Reconcile GoCardless payments

ⓘ This article is for small businesses who use Xero 

About reconciling GoCardless payments

Before you start, set up GoCardless as a payment service. Xero will automatically add a clearing bank account for GoCardless transactions in your organisation.

When a customer pays an invoice via GoCardless, Xero records the payment and fee transaction in the clearing account and automatically reconciles them. The payment is recorded as at the invoice due date.

It can take a few days for GoCardless to transfer the payment to your bank account. When you receive a payout from GoCardless, Xero creates a transfer transaction from the clearing account to your default GoCardless bank account. You need to manually reconcile the transfer transaction.

If a payment fails in GoCardless and a chargeback fee is incurred, the chargeback fee isn't imported into Xero. You need to create a spend money transaction to account for the fee.

Reconcile a GoCardless payout

How it works

When you receive a payout from GoCardless, Xero creates a transfer transaction from your clearing account to the default GoCardless bank account you’ve set up for that currency. 

If a transfer transaction isn’t automatically created, you can create it manually. You’ll need to do this if you haven’t set up an account for the invoice currency.

You need to manually reconcile the transfer transaction in each account. Reconcile the clearing account first, then go into your default GoCardless bank account and reconcile the other side of the transfer transaction.

Reconcile the clearing account

To reconcile the transfer transaction in the clearing account, you first need to enable mark as reconciled.

Once enabled, manually reconcile the transfer transaction:

1. In the clearing account, select the Account Transactions tab.
2. Find and select the transfer transaction.
3. Click More, then select Mark as Reconciled.
4. Click Mark as Reconciled again to confirm.

The transaction's status will change to Reconciled and a Xero created statement line will show in the Bank Statements tab of your clearing account.

Reconcile your bank account 

The transfer transaction should appear as a suggested match in your default GoCardless bank account in Xero.

To reconcile the suggested match:

1. In the Accounting menu, select Bank accounts.
2. For your default GoCardless bank account, click Reconcile [number] items.
3. Find the statement line for the GoCardless payout. 
4. If the correct transaction is suggested next to the statement line, click OK to accept the match and reconcile.

If the transfer doesn’t show as a suggested match, use find & match to search for it.