Matching card machine settlements to the till
How a gym reconciles card terminal settlements on the bank statement with card takings at the till, posts the fees and chases slips that never settled.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Fitness businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A member buys a personal training package at the desk and taps their card on the bank's machine. The till records a card payment. Two days later, a deposit from the bank appears on your statement for an amount that matches nothing at all, because it is several days' card sales added together with the bank's fees taken off.
That gap between what the till says and what the bank pays is where card money quietly goes missing: a slip keyed in wrong, a terminal batch that never settled, a fee nobody recorded. Reconciling the two is not hard, but it does need a routine. This article sets one out for a gym using Achekam's till.
Card takings recorded from the terminal slip
Achekam's till is not connected to any card machine. A card payment at the till is recorded by the cashier from the bank terminal's slip. There is no integration with card terminals, so the amount on the till is only as accurate as the cashier's typing.
Two habits at the desk prevent most problems later:
- Key the amount from the slip, not from the screen. If the cashier types the sale amount into the terminal wrongly, the slip shows what the member was actually charged. That is the figure to record.
- Keep the merchant copy of every slip in a bag or envelope labelled with the till name and date. When a settlement does not match, the slips are your evidence.
At the end of the session, most terminals can print an end-of-day or batch total. Staple it to the day's slips.
The card account each sale posts to
Every till sale that reaches the server posts a balanced journal in the same step, with each payment method to its own account. Card payments, and QR payments taken through a payment gateway's pay page, post to account 1060. Cash goes to 1050, EFT to 1000 and, in Kenya, M-Pesa to 1070.
Think of 1060 as money the bank owes you. Each card sale adds to it; each settlement from the bank should take it away again. If everything settles, and fees are recorded, 1060 drifts back down to the slips not yet paid out.
If your desk also takes QR payments, remember they share account 1060 with card. Closing the business day freezes its payments along with its Z reports, so use the day's frozen payment records to separate the two when matching.
Settlements on the bank statement, often a day later and net of fees
The bank that supplied your terminal pays card takings into your account on its own schedule, usually after the sale and often as one amount for a day or a batch, with its fees taken off first. Your merchant agreement says how your bank does it. Learn the pattern for your bank before you start matching.
Investopedia's explainer on interchange fees sets out what those fees are, who receives them and how they feed into what a merchant pays per card sale. For a gym, the practical point is that where fees are deducted, the deposit will be smaller than the slips, and the difference has to be recorded as a cost rather than left as a mystery.
Import the bank statement as PDF, CSV, Excel, OFX, QIF, MT940 or CAMT.053. Each import is checked so that the opening balance plus movements equals the closing balance.
Matching settlements to the card account and posting the fees
Bank lines are matched by suggestion, and a person accepts each match. A line not yet in the books becomes a suggested journal that a person approves. For a card settlement, approve it against account 1060.
Then deal with the fee. Using the bank's merchant statement, post a manual journal for the fees for that settlement or that month: debit a bank charges or card fees account, credit 1060. A journal must balance, and one dated in a closed month is refused.
A worked example in words: on Monday the desk records card sales from slips. On Wednesday the bank deposits Monday's batch, less its fees. You approve the deposit against 1060, then post the month's card fees from the merchant statement. What remains in 1060 for Monday should now be nothing.
A reconciliation completes only with no difference left or with every leftover line explained, so any settlement that will not match has to be explained before the month can close cleanly.
Chasing a slip that never settled
Once a week, open the general ledger for account 1060 and look at what is left. A balance that keeps growing means card sales are being recorded but not all of them are being paid out.
Work through it in this order:
- Compare the day's slips with the till. A keying mistake shows up as a slip that does not match any till payment.
- Compare the terminal's batch total with the settlement. If the batch total is right but no deposit arrived, the batch may not have closed on the terminal.
- Ask the bank. Quote the terminal number, the date and the batch total. Disputes and chargebacks also appear here, and the bank's merchant statement will show them.
- Correct the books. If a till payment was recorded wrongly, a supervisor deals with it on the till; if a journal was wrong, reverse it.
Business days are closed by a supervisor or manager who was not a cashier that day, which freezes that day's payments. That is a good point to check the day's card total against the terminal's batch total, while the slips are still in the envelope.
For handing the desk between shifts without mixing up card slips, see reception shifts on one till. QR payments are covered in members paying by QR code at the front desk, and the same slip routine for a workshop counter is in recording card payments from the bank terminal.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
