Reconcile bank accounts with Copilot (preview)

Article
04/16/2024

[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

This article explains how to use bank account reconciliation assist to help you reconcile bank transactions with ledger entries in Business Central.

Important

This is a Production Ready Preview feature.
Production Ready Previews are subject to supplemental terms of use. More information: Supplemental terms of use for Dynamics 365 preview

About bank account reconciliation assist

Bank account reconciliation assist is a set of AI-powered features that assist you in reconciling bank accounts. Bank account reconciliation assist offers you two distinct tasks through Copilot:

Improved matching of transactions with ledger entries

You might already be familiar with the Match Automatically action on Bank Acc. Reconciliation page that automatically matches most bank transactions with ledger entries. We refer to this operation as automatch. Although automatch works well, the algorithms it uses can sometimes result in many unmatched transactions. Copilot uses AI technology to inspect remaining transactions and identify more matches, based on the dates, amounts, and descriptions. For example, if multiple invoices were paid as one lump sum by a customer, Copilot reconciles the single bank statement line with the multiple invoice ledger entries.

Go to Reconcile bank accounts with Copilot.
Suggested general ledger accounts

For residual bank transactions that can't be matched to any ledger entries, Copilot compares the transaction description with G/L account names, suggesting the most likely G/L account to post to. For example, Copilot might suggest that transactions with the narrative "Fuel Stop 24" be posted to the "Transportation" account.

Go to Post unmatched bank transaction amounts to suggested general ledger accounts.

Prerequisites

Bank account reconciliation assist is activated. This task is done by an administrator. Learn more about configuring Copilot and AI capabilities.
Bank accounts in Business Central that you want to reconcile are linked to an online bank account or set up with bank statement import format.
You're familiar with bank account reconciliation in Business Central as described in Reconcile Bank Accounts.

Reconcile bank accounts with Copilot

Copilot in bank account reconciliation is intended to be used as a supplement to the automatch operation. For this reason, when you use Copilot, the automatch operation runs first to make the initial matches. Then, Copilot runs to try to match transactions that the automatch operation didn't handle.

There are two approaches to reconciling bank accounts with Copilot. You can use Copilot to start a new reconciliation on a bank account, directly from Bank Account Reconciliation list, or you can use Copilot on a new or existing reconciliation on the Bank Acc. Reconciliation card.

From the bank account reconciliation list
From a bank account reconciliation card

With this approach, you create and reconcile a new bank account reconciliation from scratch. This approach requires you to select the bank account and import the bank statement file, if the bank account isn't linked to an online account.

Select the icon, enter Bank Account Reconciliations, and then choose the related link.
Select the Reconcile with Copilot action to open the Reconcile with Copilot window.
Set Perform reconciliation for this bank account field to the bank account that you want to reconcile.
If the selected bank account isn't linked to an online bank account, you must import the bank statement file. To import the file, either select the value in the Use transaction data from field or select the paper clip button next the Generate button. Then, use the Select the file to import to import the bank statement file by either dragging it from your device or browsing your device.
To reconcile with Copilot, select Generate.

Copilot starts generating proposed matches. When it's completed, the Reconcile with Copilot window opens the results of the matching process.
Review the proposed matches as described in the following section.

Review, save, or discard proposed matches

After you run Copilot, the Reconcile with Copilot window shows the detailed results, including any proposed matches. At this point, no matches proposed by Copilot have been saved, so it provides you with opportunity inspect the proposals and save or discard as you like.

Shows the reconcile with copilot window with proposed matches

The Copilot window is divided into two sections. The upper section provides some general details about result, as described in the following table. The lower Matched Proposal section lists the matches suggested by Copilot.

Field	Description
Auto-matched	Specifies how many lines in the bank statement matched by the automatch operation. Select the value to view the reconciliation card.
Copilot matched	Specifies how many lines in the bank statement have matches proposed by Copilot. You can view details of the matches in the Matches Proposed section.
Statement Ending Balance	Specifies the ending balance shown on the bank's statement that you're reconciling with
Post if fully applied	Turn on this switch if you want to automatically post the bank account reconciliation when all lines (100%) are matched and you've selected Keep it.

Save or discard proposed matches

In the Matched Proposals section, review the suggested matches line by line, and then take the appropriate action:

To discard a single proposed match, select it in the list, and then select the Delete Line action.
To discard all proposed matches and close the Copilot window, select the discard button (trash can) next to the Keep it button at the bottom of the window.
To post the fully matched reconciliation automatically when you save it, turn on the Post if fully applied switch.
To save the matches currently shown in the Copilot window, select Keep it.

Post unmatched bank transaction amounts to suggested general ledger accounts

In this section, you learn how to use Copilot to post unreconciled bank account statement line amounts (specified in the Difference field) to a general ledger account. This task can only be done from an existing reconciliation.

Go to the Bank Account Reconciliations list, and open the existing reconciliation that includes the unreconciled lines.

Start by opening an existing bank account reconciliation. This step provides you with a clear view of any unreconciled bank statement lines that need to be transferred to the general ledger account.
In the Bank statement lines pane, identify the unmatched bank statement lines pane and select one or more lines that you want to reconcile.

These lines are the statement lines that Copilot focuses on for posting new payments to the general ledger account.
Select Post Difference to G/L Account to start the process.

This step prompts Copilot to start generating proposals for posting new payments.
Once Copilot has finished generating proposals, the Copilot Proposals for Posting Differences to G/L Accounts window opens.

This window displays the proposals in the Matched Proposal section. The experience is similar to reconcile with Copilot.
Review each proposal line by line to ensure the accuracy of the suggested payments to be posted.
- If you drill down on the proposal by selecting it in the list, you're taken to a list of accounts. From here, you can choose another account. This kind of manual correction is only possible when using the Post Difference to G/L Account flow, not in the matching flow.
- If you select Save... next to a proposal, you can add the mapping to the Text-to-Account Mapping page, so the next time this text appears while matching, it will be mapped to the proposed account.
Discard or save proposals.
- If you want to discard a specific proposal, select it in the list and then select Delete Line. To discard all proposals and exit Copilot, select the discard button (trash can) next to the Keep it button at the bottom of the window.
- If the proposals meet your requirements and you want to save them, select Keep It.
  
  This step confirms the transfer of the currently selected proposals from the bank account ledger to the general ledger account. It posts new payments to the proposed G/L Accounts and applies corresponding lines to the resulting bank account ledger entries.

Next steps

Validate your bank account reconciliation