01The problem: forgotten expenses
You rarely forget income — that's the part you want to see. With expenses it's the opposite: the insurance premium paid by direct debit, the software subscription, the purchase on the business card — a lot runs off your account automatically and never gets actively recorded. At year-end these bookings are missing, your profit is overstated and you pay more tax than necessary.
That's exactly where the expense bank reconciliation comes in: it compares your real bank statement with what's recorded in einzly — and makes the gaps visible.
02What the expense bank reconciliation does
- Reads all debits (direct debits) from your bank statement in camt.053 format
- Matches every debit against your already recorded expenses — based on amount, date, supplier, reference and currency
- Sorts every transaction into four clear categories: matched, possible match, missing or already imported
- Shows a summary: how many debits imported, how many matched, how many missing
- Also detects debits in foreign currency and converts them at the daily exchange rate
- Protects against double bookings — already reconciled transactions are not suggested again
03How it works
All you need is your bank statement from e-banking. The whole reconciliation takes just a few minutes:
Download your business account statement as a camt.053 file (.xml) from your e-banking — usually under "Account" → "Statements" or "Export".
In einzly, open the Expenses section and click "Bank reconciliation" at the top. Upload the camt.053 file.
einzly reads all debits from the statement and automatically compares them with your recorded expenses.
You see every transaction sorted into four categories, plus a summary of the key figures.
For every missing expense you create a booking with one click and optionally attach a receipt — or you ignore the transaction, for example in the case of private withdrawals.
04The four categories
| Category | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Matched | Debit clearly matches a recorded expense | Nothing — booked correctly |
| Possible match | Likely match, but not unambiguous | Check briefly and confirm |
| Missing expense | Debit with no matching booking in einzly | Create the expense or ignore it |
| Already imported | Transaction has already been reconciled once | Nothing — protection against double bookings |
What einzly looks at during reconciliation
- Amount of the debit
- Booking date (with some tolerance, since the debit and the receipt rarely fall on the same day)
- Supplier or recipient
- Reference and payment purpose
- Currency — including foreign currency, converted at the daily exchange rate
05What is camt.053?
camt.053 is the standardised bank statement format of Swiss banks (ISO 20022) — the same family as the QR invoice. It contains every booking in a structured, machine-readable form, which is what makes reliable reconciliation possible in the first place. You'll usually find it in e-banking under "Statements" or "Export" as an .xml file; every larger Swiss bank (PostFinance, UBS, Raiffeisen, the cantonal banks and many more) provides it.
06Not to be confused: the invoice bank reconciliation
einzly has two bank reconciliations that work in opposite directions. One assigns incoming payments to your open invoices and marks them as paid automatically. The one described here goes the other way: it checks your debits and finds the expenses still missing from your accounting. Together they make sure that neither a paid invoice stays open nor an expense gets forgotten.