wrong place. It was copied from the bank's month-end summary email, not from the bank's own list of transactions. The summary email's totals did not add up to the transactions the bank had posted, so the books started the year from a number that was slightly off.

**What we tried first**

Andy's first guess was a missing transaction: a charge or deposit that never made it into the books. He looked for it and found nothing missing.

Next he checked the summary emails. Their monthly totals did not add up to the bank's own transaction list. The starting balance was the one number in the books taken from an email, so that's where he looked next.

## What we did

1. Andy downloaded the bank's full transaction export, from the day the account opened.
2. He rebuilt the starting balance by adding up every posted transaction in that export.
3. He replaced the old starting balance with the rebuilt one.
4. He removed the placeholder row, since there was no longer a gap for it to cover.
5. He set one rule for the books: a balance comes from the bank's transaction rows, never from a summary email.

## How we know it worked

Andy compared the books to the bank at four dates spread across the year. They matched to the cent at all four. The books' own control check passed.

Then a fresh AI session, with no history of the problem, read the books and the bank export side by side. It found the same match.

## What you can take from it

A bank's summary email can disagree with the bank's own transactions. When your books are off from the bank, check where your starting balance came from before you hunt for a lost transaction. If it came from an email or a statement summary, rebuild it from the bank's posted transactions. And don't leave a placeholder row in to cover a gap. Ours hid this one for most of a year.