A bank in BlossomERP is one of your real bank or cash accounts, linked to its GL account (7.7). Its opening balance is entered once, in the account's own currency.
A bank statement is the bank's version of events: the lines the bank says moved, with the period's opening and closing balances. Type it in line by line, import its workbook from the Bank Statements list's Import action (16.4), or — usually best — use Import bank file on the same list and give it the file exactly as your bank provides it: an OFX/QFX export, the bank's own CSV, or the PDF statement itself. With a CSV you map the bank's columns to the statement's fields once; the mapping is saved for that bank and applied for you next time. Every path shows you a preview before anything is saved, and every import lands as a draft statement waiting to be agreed with your books. If you import an export that overlaps one you imported before, the lines already on file are recognised and skipped — they are named in the preview, and a statement line is never imported twice. For a PDF, the file's own printed text is read first; only a scanned statement goes through OCR, and the preview tells you when that happened so you can check its lines with extra care.
Reconciliation is the agreeing. Open a reconciliation for a bank and a statement: the workspace sets the statement's lines beside your posted entries for the same account. Auto-match pairs what it can safely pair — the same amount, dates within the bank's match tolerance, a reference where one exists; for a foreign-currency bank it compares the bank-currency amounts, because those are what the bank itself uses. It also pairs bundles: one statement line that is the sum of several of your entries (a combined deposit), and several statement lines that together make one entry (a split payment). A statement line carrying a cheque number that matches the payment's cheque number is trusted on that evidence even when the cheque took weeks to present. You match the rest by hand — the same bundle shapes work by ticking one line on one side and several on the other. And an entry the bank knows about but your books do not — bank charges are the usual suspect — can be posted as an adjustment from inside the workspace, creating the missing entry and matching it in one move. Where the bank has taken a small charge off a payment or receipt before it reached the statement, the workspace lists it under Suggested matches with a small difference: choosing one posts just that difference as the adjustment and matches the pair — nothing is ever posted from a suggestion until you choose it. An entry is only ever reconciled once, so a line agreed in March cannot quietly be agreed again in April.
The reconciliation completes (behind its own permission) only when nothing is left unexplained: the statement is confirmed, and the reconciled difference is zero — if a difference remains, completing refuses and tells you to match the outstanding items or post adjustments first. Cash Position (7.10) remembers the date of the last completed reconciliation — "last reconciled" is one of the most useful facts in this chapter.