## Reconciling Stripe Data with Financial Reports

This section covers how to reconcile financial data within Stripe, focusing on using Stripe's reporting tools to ensure accuracy and facilitate accounting processes. It details how to compare Stripe's revenue recognition data with other financial reports, such as the Balance Summary report, and how to leverage various reports for auditing and financial analysis.

### Data Reconciliation with Stripe Reports

The **Data reconciliation** page explains how to reconcile cash accounts from Stripe Revenue Recognition with the **Balance Summary report's** activity section within the same month. It emphasizes the need to exclude fees, network costs, contributions, and financing paydowns from the Balance Summary report's activity section before reconciliation.

*   **Key Takeaway:** To get the cash amount in Stripe Revenue Recognition, download the balance sheet report in summary format.
*   **Corrections:** The balance sheet report does not account for corrections. If corrections are needed for the reconciliation month, they must also be considered from the **Debits and credits report** (using the "Entries" filter set to "Corrections") for subsequent months. Any corrections that would have been booked to the original accounting period of the reconciliation month must be factored into the Stripe Revenue Recognition cash amount.

### Utilizing Specific Reports for Financial Analysis

Several other pages detail specific reports that are crucial for financial analysis and reconciliation:

*   **Balance summary report (`/reports/balance`):** This report acts like a bank statement, helping you reconcile your Stripe balance monthly. It provides an itemized CSV export of your transaction history, including custom metadata. It's most useful if you treat Stripe as a bank account for accounting.
*   **Payout reconciliation report (`/reports/payout-reconciliation`):** This report helps match payouts received in your bank account with the batches of transactions they settle. It's available for users with automatic payouts enabled.
*   **Bank reconciliation (`/bank-reconciliation`):** This feature allows you to reconcile Stripe payouts with cash in your bank account, providing a monthly summary of activity and helping you track realized cash.
*   **Fees report (`/reports/fees`):** This report allows you to view all fees charged by Stripe, networks, and external partners across products and services.
*   **Standalone fees (`/standalone-fees`):** This page explains how standalone fees are applied separately after an initial transaction, contrasting them with inline fees.
*   **Stripe fee credits (`/stripe-fee-credits`):** This page details how to apply, view, and reconcile Stripe fee credits to offset service costs.
*   **Revenue Recognition Reports (`/revenue-recognition/reports`):** This section provides an overview of various reports generated by Stripe Revenue Recognition, including monthly summaries, trial balances, income statements, balance sheets, accounts receivable aging, debits and credits, and revenue waterfalls. These reports help analyze revenue, deferred revenue, and booked revenue for financial statement preparation.
    *   **Activity breakdown (`/revenue-recognition/reports/activity-breakdown`):** Offers detailed transaction-level data for journal entry activity affecting specific accounts, useful for account reconciliation, audit preparation, and customer/product analysis.
    *   **Accounts receivable aging (`/revenue-recognition/reports/accounts-receivable-aging`):** Consolidates outstanding invoice amounts into age ranges to monitor collections performance and assess credit risk.
    *   **Audit your numbers (`/revenue-recognition/reports/audit-numbers`):** Allows examination of revenue numbers in detail by customer or transaction via the Stripe Dashboard.
    *   **Balance sheet (`/revenue-recognition/reports/balance-sheet`):** Provides a snapshot of your company's financial position at a specific time, listing assets and liabilities.
    *   **Debits and credits (`/revenue-recognition/reports/debits-and-credits`):** Shows every debit and credit entry for reconciling general ledgers, auditing transactions, and verifying balanced books.
    *   **Income statement (`/revenue-recognition/reports/income-statement`):** Analyzes revenue, expenses, and net income for a specified period.
    *   **Trial balance (`/revenue-recognition/reports/trial-balance`):** Lists account balances at a specific time to ensure total debits equal total credits, crucial for closing accounting periods.
    *   **Revenue waterfall (`/revenue-recognition/reports/waterfall`):** Displays monthly revenue, showing booked, recognized, and remaining revenue over selected periods.

### Integrating with Accounting Tools

The **Integrate an accounting tool** page (`/accounting-integrations`) explains how to connect Stripe data with accounting software like QuickBooks and NetSuite. It details how exported data, including IIF files for QuickBooks, creates specific accounts within the accounting software to categorize Stripe transactions.

This comprehensive set of documentation ensures users can accurately track their finances, reconcile Stripe activity with their bank accounts and accounting systems, and generate necessary financial reports.