How bookkeepers request a bank statement from clients
By Arthur Teboul, DokuTrak · Published
In short
Ask the client for the official monthly statement of every business bank account, savings and closed accounts included, as the PDF downloaded from online banking, all pages. You reconcile each account to the statement ending balance at month-end, so you need the statement even when the bank feed is connected. For cleanup work, ask for every month since the books were last reconciled.
Why bookkeepers need a bank statement
A bank feed is not a statement. Feeds disconnect, skip days, import a transaction twice or start mid-month, and none of that shows until you reconcile. The statement gives you the ending balance the books have to match, the list of cleared items and the checks and fees the feed may have missed. Without it, a reconciliation in QuickBooks or Xero is only a comparison of the feed against itself.
What exactly to ask for
One statement per account per month, for the month you are closing, or for every month back to the last reconciled period on a catch-up job. Ask for all pages, including the check images and the pages that look blank, and for any account the client opened or closed during the period.
What to check when it arrives
- The statement period follows the last one you reconciled, with no month missing in between.
- The last four digits of the account number match the account you are reconciling in the books.
- The ending balance is printed on the file, and every page of the statement is there.
Email to send your client
Replace the bracketed parts. The same text fits in the message of a DokuTrak request (up to 1,000 characters).
Subject: Bank statements for this month’s close
Hi [Client name],
I am closing your books for the month and need the bank statement for each business account, savings and any account you closed included.
The best copy is the PDF from your online banking, usually under Statements or Documents. Please send every page, even the ones that look empty, because I reconcile to the ending balance printed at the end.
Could you send them by [date]? If you cannot find a statement or have trouble logging in, tell me which account and I will walk you through it.
Thank you, [Your name]
Ask once. DokuTrak does the chasing.
- Your client uploads from one link, with no account and no password.
- Reminders go out on a schedule, by default 2, 5, 10 and 14 days after the request, until the file arrives.
- With AI review switched on in your workspace (it is off by default), each upload gets a first pass that flags a file that is not a bank statement, an unreadable or blurry scan or a copy where one of these is missing or cut off: the account holder, the statement period. It says so when it is not sure.
- You accept every file or mark it for re-upload, and your client gets the note by email. The AI never accepts a file.